Gift Ideas for the Genealogists in Your Family

Here’s a unique gift-giving idea. Help a loved one or friend who wants to research their family history.

Sure, there are DNA tests to give as gifts and maps or books of a homeland. But there are other, unique ideas that will help shed light on your family’s story and make those findings available for future generations.

How?

Follow these easy steps.

Let’s Declutter

If you’re researching your family’s history, you’ve got treasures in those printed photos, slide shows, VHS tapes and many more files.

Ever wonder why you’ve got so much clutter?

Taking photos became easier and easier in the 20th century.

Here’s a screenshot of a TV ad from 1981.

James Garner and Mariette Hartley starred in a series of Polaroid commercials and in this specific ad Garner remarked that the camera is the world’s fastest instant developer.

Here’s why this is important

The Polaroid camera first appeared in 1948 thanks to Edward Land who developed the camera as a hobby during World War Two. The great war allowed many new industries to flourish, including photography.

Photos became affordable and were taken as slices of our everyday lives and people weren’t just posed in formal portraits.

What this means is many of our families have old photos from the 1950s onward stored in closets, on shelves, and in garages. Those photos are historical and important, but the important ones are often hard to find because they’re lost in piles.

And this brings us to Gift #1.

Gift #1 Give the gift of digitizing

Take your printed photos and many other media files and digitize them with FOREVER®, the same solution I use for my family and with my clients.

Have a plan to declutter and digitize those old prints so you can enjoy what you have. I’ve covered this in previous posts so scroll down and link to them.

The older, printed photos can lay the foundation for you and other genealogists in your family. Research who’s in the photos and follow their stories to earlier times.

Gift #2 is storing your files

FOREVER® is a wonderful storage solution.

It’s permanent storage that’s guaranteed safe for a lifetime, plus 100 years with the goal of files being available even longer. This is from my parents’ digital album.

How? Through the FOREVER® Guarantee Fund that I’ll share with you.

You own your account, so you have peace-of-mind that:

• the Terms of Service won’t change so you won’t be locked out of your account
• your files aren’t compressed
• your data won’t be used for advertising and marketing purposes and you own all the rights. When current digital file formats become obsolete, they will be migrated to the newest file format at no extra cost to you or future generations.

Bring all of your most meaningful memories together into one place.

Gift #3 is FOREVER®’s professional researchers

If you’re digitizing old printed photos, videos, slide shows or home movies there are many stories to tell. In your FOREVER® account, you’ll have room to write brief or unlimited, detailed notes and stories about your files.

It’s a great way to tell the story of your family’s lineage.

You can use many free resources to add information about places and people. FOREVER® offers the services of professional genealogists who have many years of experience.

Ask them for a consultation if you hit a roadblock or use their services if you need to go back further in time like I’ve done, tracing my family’s story to the Civil War era.

They’ll keep you informed of progress and obstacles they encounter like they’ve done with me in this chart.

Gift #4 Themed photo books with your family history

You can inspire your genealogist by using your digital files to create printed photo books with a theme.

Include your family tree and write a few sentences as to who’s included and why.

History also means looking forward

When you organize and store your photos using FOREVER®, you’re saving them for future generations.

Imagine your descendants 8o or 90 years from now accessing the family story that you’ve put together. They see the photos that are digitized and can read the descriptions that you or your children or grandchildren have written.

They’ll be able to learn so much about you and your ancestors.

So as you go back in time to piece together your family story, you’re creating history for people who will access your story in the future.

Need help telling your family’s story?

You may be wondering where and how to begin researching your family’s story or how to go back into earlier centuries.

Contact me. I’m here to help.

I can also tell you the story behind this photo of my husband with an ancestor from the early 1800s.

Learn more in this post:

Here’s the Easy Way to Declutter and Digitize so You can Enjoy Your Printed Photos, VHS Videos, and More

James Garner, Mariette Hartley Polaroid commercial on YouTube

Here’s a link to the history of the Polaroid camera from the Digital Public Library of America:

In Focus, the Evolution of the Personal Camera