Family is forever, but the memories, photos, and traditions can fade. That’s why it’s critical that you preserve your family’s story, history, heritage, and traditions while you still can.
Capture has helped over 12 million families preserve their precious memories, so we put together this guide to help you preserve your family’s story too. That way, you can cherish those memories and traditions forever, passing them on to future generations.
Read on to understand the importance of preserving family history, how to gather the most important information, and what you can do to preserve family photos, documents, memorabilia, and history.
Jump to:
- Why is Preserving Family History Important?
- Gathering Family Information
- Preserving Family Photos and Memorabilia
- Creating a Family History Archive
- Sharing and Passing Down Family History
- Utilizing Online Resources and Tools
- Conclusion
Why is Preserving Family History Important?
Preserving family history is important because your family is 100% unique. You have your own traditions, experiences, history, and stories that should live on for future generations to experience.
Not only that, but without taking action to preserve memories, historical records could be lost, photos will fade, memories will die, and home movies will decay. To put it simply, family memories could be lost forever.
With our help, you can ensure that never happens, and it starts with gathering family information.
Gathering Family Information
The best way to start is by gathering all the information you can about your family. To do that, you can start with the basics and yourself. Then, you can expand with family interviews, documents, and family stories.
To start with what you know, you can document yourself and your immediate family details. This includes birthdays, marriages, and other basic details. You can then use these to create a family tree. There are some good options like MyHeritage and FamilySearch Memories. Just make sure you check MyHeritage & FamilySearch Memories reviews before deciding.
Next is the fun part: family interviews. This is where you can flesh out more than just your family heritage, but the oral history that makes your family unique. This can include traditions, funny stories, nostalgic events, holidays, memories of Dad, and anything else your loved ones want to share with the next generation.
Finally, you’ll need to collect family documents including birth certificates, marriage licenses, and other vital records. These family treasures can be a little more difficult to track down, but there are plenty of online resources that can help, including the two mentioned above.
You can also check a local historical society for important documents & ancestry information if your family has been in the area for a long time. Who knows? Maybe historical preservation societies will discover entire new sections of your family tree!
By following these steps, you’ll have a great start preserving your own family memories. But what about those shoeboxes full of old movie reels, photos, and videotapes?
Preserving Family Photos and Memorabilia
Old photos, Polaroid pictures, home movies, film reels, and videotapes contain true-to-life memories. Unfortunately, all these older formats can fade, decay, or be lost altogether.
That’s why the first thing you need to do is preserve memories. You can do this by digitizing the memories. This means that you turn your family collection of analog photos and home movies into digital copies that can be saved onto a cloud, so they are never lost.
Additionally, you can use the digital heirlooms to create a virtual scrapbook, add to an online family tree, share with your family, and so much more. Capture archivists can preserve all your analog movies to create the highest-quality digital files that will last forever.
That’s because of our state-of-the-art American facilities, complete with multi-million dollar tracking and security systems.
Plus, Capture offers the world’s first touchless photo album scanning service, meaning you can send us your albums and we’ll digitize the individual photos without anyone ever removing or touching them. This ensures they stay in superb quality during the digitization process.
After you preserve these memories, you need to begin organizing photos, videos, and films. You can organize them by holiday like Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter or you can do it by person. However, the most popular organizational method is chronological. For example, you could organize going from the oldest photograph to your most recent home movies.
Now that you’re done with home movies and photo preservation, you can start creating a virtual family history archive.
Creating a Family History Archive
Now, you can create a family history archive. You can do this online using virtual family tree and genealogy research tools. Most simply allow you to upload digital photos, videos, and audio to the archive.
However, some are expensive, others don’t allow video uploads, and each has different features. That’s why it’s always important to check FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage reviews.
You could also make your own website using WordPress or another website builder. Then, you can create pages, blogs, and portfolios of memories. You can even give other family members access so anyone can add more memories, anytime.
Another option is to create a physical archive in your home or an air-conditioned storage unit. You can gather and organize everything from photos and Super 8 film reels to VHS, Betamax, and other videotapes.
If that’s what you want to do, there are some things to keep in mind. To preserve the physical family heirlooms, we recommend storing photos in acid-free paper, without paper clips. Then, keep them in a dry, dark, and cool place to ensure they continue to last.
Videotapes are more at risk, as the magnetic charge that allows you to view your favorite memories loses its strength. Because of that, you need to digitize them, and then perform VHS repair as needed. Still, like photos, you’ll want to store them in a cool, dark place when archiving family records.
So, what do you do with your family archives, family tree, gathered memories, and virtual collections? Share them with your loved ones and future generations of course!
Sharing and Passing Down Family History
To share and pass down all your family history, memories, and traditions, it’s best to organize them as heirlooms that can be passed down from great-grandparents all the way down to the newest babies.
While we encourage you to at least organize them in Google Photos or some other online archive in order to preserve your family history forever, it can also be great to make a family history book.
Even if you don’t know how to scrapbook you can include pictures, high school graduation notices, wedding announcements, personal stories, family recipes, and anything else. This makes it easy for anyone in your family to go through and cherish their family history.
Another idea is to organize a family reunion. This is a great method for preserving memories through family storytelling. Then, you can share the family history with your entire family at one time, even using a projector to display the memories and documents for everyone.
Finally, to preserve your family heritage, it’s a good idea to involve the younger generations, letting them go through the traditions and adding new ones. Explain to the children the importance of family history and how they’ll someday cherish these memories and look forward to passing them down to their children and grandchildren.
Utilizing Online Resources and Tools
Finally, you can use genealogy databases to discover new relatives and where your family originates. Options like Ancestry.com and 23andMe use your DNA to find out where you came from.
This can offer enlightening information to flesh out your family history and expand your family tree. Just make sure you read reviews of those tools to find the one that best aligns with your family history goals.
Conclusion
Preserving family history and memories is important. Whether you’re creating a family tree, digitizing photos, digging deep into your ancestry, or creating a family history album, you can pass traditions and experiences down to future generations, ensuring your legacy never dies.
If you want to preserve film reels, photos, videotapes, or even digital devices like SD memory cards, Capture can digitize them at an affordable cost. We use the most cutting-edge equipment to ensure the best possible results for your priceless memories. Tap here to learn more.
