The excitement is contagious!

As Projectkin, I’ll be attending this year’s American National Genealogical Society (NGS) Annual Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a little over a week. Best of all, I get to do this with my bestie, , whom you probably know from RootSquadRoundup and now a Geneabloggers board member.

It’s the perfect opportunity for RideAlongPartners to ride again!

With the joy of the RideAlong at RootsTech still in mind, we were both all-in on making a RideAlong at NGS happen too, so we’re here to mingle and get the word out about all we’re doing to encourage family history storytelling.

Are you headed to NGS, too? Join us in a livestream!

Not satisfied to meet in person, Kyla and I have planned a livestream, and a photo opp too: Ride Along Partners, Again. And why not? It’ll be a fun way to connect with all of you online and bring our communities together in real life.

If everything works (and this is a big “if,” to be sure), Kyla and I will start the livestream from the Expo Hall on the first night of the conference during the welcome reception.

Fortunately, our old friend, , founder of Vivid-Pix, is a Platinum sponsor of the conference and a huge supporter of our mission as RideAlongPartners. He has generously offered our RideAlong duo a complimentary spot in their fabulously positioned sponsors’ booth in the Expo Hall. 🎉 Look for me there between conference sessions.

If you’re a Geneablogger or Projectkin member and at the conference, please pop by. If you’re there at the welcome reception, you can be in the livestream, too!

Look for the Blogger Beads and say hi!

With over eighteen years of supporting each other as genealogy bloggers, Geneabloggers are everywhere. Kyla and I are eager to spot Geneabloggers with those iconic Blogger Beads and joyful discoveries. Find each other during sessions, in the Expo Hall, and around the impressive ACPL stacks, as well as at fun trivia nights and lively pub gatherings. The conference creates a rare opportunity to speak with as many fellow-travelers in genealogy as possible, and I’m thrilled to be part of it.

A broader focus for RideAlongPartners.org

In anticipation of this NGS conference, I’ve safely archived our RootsTech RideAlongPartners videos and updated the website to reference the booth banner with “Discover, Collaborate, Preserve” and the core of our shared message with the simple flow of a reporter’s story structure: what, who, when, why, and ending with where…:1

If you haven’t already, join us as Projectkin, Geneabloggers, or both, and be part of the crew inspiring others to share their stories. Learn more and join our email lists:

A complex weave of goals

For me, this trip is a complex weave of personal and professional goals. Professionally, I’d already planned to attend as a way to dip my toe in the real world. The conference will be my first in-person event since RootsTech 2020. 🫣 As I tune up my small talk for the real world, I’m looking forward to mingling with the accomplished amateurs and professional genealogists at the conference. We’re all looking for new ways to reach and inspire the genealogy-curious.

As Projectkin, I am particularly looking forward to meeting representatives from local historical and genealogical organizations. With programs like our Stories250, Speakers’ Corner, and All About That Place, I see the potential for a range of new outreach initiatives. Maybe even a few of my hare-brained schemes, too.

The journey to Indiana

As I shared in my recent post, a journey to Indiana has a personal twist for me. The Ride Along at RootsTech gave me the courage to throw myself into Relatives at RootsTech. The connection of databases between RootsTech attendees and the FamilySearch tree app helped me discover cousins in the Fort Wayne area, something I talked about in this post:

If they were here, why? That led me to an unexpected “Friends and Neighbors” connection to my paternal 2x great-grandmother’s family. Silly me, I’d not paid enough attention to the women in the family. Now the trip has a personal connection, and I look forward to visiting some of those Martz, Gehring, Kunderd, and Ries family ancestors on the Lindenwood Cemetery tour.

I was already excited about a visit to the revered Allen County Public Library (ACPL) Genealogy Center. I’ve been eager to explore their collection for years to discover details about my mother’s family. Among them are at least eight Quaker families who migrated from North Carolina and Ohio to Indiana in the early 19th century. Among them are the Parker, Jaques, Newby, Sering, Patten, Coffin, Milne, and Hardy families who settled in Henry, Boone, and Franklin counties in Indiana. I shared some of these details in one of my early posts about my family on this platform under the “My Sixteen” banner.

