A family history book is a printed book that tells the story of a family across generations, with the names, dates and places that connect its people. It may be a book of family trees, a memoir, a photo book, a cookbook or a history researched from the original records. Which kind fits depends on what the family holds and what it wants the book to do.
Families use the words family history book for very different books. For one family it is a photo book with a page of names at the front. For another it is two volumes that follow the family through three countries, with the records behind every chapter. This guide sets out the kinds and what each takes to make, then how to choose one. Family history book examples shows their pages.
Key points
- A family history book tells the story of a family across generations, with the names, dates and places that connect its people.
- The main kinds are register genealogies, family tree books, memoirs, photo books, cookbooks, memorial books and researched histories.
- A memoir is one person's account of their own life; a family history follows the whole family, usually from the earliest ancestor it can find.
- Which kind fits depends on who will read it, what the family already holds, how far back it should go and whether there is a date.
- A full book has a family tree, chapters, captioned photographs, documents with translations, maps and notes on its sources.
- Most kinds can be made at home; records held by archives abroad, in other languages, usually need a researcher.
What a family history book is
A family history book is a printed book that tells the story of a family across generations, with the names, dates and places that connect its people. Its subject is the family as a whole. A memoir is one person's account of their own life, and a biography is one person's life written by someone else. A family history usually begins with the earliest ancestor the family can find and comes down to the children and grandchildren who will read it. When the book follows the members of one family one at a time, a chapter for each, it is sometimes called a family biography.
A genealogy book and a family history book overlap. A genealogy records who descended from whom, with dates and places, and is made to be looked up. A family history is made to be read: it sets the people in the towns where they lived and the events they lived through. Most books families make now do some of each, with a tree for reference and chapters for reading.
The kinds of family history book, side by side
| Kind | What it holds | Who does the work | How long it takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register genealogy | Every descendant of one ancestor, numbered generation by generation, with dates and places | A family member or a genealogist, from the records | Years, for a large family |
| Family tree book | Pedigree charts, family group sheets and timelines, with photographs | The family, from a tree it has already built | Days to print once the tree is done; the tree itself takes far longer |
| Fill-in family record book | Printed charts and pages the family completes itself | The oldest relative who knows the names | As long as the person filling it in takes |
| Memoir or life story | One person's memories in their own voice, with family photographs | The person, or a writer who interviews them | Several months, when written from interviews |
| Photo heritage book | Photographs from each generation, each with a caption | The family, with a photo book printer | A few evenings to choose and caption, then about a week to print |
| Family cookbook | Recipes with the stories of the people who made them | The family, with everyone sending a recipe | A few weeks to gather the recipes |
| Memorial book or sefer zikaron | The life of one person, with letters and photographs and, in a sefer zikaron, divrei Torah | The family, often with an editor | A few weeks to a year |
| Researched family history | The family's story in its towns and times, from the original records, with translations, maps, trees and source notes | A researcher and writer, with the family | Months, much of it spent waiting for archives to reply |
Times are typical. A family that has already named its photographs and checked its tree moves faster at every step.
Register genealogies and family tree books
The oldest printed family histories are registers. They begin with one ancestor and list every descendant generation by generation, numbered so that a reader can follow any line. Thousands, many of them a century old or more, can be searched free in the FamilySearch Digital Library. A register suits a large family that wants everyone listed. Many older ones do not say where each date came from, so a reader today cannot check them.
Most books sold as a family tree book today are books of charts. A pedigree chart shows one person's direct ancestors, branching back across a page, and a family group sheet shows one couple and their children. Several printers will print a book of these pages, with timelines and photographs, from a tree the family has built on a genealogy site.
Fill-in family tree books
A fill-in book is a printed book of blank charts and pages that the family completes itself. Most cost less than $25; in October 2026 the publisher of Our Family Tree: A History of Our Family, a 144-page hardcover, listed it at $13.99. It is the easiest way to get a grandparent's names and dates on paper. It is also usually the only copy, so copy the pages once they are done. Fill-in books built around a parent's own life are compared in legacy books for parents and grandparents.
Picture books about families
A search for a family tree book also brings up picture books for young children about who belongs to a family, some printed with the child's own name. They show a small child where they fit, and hold no history of the family itself.
Memoirs, photo books and family cookbooks
These books start from what the family remembers and keeps at home. A memoir or life story gives one person's memories in their own voice, written by them or by a writer who interviews them; StoryTerrace, one memoir firm, says it aims to finish each book in four to seven months. A memoir's strength is the voice. Memory moves dates and joins places together, so it is best read as the person's own account. How to write a parent's life story covers the form.
