A few years ago, after our parents passed away, my sisters and I decided to create a family history scrapbook. We realized that future generations wouldn't know anything about our past unless we began collecting and saving it now. Indeed, we should have started sooner. If you are interested in preserving the past for your descendents, here's how:

1. Gather information. We started with what we had - family stories, a list of relatives that my Grandma drew up a long time ago, old photographs and documents. We organized these and then began to fill in the blanks by contacting other relatives and going online. Some good sites are http://www.ancestry.com/ and

http://www.FamilySearch.org. Also do a Google search of your last name. We found a wealth of information that way.

2. Organize your information. Creative Memories, http://www.CreativeMemories.co m, offers great Family Tree pages for scrapbooking. These can provide a starting point and there are many family tree worksheets available online. We made up a list of photographs and documents for each branch of the tree, so that we knew what we had to work with.

3. Plan your book. Scrapbooks generally have 15 to 20 sheets, and you can use both sides, which gives you 30 to 40 pages. Before you begin pasting anything down, plan how many pages you're going to give to each subject. We organized our into double-page layouts, devoting certain pages to certain ancestors.

4. Decide on your photos. Some of the photographs, if they're quite old, may have damage such as creases, spots, etc. Nowadays it's easy to make new copies of these photos that retain all the old-fashioned charm without the dings and bruises. We used black scrapbook paper to give an impression of old-time photograph albums.

5. Documents - we had some old letters, newspaper clippings, and even a copy of our Great-great-grandfather's Civil War enlistment papers. These items were so fragile that we decided NOT to put them into the album, even if mounted on archive-quality paper, but instead scanned them onto scrapbooking paper that looked appropriately aged, and preserved the original documents separately. In some cases, we reduced the size of the documents so that they'd fit on the scrapbook pages better; small enough to allow room for photos, large enough to still be able to read them.

6. Share the work if you can - turn it into a family project. We had a lot of fun sharing ideas on this and it can be a real bonding experience for siblings, parents & children, cousins, etc.

7. Journaling - on each page featuring a specific ancestor, we put whatever factual information we had - birth and death dates, marriages, children, what kinds of jobs they had - but we also wrote down family lore in journaling boxes. If you prefer, you can type this information up, use a font that seems appropriate to the period of time, and print it out on scrapbook paper. Who wouldn't enjoy knowing that Great-great-great-Grandma was part Cherokee Indian and only stood four foot nine, or that Great Uncle Pete was a detective for the Police Department who once caught a crook during his lunch break, and then went back to finishing his bologna sandwich like nothing had happened? Add whatever personal stories you can find; they'll make the scrapbook ten times more interesting. 8. Once the scrapbook is done, you might want to copy it for other relatives. Creative Memories and other places can make a print version for you that looks identical to the original.

Be prepared. When you start a project like this, it can grow and grow. We ended up with so much material on each side of the family, that we decided to make two books, one for my dad's ancestors and one for my mom's. Not that we're complaining - it's been fascinating! We just wish we hadn't waited as long as we did. So start now before those wonderful family stories are gone with the wind.

Learn more about this author, Carolyn Steele Agosta.
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