I am eager to explore their Quaker records to validate whether my 2nd great-grandfather, Isaac Parker, was in the first matriculating class at Richmond School before it became Earlham College, as is reported in family documents. I have started compiling a list of books and articles from the ACPL collection and their wonderous PERSI to explore during those special late-night hours.

How about you? Will you be there? Have related research? Happy to do what I can!

Where were YOUR ancestors on July 4, 1776?

Stories250 Coming Together

This special program collects and shares the stories of our ancestors around the time of the Declaration of Independence (give or take 50 years). Stories could be set anywhere in the world and published on any public platform as long as they are true and related to your ancestors. Together, we’ve

• …compiled stories on a website (Projectkin.org/stories250),

• …created an interactive timeline (Projectkin.org/stories250-timeline),

• …shared the stories on a map (Projectkin.org/stories250-map),

• …retold your stories in live recordings (Projectkin.org/stories250-live),

• …and by September, we’ll have published a commemorative magazine collecting the stories (more here).

Have you been thinking about it?

There’s still time to join us (but not much). We have just about 45 days until my June 30th deadline for the final contributions to the series. Seriously, I can’t do this without deadlines!

Add YOUR Story

Remember YOUR ancestors. Share their stories with YOUR descendants. In case you need any more encouragement, I had the opportunity to present the essence of this Stories250 idea to a gathering assembled for ’s Mondays with Myrt earlier this week. Perhaps my answers for Myrt will convince you to take a look:1

In my view, one of the most important consequences has been a demonstration of the experiences our families survived during this remarkable period in world history. The series has brought three digital components, each designed to provide a collective context to the individual stories on a shared website, timeline, and map.

Through our Speakers’ Corner series, I’ve come to appreciate how powerfully different the spoken word can be as a form of storytelling. Eleven of our writers have stepped up to join me at my Stories250 livestreams to talk about their submitted stories. After each event, I share a link so our speakers can download the digital video file and clips for their talk for their own archives.

Then I realized that this is so special, it might be nice to have something we can hold. Why not a commemorative magazine? As I assembled the draft with the first 60 or so posts, I could already see how transformative the piece would be. I want a copy now, too.

The idea is to give everyone participating a memento of their involvement and something they can share with their siblings and descendants. All participants will receive a PDF of the magazine they can print themselves, as well as a published magazine they can purchase from Lulu.com. This is a learning experience for me, so I’m not charging for my time.

The Penultimate Episode 🥁

Just in time, we have the penultimate, or second-to-last, in our series of Stories250 livestreams scheduled tomorrow, Sunday (Monday in Asia/Pac) as joins me to share her stories. With four contributed stories in the series, she’s one of our most prolific writers. You won’t want to miss this fascinating combination of stories from Patriots, Loyalists, and the squishy middle.

This is a livestream program, and everyone is welcome. If you have an active Substack account, you might appreciate that a feature change now allows everyone with a modern web browser to view these programs. As a host, be sure to toggle “everyone” when configuring access.2

One more thing: Let’s Party! 🎉

(You knew that was coming, didn’t you?) Here in the US, we’re approaching the semi-quincentennial with national hoopla that’s undeniably intertwined with a cocktail of international politics. Let’s put all of that aside for a day and look back into history, at the unlikely way we were all touched by ideas, notions of freedom, and the Enlightenment.

Let’s celebrate every way all of our ancestors were involved: Patriots, Loyalists, mercenaries, neighbors, librarians, craftsmen, artists, mothers, children, servants, and spies. There were so many stories. Most of us had to pick from a fraction of the tales we discovered to share in the series.

Since I wasn’t able to include every one of our storytellers in the livestream series, I’ve invited them all to join me at one of two special events on Thursday, July 9th (and Friday, July 10th in Asia/Pac) at each of my Atlantic and Pacific time windows. Both events are free and open to everyone.

It’s planned as a pair of Zoom events so that we can see each other and everyone can tell stories. I will give each writer submitting a story priority so that they can say a few words and share insights about their story or stories. You’re welcome to join me at both, if you wish. You’re also welcome to bring your family along.

Together, we’ll share our experiences researching these stories and the stories themselves. This was an effort we accomplished together; let’s celebrate.