A photo heritage book arranges the family's photographs by generation or by branch, with a caption under each. Once the photographs are named it is the quickest kind to make, and the captions carry it. What to do with old photos and family papers explains how to name and organize them.
A family cookbook keeps the recipes with the people who made them: a grandmother's kugel, or the honey cake that came out every Rosh Hashanah, with a line on who made each dish and where the recipe came from. It is often the book the whole family helps to make, since everyone has one recipe to send. How to make a family cookbook explains how to gather them.
Memorial books, the sefer zikaron and the yizkor book
Some family books are made in memory of one person. A memorial book gathers a life story with letters and photographs from family and friends, and many families make one in the first year after a parent's passing. In frum families it is often a sefer zikaron, which adds divrei Torah in the person's memory or in their own words, and often a family tree. What a memorial book is compares the kinds, the sefer zikaron among them.
The yizkor book is an older relative of the family book. After the Second World War, former residents of hundreds of Jewish towns in Eastern and Central Europe wrote books in memory of their communities, mostly in Yiddish or Hebrew, with the town's history, memories of its people and lists of names. For a family whose grandparents came from such a town, its yizkor book can hold a street or a relative's name found nowhere else. How to find the town your family came from covers the town and its yizkor book.
A researched family history
A researched family history is built from the records. It starts with the papers at home and interviews with relatives. It then goes to registers of births, marriages and deaths, census pages, passenger lists, naturalization files and gravestones, and to the archives of the countries the family came from, many of which answer only written requests. The records are read in their original languages and translated, and the family's story is written from them and set in the history of its towns and its times.
The finished book holds the records themselves with their translations, the family trees, maps, and notes that say where each fact comes from. It keeps the family's memory apart from what the records show, and says plainly what is still unknown. It takes the most work of any kind, and it is the one kind that checks the family's stories against the record. An index can misread a name: in the example on this site an index read Nuta Marko as Nuta Tarko, and only the original register settled it. How the example was researched follows one such book from the first papers to the finished volumes, and Inside a book shows its pages.
What goes into a family history book
The parts of a family history book are much the same whatever the family. A short book needs fewer of them, and a full one has most of these:
Checklist
- A title page, and a short note on how the book was made and who helped.
- The family tree, or a tree for each side, with every spelling each name takes in the records.
- Chapters by generation or by branch, in the order a reader will want them.
- Photographs with captions that name each person, the place and the year.
- The documents that prove the story, with transcriptions and, where needed, translations.
- Maps of the towns and the routes between them, and a timeline of the main dates.
- Notes on the sources, so that any fact can be checked.
- A plain list of what is still unknown, and an index of names.
A photo book needs little beyond the tree and its captions, and a register needs its sources above all. The tree and the captions are what a reader in fifty years will rely on to know who is who. Family history book examples shows how a researched book sets out its documents, with their translations and source notes.
Names, dates and places in a Jewish family's book
Most people in a Jewish family's book have more than one name: an English name, a Hebrew name and often a Yiddish one, and the records spell each of them several ways. A good book gives every form beside the person's place in the tree, so that a grandchild who finds any one of them can find the person.
The Hebrew name is given with the father's name, as it is when a man is called to the Torah and in a ketubah. A gravestone gives it the same way, with the date of death by the Jewish calendar. Families keep a yahrzeit by the Hebrew date, so a good book gives both dates for every death.
Many frum families also keep a written yichus, the family's lineage, often traced to a rav or a rebbe. A book can set it out with the record behind each link, and say where a link rests on family tradition alone. The book also names the towns before America or England, the shuls where the family davened and the yeshivos and schools the children went to, which are often the first places a later generation looks for.
The same parts for any family
The parts above are the same for an Irish, Italian or Korean family, and so is the method: start from the papers at home and the oldest relatives, then go to the records. What changes is where the records are kept and their languages. An Irish family's book may rest on civil registers in English, and a Jewish family's from central Poland on registers kept in Polish and, for some decades, in Russian.
How to choose the kind that fits
Start from what the family has and what it wants the book to do. Five questions settle most choices:
- Who will read it? A book for small grandchildren can be mostly photographs. A book meant to be read in fifty years needs names, dates and sources.
- What does the family already hold? A box of photographs points to a photo book, a parent who loves to talk to a memoir, a drawer of recipe cards to a cookbook, and a tree already built to a tree book.
- How far back should it go? Living memory reaches the grandparents, and sometimes their parents. Anything earlier has to come from the records.
