This article was written by Jerry Sherard and is published here with his permission.
What is going to happen to all the items you collected about your family history after your passing? You may have spent hundreds of hours, dollars and much hard work researching. As with many hobby items you have collected, after your passing too many times the items you have collected end up in the trash or are not sold because no one wants the items. Family history information has little financial value. The best and simplest way to preserve your research results and family history are to make an eBook. Hardcover books are expensive. There are many websites which tell you how to preserve your family history, but eBooks are the most cost-effective way to preserve your family stories and history for future interested generations. Because many libraries and museums are running out of shelf space, they are doing away with their genealogy collection of hard cover books to create space for other items which they feel will be used more often.
Begin by making family group sheets with birth marriage, death dates, burial information and parents. Make a list of death dates and where they were living at the time of their death. To gather information about your family, Google search the name with the word obituary after the name. There are also web sites which have collected obituaries, but their early year 2000 obituaries. Biographies published in the late 1800s and early 1900s plus obituaries may be the foundation for your eBook.
The best place to begin your search for information is the Family Search website. There are websites that have obituary indexes only or list obituaries people have indexed. The Genealogy Bank website, a fee based website, the free Dignity Memorial or Legacy web sites and the NewsBank website available at home through large public libraries are good places to start. If you know the death date and place where they last lived, you may find their obituary in a local newspaper. Some of these newspapers may be found online or at state archives, local libraries or at historical societies and musuems. The fee based website Newspapers.com is also good.
In typing the genealogies of their descendants, use an outline form, giving an individual number to each person and double spacing between generations. For example each of the children of Alexander Rooney was given a letter of the Alphabet. Florence R. Rooney who married Jonas M. Johnson is given the capital letter "A" to designate their order of birth. Each of their children in turn and so on down the line to the last descendant contained in the book add the number necessary to designate their order of birth into their family. Starting with the last letter or number in a given series, take off the last letter or number, one at a time, and you can trace any one person back to one of the descendants of Alexander Rooney.
If a direct descendant was married more than one time, their spouses are given a number (1), (2) etc. in the order of their marriage to the direct descendant. The numbers given to the children resulting from these marriages would show which spouse these children came from using the small letters a, b, etc to follow their individual number.
Example:
A - Florence R. Rooney, first child of Alexander Rooney who married (1) Jonas M. Johnson and had two children. Say she later married (2) John Doe and had one additional child. Give the vital information for each descendant and spouse listed, b., d., bd., md., dau. of ??? and their story.
A-3b Alice Irene Johnson, third child of Florence R. (Rooney) Johnson resulting from marriage to the 2nd spouse
To prepare your eBook use WORD format, and you may incorporate pictures. Your main sources of information are stories and obituaries. Obituaries are good sources for vital information. The most important things to preserve are vital information, lineage and stories. These things help others relate to your family history. Make the eBook simple and without graphs and charts. No book has ever been published without mistakes. An advantage of an eBook is that it can be easily changed over time.
The FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City may microfilm / microfiche the eBook or accept the digitized version for placement in their Family Search catalog. Other places to send your eBook is to a local library genealogy department or a local genealogical society library if they have one. Always choose a title that has wording people most likely look for. If you want a printed copy, print it out and have it velo or spiral bound. Small libraries or museums will accept this type of binding. For shelf placement, large libraries usually want hardcover copies. Start writing!