I started all of this in July 2025, when many of us here in the United States began focusing on the July 4th anniversary for the Declaration of Independence. To celebrate, I’ve been collecting stories and recordings about where our ancestors were, anywhere in the world, 250 years ago.

As your stories poured in, I collected them into a web page at Projectkin.org/stories250, an interactive timeline, a map showing where each story took place, and since August, I’ve hosted authors in the monthly Stories250 livestream. Last month, I announced a special event in July and a commemorative compilation of the stories in the form of a Stories250 magazine.

My Start in Magazines

Since I’m always curious about media, I set about playing with the posts we have so far to derisk the final effort after my June 30th submission deadline. Have one or more to add? No problem, there’s still plenty of time:

Add your own stories

I’ve concluded that though it’s a lift, it’s entirely feasible. There are a dozen or more operational tricks I’ve learned, but I’m confident now I’ll have the whole thing buttoned up by August.1 Among the discoveries:

• A community publication like this gets big fast. 50 articles doesn’t seem like that much on a web page, but in print layout, it’s already over 340 pages. I anticipate at least five more articles, so it’s big.

• Price matters. To keep the project within reach of authors, I’ve planned to publish it with a color cover but a black-and-white interior. At cost through Lulu direct, it should be just under $25, with global printing to keep shipping costs to a minimum. LitMag offered great advice, by the way.

• Color can be in digital form. I’ll make a PDF of the whole magazine available to writers for their archives. This way, it’s easy to print just your own articles in color, if you’d like.

• AI can be fabulously helpful! (Who knew!) AI tools made it trivial to create a table of contents and index. Now I’m not at all worried about rearranging pages and adding new articles.

I’m not declaring victory. I’m sure disasters await, but it has been a good start. The feedback from all of you contributing authors and the community's tremendous advice have been a huge help. Keep it coming.

Feeling the Analog Veil

The work of assembly left me thinking about the separation of media from a story. For centuries, we’ve thought about sharing stories in written form. This magazine is simply a compilation of blog posts. And yet, when they’re assembled into the decidedly analog print form, it’s distinctly different.

In creating the timeline and map, I’d already found ways to view each of our individual posts about our ancestors in a new light. Instead of reading each as the product of the author, you’ll now notice that our ancestors may have been at or near the same place. You’ll also notice the crush of activities between 1750 and 1790. Now, perhaps, you’ll think about where your ancestors were during that time window.

In this draft, I’ve arranged the articles in linear time following the pattern set with the timeline. It seems simple-minded, but I found it surprising to see the continuity created by reading one story after another. Print gave me a much better sense of the progression of time through that period.

The Media and the Message

I know I’ll be thinking more deeply about how to capture and share stories across a variety of media. Because you’ve heard a story once, doesn’t mean you’re done learning from it. Your stories, reprinted from interactive blogs into a magazine, are like characters wearing newly designed costumes. I hope you find them as interesting as I have.

Stories, Hiding in Their Many Forms

While I hunt for stories in my ancestral timeline, I know I will now be on the lookout for tales emerging from unexpected forms, like letters, logs, and records. Though my family history effort started as a means to curate my archive, my storytelling effort has now taken on more forms.

Working with all of you inspires me to keep finding new ways to share these stories. I want to think that’s good for everyone.

’s Bridge to 2076 time capsule series, inspired by Annie Deihm’s Century Safe, injects a new energy into this effort by looking at ourselves as ancestors for future descendants.

The program is free. It will be recorded and shared as a video and audio podcast with all Projectkin subscribers.

But Wait! There’s More Down Under!

Next week features a special Pacific edition of the Speakers’ Corner starting with a preview on Sunday (or Monday across the date line) as our presenter welcomes and to the soapbox at our Speakers’ Corner.

Jane and Lex will share their family stories from “Down Under & the Long White Cloud,” 19th-century stories from Australia and New Zealand.

Nearly 250 years ago, a group of rebels gathered to propose a country founded on an enlightened idea expressed in our Declaration of Independence, that…

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Stories250: Your Family, 250 Years Ago

At the time of the American Revolution

This simple idea was transformational not only to colonists in America but also to individuals around the world. As genealogists, family historians, and storytellers, your family stories have helped capture the turbulent times of the American Revolution, nearly 250 years ago, in a very personal way. I’m now planning for the July 2026 conclusion of this year-long series.