- Is there a date? A birthday, an anniversary, a bar mitzvah or a yahrzeit fixes how long the work can take.
- Who will do the work? Every kind can be made at home, apart from the parts that need archives abroad and their languages.
The kinds also work in sequence. A memoir recorded while a parent can still tell it gives a researcher the names and towns to look for, and a researched history can take in the photo book and the recipes. The other guides are in family history books.
When your family's history may already be in print
Some families were written up decades ago, often by a cousin who spent years on it. Thousands of printed family histories can be searched free in the FamilySearch Digital Library. The Library of Congress says it holds more than 70,000 compiled genealogies, and the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has one of the largest genealogy research collections in the country. An old printed genealogy is a good place to start, and every line in it should be checked against the original records before it goes into a new book.
Making one yourself or commissioning one
Most kinds of family book are made at home, and the work goes in much the same order whatever the kind:
- Choose the kind, from what the family holds and who will read it.
- Gather the material: photographs, papers, recipes, and recordings of the oldest relatives.
- Ask the oldest relatives to name every face and place, and write the names down.
- Check each name and date against a record, and note where each one came from.
- Write a short page for each person or generation, and draw the tree.
- Lay out the pages, have a relative proofread them, and print a copy for each branch.
How to write a family history book gives a chapter outline, and printing a family history book covers paper, binding and copies. A family whose records are in English and indexed can go a long way alone, while one whose records sit in archives abroad, in Polish, German or Yiddish, needs letters, fees and translation. Doing it yourself or commissioning it helps decide, and what a family history book costs compares what each kind of service charges.
Sources: the FamilySearch Digital Library; the Library of Congress collections policy for genealogy; the Allen County Public Library; the publisher's listing of Our Family Tree; StoryTerrace's published answers; Chabad.org on being called to the Torah; the OU's glossary entry on yichus. Checked October 2026.
Questions families ask
What is a family history book?
A family history book is a printed book that tells the story of a family across generations, with the names, dates and places that connect its people. It can be a register of descendants, a book of family tree charts, a memoir, a photo book, a cookbook, a memorial book, or a history researched from the original records with translations, maps and source notes.
What is a family biography?
A family biography follows the members of one family one at a time, often with a chapter for each person. It sits between a memoir, which is one person's own account, and a family history, which tells the family's story as a whole across generations. Many family history books hold a short biography of each person inside the larger story.
What should a family history book include?
At the least, a family tree with every spelling of each name, the story of each generation, and photographs whose captions name the people, the place and the year. A fuller book adds the documents with transcriptions and translations, maps, a timeline, notes on the sources, a list of what is still unknown and an index of names.
What should I look for in a family tree book?
Room for every spelling of each name, and for a Hebrew or other second name. Space to note where each date came from, so a reader can check it. Pages for photographs and stories as well as charts. If the book is printed from a tree, check each person against a record first, since the book prints whatever the tree holds.
How can I create a personalized family book?
Choose the kind first: photographs, recipes, a parent's memories or the family's records. Gather the material, ask the oldest relatives to name the faces and places, and write a short page for each person or generation. Then lay it out and have copies printed for each branch. A book that needs records from archives abroad usually needs a researcher as well.
How do family heritage publishers help preserve family stories?
They do different parts of the work. Photo book and tree book printers turn a family's own pictures and charts into a bound book. Memoir firms interview a parent and write the book from the recordings. Genealogists find the records and write a report. A few firms research the family in the archives and write and print the book under one commission. Companies that write family histories compares them.
Where can I find family history books online?
The FamilySearch Digital Library holds thousands of printed family histories that anyone can search free, most of them older American genealogies, and many can be read online. The Library of Congress and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne hold large collections too. Search by surname, then by the family's town, and check what you find against the original records.
How long does it take to make a family history book?
A photo book can be captioned in a few evenings and printed in about a week, and a cookbook or a tree book takes some weeks. A memoir written from interviews usually takes several months, and a register of a large family can take years. A researched history takes months, since archives answer on their own schedules; most Zichronos commissions take three to four.
A researched book for your family
Zichronos researches a family in the archives that hold its records, then publishes its history as a finished hardcover book. It begins with what the family holds and what relatives remember, and goes on to the records, with letters to archives abroad and full translations of what comes back. A standard commission includes five hardcover copies and a PDF, and most take three to four months. When a book is needed by a fixed date, such as a milestone birthday or a yahrzeit, a priority commission delivers printed copies of a first edition in time, and records that arrive later go into an updated edition. A priority fee applies. The examples page shows what such a book holds, what a family history book costs compares the options, and How we work sets out the steps.
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