50 Family History Journal Prompts

Family historians spend years chasing documents about people they never met, and leave almost nothing about themselves. You are the one primary source your descendants will actually wish they had, and unlike a parish register you can be asked anything. The obstacle is never material; it is that "write about your life" is too big an instruction to start on. Fifty small questions solve that. Answer one a week for a year and you will have written more about your own life than any ancestor left about theirs. To settle any relationship that comes up as you write, use the cousin calculator.

Why write about yourself at all

The case, for anyone who feels self-conscious about it — which is nearly everybody.

You are the only source who can be asked. Every ancestor you research is silent. You are not, and that asymmetry is the whole argument.

The ordinary details are the ones that vanish. What a week's shopping cost, how you got to work, what the kitchen sounded like. Nobody records these because they seem unremarkable, and they are precisely what is unrecoverable later.

It fills the gap in your own research. A family historian who leaves no account of themselves has repeated the exact problem they spend weekends trying to solve.

It is also a gift. Grandchildren read these; a written life is the most-kept thing in this whole field, and it costs nothing to make — the wider list is in family tree gift ideas.

And it is different work from interviewing. Asking somebody else needs their time and their willingness. This needs twenty minutes and a pen — the interviewing side is covered separately in family history interview questions.

How to actually use these

Six rules that get a journal finished rather than started.

One prompt at a time. Choose whichever appeals; there is no order.

Twenty minutes, then stop. A short honest entry beats an hour of trying to be literary.

Do not edit as you go. The first telling is the truest, and rewriting is where journals die.

Date every entry and note where you were writing. Future readers care about both.

Write "I do not remember" when you do not. A gap acknowledged is more useful than a gap smoothed over, and far more honest.

Weekly beats daily. Fifty prompts at one a week is a year, which is achievable. Daily is not, for almost anybody.

And write by hand if you can. Handwriting is itself part of the record, and the storage side of paper is covered in how to preserve old family photos.

Beginnings

Where you came from, in your own words.

1. What is your full name, who chose it, and were you named after anyone?
2. What have you been called by different people across your life?
3. When and where were you born, and what have you been told about that day?
4. Describe the first home you can remember, room by room.
5. What is the earliest thing you can remember, and how old were you?
6. Who looked after you when you were small?
7. What did your parents do, and what did you understand of it as a child?
8. What do you remember of your grandparents?
9. Where did your family come from before that, as far as you know?
10. What did you believe as a child that turned out not to be true?

Everyday life

The most valuable prompts on this page, and the ones that feel least worth answering.

1. What did you eat on an ordinary weekday as a child?
2. What did the house smell like on a Sunday?
3. What was your job in the household, and from what age?
4. How did you get to school or work, and how long did it take?
5. What did things cost — a loaf, a bus fare, a pint, a week's rent?
6. What did you wear on an ordinary day, and what only on special ones?
7. What did you do in the evenings before the technology you use now existed?
8. What music, programs or books were you following at twenty?
9. What did a holiday look like, if you had one?
10. What is something completely ordinary in your life that you suspect will not exist in fifty years?

The people

Write them while you can still hear how they spoke.

1. Describe your mother as a person, not as a role.
2. Describe your father the same way.
3. What did each of them teach you, deliberately or otherwise?
4. Write about a sibling, and about how the relationship changed over time.
5. Which relative were you closest to, and why that one?
6. Who is the relative nobody in the family talks about, and what do you know?
7. Who made you laugh most?
8. Describe a friend you have kept, and how you met.
9. Who influenced your life without meaning to?
10. Who has died that you still find yourself wanting to tell things to?

Turning points

The longer entries. Take two sittings if you need them.

1. What was your first paid work, and what did it teach you?
2. When did you first leave home, and what was that like?
3. Describe how you met the most important person in your adult life.
4. What is the biggest risk you have taken?
5. What decision changed the direction of your life, and did you know it at the time?
6. Describe a time you were frightened.
7. What is the hardest thing you have lived through, and what got you through it?
8. Describe a place you moved to, and how long it took to feel like home.
9. What did you lose that you never replaced?
10. What went differently from how you had planned, and how do you feel about it now?