Learn more at Projectkin.org/stories250 where you can read the stories and explore an interactive timeline and map that captured…

• Nearly 50 Stories about ancestors’ lives, loves, and battles posted by…

• More than 15 Storytellers sharing tales of their ancestors’ struggle for every side in tales that included…

• American patriots, British loyalists, Spaniards, Indigenous tribes, spies, men, women, children, pacifists, and all sorts of non-combatants in the middle. Your stories have been contributed from writers in…

• New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States.

In addition to the compiled stories, Projectkin has hosted Stories250 conversations each month since August 2025 with an incredible range of Livestream storytellers including: , , , , Tad Callin of , , and .

These are the ordinary stories passed down in our families by fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and then captured in your research. While some celebrate extraordinary feats of heroism, many illustrate how the conflict changed lives and interrupted dreams for generations.

Here’s what’s next

Our March program this weekend is a perfect example. It features sharing the story of one of her ancestors, John Adams. This was not President Adams, nor one of his famous relatives. Instead, Linda’s John Adams was a Loyalist whose convictions took him from a comfortable life in Connecticut to a lonely exile in New Brunswick. In “John Adams & the American Revolution: The Other Side of the Story,” Linda explains how, despite many opportunities to switch allegiances, John stood by his beliefs.

After Linda’s program, we have just three months left until the big anniversary event, and all speaking slots are booked:

• In April, Dai Davies of joins us to share a story about the enlightened education of the poor and small lending libraries in the so-called Cilgwyn Circuit in Wales.

• In May, of Grandma’s Granny’s Family Album will share the complicated story of divided loyalties in her tale about Captain Joseph Durfee (1725 - 1801) of Rhode Island.

• And finally, in June, will wrap the series with tales about her 5x great-grandfather and notable frontiersman, Militia Captain John Hinkson (1729-1789).

Concluding the Series: July 9 Special Event

This 250th anniversary reminds us of our personal connection with the history of our country, and the role it played in the 18th-century Enlightenment. While the monthly series will end with Helene Labelle’s story in June, I’ve planned a special event in July to bring everyone together for a Zoom celebration of the series. Since it’s a fair bet that some of you will have commitments on the Fourth of July, I’ve planned a special event on the Thursday of the following week, July 9th.

All of you who have submitted stories for the timeline, map, or live programs will be invited to share your stories in a live Zoom program, tentatively in our Pacific-friendly timeslot. If we have enough interest, I might split it into two sessions. If you’ve already submitted a post (or posts), watch for an email with details.

⮕ If you haven’t submitted a post but are considering it, don’t wait. Do it now. There’s still time.

All posts must have been published and submitted by June 30th. Submit your story using the simple form at Projectkin.org/stories250-form.

Topping it Off: A Commemorative Magazine

Your joy of discovery has inspired me to consider extending the idea. I want to combine all our posts into a “commemorative” magazine that celebrates everyone’s contributions.

The idea is simply to create something that all of you as writers and storytellers can share with your loved ones. The magazine-style reprint of our combined stories can help your family and descendants appreciate how your ancestors’ experiences fit into the broader narrative of the period.

Soft-cover, short-run “magazines” are now cost-effective, and there are dozens of tools out there that should make it (relatively) easy to format and publish post collections into magazine formats.

Candidly, I’m hoping that the potential to be included in such a publication might nudge you into getting your own stories done. I’ve planned to use this project to gain experience I can apply to future projects, both for myself and our shared community.

So there’s no misunderstanding, here’s what I have in mind:

• A private print run: I’m not looking to sell these on Amazon, eBay, or anywhere else.

• A digital version of the magazine, offered as a PDF (or possibly an ebook) to everyone who contributed an article. I will solicit contributors' opinions about whether to make this capstone available to everyone.

• Opt-in: I won’t publish anything without approval from authors. Purchasing one or more copies of the magazine is not a requirement to be included.

• A QR code to link author publications or websites to published articles. I’d like to include multiple posts per author, but I can’t commit to that yet.

• The price per printed copy should be modest: I anticipate adding a small amount of overhead to cover my costs, and I will be transparent about these costs with all authors. My target is around US$20 per copy or less using a print-on-demand service like Blurb.

