The Three Ways to Make a Family History Book
When you want to place your family’s history on a bookshelf or give it to your parents, three very different paths exist in the US market:
| Criteria | 1. Automated Tree Printout (Ancestry / FamilyChartMasters) | 2. DIY Photo Book (Shutterfly / Artifact Uprising / Mixbook) | 3. Bespoke Archival Book (Family History Press) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who researches & verifies? | You (often copying unverified online trees) | You | Our archival historians (US & European records) |
| Who writes the story? | Software-generated sentences (“John was born in…”) | You write every caption and paragraph | Written in literary prose by a family historian |
| Historical documents | Raw low-res thumbnails or none | Whatever you scan yourself | Original manifests, censuses & civil acts transcribed & explained |
| Your time investment | 20 to 40 hours cleaning data | 60 to 120 hours writing & laying out | 2 to 3 hours (sharing photos & reviewing proofs) |
| Price | $80 – $250 | $120 – $350 + your time | From $590 (Ancestor Portrait) or $1,690 (Lineage Edition) |
Why Automated Genealogy Exports Go Unread
If you click “Print Book” inside a genealogy program, the software loops through your GEDCOM file and generates repetitive mechanical paragraphs:“ Giuseppe Rossi was born on March 12, 1884 in Palermo. He married Maria Conti on June 4, 1909. They had four children.” Multiplied across fifty relatives, that format produces a directory that no one in the family ever reads from cover to cover.
worse still, online “leaf hints” on commercial genealogy platforms copy mistakes from one user tree to the next—merging two men with the same name in different counties or attaching an ancestor to a noble European family without a single documentary link.
What Makes an Archival Narrative Book Different
In a custom edition like The Grandfather’s Book, dates and places are only the scaffolding. The book answers the human questions that make a family’s past vivid:
- Where did they live, and how did they earn their living? A 1910 US Federal Census sheet or an 1872 French census doesn’t just list names—it shows the street address, whether the family rented or owned, whether your great-grandfather worked as a machinist, a stonecutter, or a tenant farmer, and which widowed mother-in-law lived in the back room.
- How did they cross borders or oceans? A two-page Ellis Island ship manifest records the name of the ship, the port of departure, how many dollars your ancestor carried in his pocket, the relative he left behind in the old country, and the exact address of the cousin waiting for him in Brooklyn, Chicago, or Pittsburgh.
- What did they endure in wartime? Rather than a single line saying “served in WWI,” draft registration cards and regimental war diaries let us narrate where a soldier stood during the Meuse-Argonne or in August 1914.
Frequently Asked Questions
01Can you start from an existing Ancestry.com or FamilySearch tree?
Yes. If you have already built a tree on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or MyHeritage, you can share a link or GEDCOM export with us. Rather than blindly printing unverified user hints, our historians audit the tree against original primary records, correct common indexing errors, pull high-resolution scans of the key acts, and write the narrative from verified sources.
02What if we haven't done any genealogy research at all?
Most of our clients haven't. You only need to share the names, approximate dates, and towns of your parents or grandparents. We conduct the entire archival investigation from scratch.
03Can we order extra copies for brothers, sisters, and grandchildren?
Yes. Every commission includes your first cloth-bound hardcover book and a private digital edition. Additional hardcover copies can be ordered at printing and shipping cost ($65–$95 per copy), and for our next 3 Lineage Edition commissions, the second hardcover copy is complimentary.