What you want passed on

Write these plainly. Grand statements age badly; specific ones do not.

1. What do you believe, and has that changed over your life?
2. What traditions do you keep, and where did each come from?
3. Write out a recipe that should not be lost, in the way you actually make it.
4. What advice were you given that turned out to be right?
5. What advice were you given that turned out to be wrong?
6. What are you proud of that nobody would guess?
7. What do you regret, and what did it teach you?
8. What would you tell yourself at twenty?
9. What do you hope your great-grandchildren know about you?
10. What have I not asked that you would want written down?

Number fifty is the most productive prompt here. Come back to it once a year — the answer changes, and the changes are themselves a record.

When a prompt is hard to answer

Several of these touch grief, estrangement and regret. Some guidance, because that is where journals stall.

Skip it and come back. There is no order and no obligation. A prompt left blank for two years and answered in the third is a normal thing.

Write it and seal it if you want it recorded but not read yet. An envelope marked "not to be opened until" is a long-established solution and entirely legitimate.

Be careful writing about the living. Something true about you may not be yours alone to publish. Where an entry involves someone still alive, either ask them or accept that it stays private for now.

You are allowed to be unflattering about yourself and still keep it. Descendants forgive far more than writers expect, and a sanitized account is the one nobody believes.

Do not settle scores in it. An entry written in anger reads as anger a century later, whatever it was about, and it colors everything around it.

And say when you have chosen not to say. "There is more to this that I am not writing down" is honest, preserves the shape of the truth, and is far better than silence.

If you only write five

For anyone who will not do fifty, and it is better to admit that in advance.

Five entries is a real record. Fifty is better, five is enough, and nothing is what most people leave.

Start with the house. It is the easiest to write and reliably unlocks the others.

Making it survive

Getting the journal to outlive the person who wrote it.

Write on decent paper, or type and print a copy. Screens and services change; paper in a box does not.

Date and sign every entry, and add your age. Undated writing loses half its value.

Say who people are. "Auntie Peg" means nothing in eighty years — write "Margaret Hall, my mother's sister" the first time each person appears.

Photograph or scan the pages once a year and store the copies somewhere other than the house.

Tell someone it exists, and where. The commonest fate of a family journal is being found too late, or not at all.

Do not wait to be finished. Give a copy to somebody now — a half-finished journal in a grandchild's hands beats a complete one in a loft, and the same logic runs through how to write a family history and the structure in family history book template.

And ask the older generation to do the same, with a blank book and a short list of prompts. Some people find writing easier than being interviewed, and a starting set is in questions to ask grandparents.

FAQ

What is a family history journal?

A written record of your own life kept for the family who come after you — everyday detail, the people you knew, and the turning points. It is the source your descendants will most want and the one most researchers never leave.

How often should I write in it?

Once a week, for about twenty minutes. Fifty prompts at that pace is a year. Daily journals are abandoned far more often than weekly ones, and consistency matters more than volume.

What should I write about first?

The house you grew up in, described room by room. It is the easiest prompt to answer, it needs no research, and it reliably brings back the material for a dozen other entries.

Is this the same as interviewing a relative?

No. Interviewing captures somebody else's memory and needs their time and willingness. A journal is you writing your own, which needs nothing but a pen and twenty minutes.

What if my life feels too ordinary to write down?

Ordinary is the point. What a week's shopping cost, how you got to work, what Sunday smelled like — these are exactly the details no document preserves and the ones that will be read most closely.

How do I make sure it is not lost?

Write on decent paper, date and sign every entry, name people in full the first time they appear, scan the pages yearly and keep a copy elsewhere, and tell at least one person that it exists and where it is.

Be the source you wish you had

The one ancestor your descendants can still question is you, and the window does not stay open. So make it small enough to actually do: one prompt, twenty minutes, once a week, no editing, dated and signed. Favor the ordinary — the cost of a loaf, the route to work, the smell of a Sunday — because that is what no record anywhere else preserves. Name people in full the first time they appear, write "I do not remember" where that is the truth, and answer number fifty again each year to see what has changed. Then tell someone the journal exists and where to find it. Use the cousin calculator whenever a relationship you are describing needs its proper name.