• No one will be asked to pay or purchase a copy to have their post (or posts) included.

• Securing digital rights for images will be the responsibility of contributors.

• The magazine will be finalized and available for purchase AFTER the July program. Delivery will be weeks after that.

Have suggestions or feedback for me? Please drop me a note. There’s still time to talk me out of it. 🤭

There’s a method to the madness.

To synchronize modern clocks, we adopted a system of 24 time zones, each marked in hourly increments relative to the local mean time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, resulting in Greenwich Mean Time (or GMT). By a happy coincidence of geography, California lies on the Western edge of the Americas, so that two natural time slots result.1

• 🐓 A slot in the California morning that’s friendly to the Atlantic coasts of Europe and convenient across the Americas, for example:

  • 10 am San Francisco, 1 pm Toronto, 6 pm London, 5 am Sydney

• 🫖 A slot in the California afternoon that’s friendly to the Asian and Pacific nations but still convenient across the Americas, for example:

  • 4 pm San Francisco, 1 pm Wellington, 11 am Sydney, 12 am London

Now Add Seasonal Changes

The trick, of course, is that in the Northern and Southern hemispheres we generally change our clocks to Spring forward and Fall back. If that’s not enough, our varying geography and politics won’t let us agree on a single global date for these changes. Instead, they take place regionally, leaving us scrambling to keep up.

This year, the changes occur in three stages over four weeks, starting on Sunday, March 8. These are the key dates to keep in mind:

March

• First Sunday, 8 Mar: Most of the United States and Canada (except for Hawaii, most of Arizona, and Saskatchewan) jumped ahead an hour at 1 am.

• Last Sunday, 29 Mar: The United Kingdom and most European countries will jump ahead an hour to British Summer Time (BST) or Central European Summer Time (CEST).

April

• First Sunday, 5 Apr: New Zealand and most states in Australia will move their clocks back one hour to Standard Time. As of 2026, three regions in Australia do not change their clocks: Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Projectkin Events

Projectkin events are scheduled according to North American clocks. To anticipate local start times in your region, you can always check the Projectkin Events calendar, which uses your local clock to calculate start times on any given day. This is very much like online tools like WorldTimeBuddy when used to calculate future events.

Planning for Order

The chart below visualizes the shift in Projectkin event start times in four Anglophone time zones. This season, it’s the four weeks between 8 March and 5 April that can be confusing. That’s not so bad, is it?

Your Computer Calculates Start Times

Many don’t realize that their computer, phone, or tablet calculates program start times when viewing the Projectkin Events Calendar. This is done using a third-party service called Tockify.com, which hosts all event pages for Projectkin. To make it easier to see the entire month, tap the full-screen button on the Events Calendar.

Expanded Calendar Views

With the calendar expanded to full screen, you can explore Tockify calendar view options:

• Move forward and backward on the calendar by changing the date.

• Use the Pinboard and Agenda views as alternatives to the Monthly view.

• Pro tip: Use the search window to filter events by title.

Notice that this affects not only my Projectkin events, but also the two monthly gatherings centered on my sister publication, MissionGenealogy. I now maintain this publication as a public service to our growing genealogy community here on Substack. Our March meetings, usually held in the first week of the month, were delayed by RootsTech and will be held today, March 10th or 11th, depending on your location. See a filtered version of this calendar for your local times at MissionGenealogy.org/events.

Last thoughts

Projectkin is platform independent, and we don’t accept sponsorships or affiliate funds. You can explore past programs at Projectkin.org/event-recordings. You can thank your Patrons, speakers, and community participants by visiting their publications or sharing them with your communities. Share the love ❤️ and join in the conversation.

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Cruise the Salt Palace with Friends

If you’re excited about the annual FamilySearch RootsTech conference, come on down! Once again, Projectkin and my sister publication MissionGenealogy will host a “Ride Along” during (and maybe even a little before) the conference in Salt Lake City, UT. The idea is to create a way for us to participate in the show as a community (on-site and remote). It’s like jumping on a bus together; it’s just that some of us are in bunny slippers 🐰🐰.

