Sharing your Family History

'Sharing Your Family History' and it's sister course, "Storing your family history" can be purchased as individual 4 week courses or together as an 8-week course at a special bundle price. See: "What to do with your Family History?" course for more information.

Researching a family history generates a plethora of documents and information. What should you do with it all? On this 4-week evening course, delivered by a range of industry-leading experts, you will learn how to store your family history, plus how to preserve both physical and digital documents.

Researching a family history generates a plethora of information. What should you do with it all? How can you ensure your discoveries aren’t lost in time once more? On this 4-week evening course, delivered by a range of industry-leading experts, you will learn how to write and share your ancestors’ stories ensuring they never get forgotten again.

What will the course cover?

• How to write and share your family history stories in engaging ways
• How to create ancestor biographies, from choosing your format to adding historical context
• How to keep your family history legal, ethical and morally correct
• How to ensure quotes and images are within copyright
• How to create source citations so that others can find your references
• Why and how to share your family history online, including creating your own website

Time and Cost

Every Tuesday evening 6 to 7:30pm (includes discussions) from 16 May to 6 June 2023 on Zoom.  Each class is recorded and available to students for two weeks. New to Zoom and would like to attend an online talk but not sure how? Do contact us if you would like to arrange a free taster session.  Bookings will be accepted until 29 May.

Cost for 4 weeks study: £100.00/£80.00 SoG Members.   To find out more about joining our society as a member, visit our membership page

What you will learn

• Sharing your family history. Writing the stories with Natalie Pithers. Every family tree has at least one story worth sharing! It's up to you to decide how and where to share it. All too often our time with our ancestors ends once we've collected our data...which means that our ancestors' stories go unheard and unshared despite the great care we've taken to uncover them. Natalie talks about how to write and share the stories we have uncovered.
• Writing your family history. Writing a biography with Janet Few: This session will provide advice and suggestions for anyone wanting to write interesting biographies of their ancestors, or of course themselves. Students will be taken through choosing formats and starting points and there will be helpful hints for organizing material. There will be guidance for creating timelines and particular emphasis will be given to setting the family story within the broader social, national and local historical context.
• Writing your family history. The legal aspects copyright and citations with Tahita McCabe. Tahitia digs into keeping your family history writing legal, ethically, and morally correct. How to craft a citation so that others can find the reference. What to consider when using quotations, images and whether they are within copyright.
• Sharing your family history: creating an online presence with Paul Carter: This talk will cover putting your family history online which not only aids sharing with family members but also acts as a means of connecting with others researching the same lines. The content is aimed at beginners to web design who are interested in setting up a website and publishing their family history to it

Your tutors:

Janet Few. An experienced family, social and community historian who has presented throughout the UK, overseas and at sea. She has written several books of interest to genealogists and contributes to local and family history journals. She also writes historical fiction.  Janet is currently serving as the president of the Family History Federation. She was awarded the Society of Genealogists certificate of recognition in 2020 for her work.

Natalie Pithers is a self-confessed history geek and a Mum of 3. Nowadays her little descendants keep her just as busy as my ancestors. She started tracing her family tree when she was 18, whilst s also studying for a degree in English Lit. She loves stories, and spent long nights devouring many classic novels. Stories by social commentators (like Charles Dickens) fuelled her interest in discovering the lives of her ancestors – and helped to understand their world. After Uni she had a career in Project Management. She really enjoyed it, especially the problem-solving and organising aspects of her roles. Genealogy Stories allows her to combine my passion for history with the pleasure I take from analysing and structuring data.  

Paul Carter is an experienced software developer and web designer, whose work has included producing and supporting web solutions for a number of professional genealogists and genealogical organisations. Paul is also the co-founder of Name & Place, a new software product designed to support one-place studies, one-name studies and local history projects, which was launched at RootsTech in Salt Lake City just before the pandemic hit, in February 2020. As a genealogist, Paul is an Associate of AGRA, the professional body, and is the Digital Manager for the British Association for Local History. With this expertise­ of both web technologies and genealogical research, Paul is regularly called upon to speak to family history and local history audiences.

Tahitia McCabe is the Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the Postgraduate Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Programme and the Lead Tutor for the PG Certificate Programme at Strathclyde University. This means she is the Course Director and thus takes the lead on postgraduate programme management, promotes the courses generally and does long range planning. She also runs the PG Certificate programme on a day to day basis.