Celebrate Family History Month

Discover and Preserve Your Family’s History

As we celebrate Family History Month in October, NGS is excited to support you and the genealogy and family history community with a few ways to explore, preserve, and share unique stories and memories from our families.

Free PDF Downloads

New NGS resources below provide ideas and easy-to-follow steps to participate in our community and make common projects manageable and successful. Use these PDFs yourself and share them to inspire friends and family. Or, use them with your genealogy society, family association, library, museum, or archive (add your logo in the top right corner) to help reach more people and welcome them to your organization.

Scan and Label Family Photos

Tips to digitize and preserve visual family history for generations to come.

Record and Preserve Family Memories:

Guidance to plan and record interviews and capture meaningful conversations.

Write and Share Family Stories

Prompts to get started and suggestions for telling cherished tales.

Join the Family History Community

Benefits of NGS, family associations, societies, libraries, archives, and museums.

Check out studies showing these activities may be good for brain health and begin to plan a Family Matters event with your organization. For more tips and tools, visit the NGS Free Resources page.

Share the Joy of Finding Who We Are

The fabric of who we are is woven with the stories of family members who came before us. Their memories, traditions, life lessons, and experiences are threads that together create our heritage. Exploring and preserving family history is a fulfilling journey that enriches our sense of self, deepens the bonds between generations past and present, and passes on your family’s legacy in the future.

Sharing family history is an act of love. Cultivate younger family members’ appreciation of their roots, let elders know they’re valued, and ensure your family can access memories and stories in the years to come. (Remember to respect privacy. Discuss plans to make sure everyone is on board when conveying personal anecdotes and information.)

Get Started Today and Invite People to Join You

Celebrate this October by taking a moment to begin or restart a project. Whether you’re curious about old photos and hoping to scan them, looking to record family members’ memories, or aiming to write stories that are part of your family’s legacy, it’s easy to put off tasks and think they’ll wait until tomorrow. But as we’re often reminded, the best time is now.

Now is also the time to get more people involved in discovering their family’s colorful tapestry. As you tell family and friends why this month is meaningful to you or do outreach through your organization, use the images below from NGS with the hashtag #FamilyHistoryMonth and the link to this Family History Month page.

Download Free Family History Month Graphics

Click on the name linked underneath one of the Family History Month images to open up a file that is 1080 x 1080 pixels. After you have opened the full-size image, you can download it to your mobile device or right-click on the graphic to save it to your computer.

Let’s celebrate the fabric of our lives. There’s no time like now to scan, record, and write family history or join your local genealogy organization for an event or project.