How to write down a family story before it’s lost

Tell the story the way you’d tell it at the kitchen table. Answer these four questions in your own words, and the story is mostly written.

Write down a family story with these questions

Your first three keepsakes are free. After that, plans from $4.99, paid once. See pricing

A grandfather and his granddaughter on the sofa with an old photograph album

Four questions to start from

1What is this story about?A person, a place, a day, a house. Start anywhere.
2What happened?Take as long as you like.
3Why do you want your family to have this story?Say it the way you’d say it out loud.
4Anything else before you finish?Stop when you’re ready.

Watch Ruth write one on her phone

She answers the questions, and Forever Photo writes the first draft. Press Play to hear it with sound.

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A sample letter

For Emma and Joe,

Your great-grandfather Walt came over from Norway in 1923 with eleven dollars and a jar of pickled herring his mother packed for him. The herring didn’t make it past Ellis Island. The man at the desk made him open it and then wouldn’t let him close it again.

He worked the ore boats out of Duluth for nine years. That’s where he lost the tip of his left thumb, which he told everybody was a bear. It was a winch. My mother told me when I was twelve, and I didn’t believe her either.

He met her at a dance at the Lutheran church, and he couldn’t dance. He stood by the punch bowl for three hours and walked her home anyway. They were married forty-one years.

Every Christmas Eve he’d hold up that thumb and say, “Now, the bear.” You’ve both heard me do it. Keep telling it wrong.

Grandma

Write down a family story with these questions

The same questions, one at a time. The story arrives on the day you pick.

Your first three keepsakes are free. After that, plans from $4.99, paid once. See pricing