In 2024, Projectkin hosted a series of talks, and last year we added MissionGenealogy and got serious…

Last year’s dedicated team of collaborators on site included , , , , and . In addition to the onsite team, our livestreaming guests included , , , , and .

Livestreaming on Substack was new to all of us then. It offered a palpable sense of being together for the show. Part of the magic was the sense that whether onsite or offsite, we were doing this together.1

For 2026, we’ll build on that and expand it beyond Substack itself.

RootsTech 2026: An Open Ride Along

A new year creates new opportunities for innovation, improvement, and creativity. So, we’ll start with the original idea of live events, and add…

• Links and bridges to make the “Ride Along” more open. Why limit it to Substack account holders?

• Multiple channels: While we’ll still do Substack livestreams, we can also use YouTube or any other publicly accessible web-based platform for audio, video, or written, or combined posts.

• Posts and discussions can be linked or embedded on any long-form or media-based platform.

Consistent with my “Skybridges” post from earlier this year, the idea is to create a more open space where ALL of us, as family historians and genealogists, can meet and mingle, share what we’ve learned, and leverage what others discover or create.

The idea is to create a positive space to help increase each other’s visibility while leveraging existing platforms to do what they do best.2

RootsTech 2026 Ideas:

So far, we’ve identified five active components of this Ride Along. Here’s a preview of what I have in mind so far:

1. 🎬 Livestreamed Conversations

2. 🚩 Special RootsTech Posts

3. 🐰🐰 🍿 Viewing Parties for Online Classes & More

4. 🗓️ Schedules & Time Zones

5. 🕳️🐇💨 Relatives? Maybe YOU Are My Cousin!

Your feedback can help me figure out what to replace, expand on, or improve. Here’s what I’m thinking. What do YOU think?

🎬 Livestreamed Conversations

As in 2024 and 2025, I plan to recruit speakers to join me in Livestream sessions. I’m not sure yet how many each day. From past experience, I know to avoid more than one daily email to my subscriber base. Last year, I found that combining multiple recordings into a single post worked pretty well, though it was time-consuming.3

Personally, I’m happy to switch to YouTube for livestreams, so Substack is no longer a requirement if my guests prefer. Platforms are like languages; it’s easy to switch to a common denominator. I also recently discovered that Substack now lets anyone view a livestream link; you no longer have to be a subscriber.4 👀

Do you already have a plan for RootsTech posts for your readership that you’d like me to include? Let me know. I’d love to get a sense of who is interested.

Interested already? Send me an email

🚩 Special RootsTech Posts

With a little embedding magic, I’ve planned to create a page (or pages) of embedded posts, videos, and more.

The idea is to share meaningful insights about what’s ahead, what you’ve just seen, or what you think others should see. I envision including compendium posts, roundups, and videos. I see no reason these need to be limited to any platform, so I’ll welcome posts from any long-form platform (see Notes below).

I’ll be more than happy to share relevant posts as long as they’re accessible without a login (WordPress, for example, but not Facebook). I’ll not accept commercial posts or product pitches, and long-form helps me manage scale, but I’d like to be open-minded beyond that.

I’d love your thoughts on this so I can anticipate questions and problems. I’ll focus in the meantime on automation and scaling so I can physically handle it.

These will all be posts on your own site, I’ll get you a form where you can submit your post so I can add it to the page. A few suggestions I’ve heard so far for posts that would be helpful to others include:

• Daily Summary, Roundup, and Compedium Posts:

  Those posts highlight what YOU think is interesting. With your permission, I’ll embed your post to increase your visibility. It’ll help us find it!

  • ⮕ I’m thinking about including a few daily “columns.” Interested? Let me know (email or Substack DM @Projectkin)

• Livestream feeds/recordings: Substack, YouTube, TikTok?

  If you’re taking the time to run a livestream, that’s awesome. Let me help get your programs some visibility.

  • ⮕ As with last year, it’s easy to embed recordings, and your posts can help to get the word out about timing.

• Posts about what happened at the show:

  Tell us insights, experiences, and what you enjoyed. Have a special strategy for getting through the Expo Hall or for managing sessions? Let us know.

  • ⮕ I envision a form that nudges me to include your posts, or a dedicated channel. Tell me now what you’re thinking. (Again, email or Substack DM @Projectkin)

🐰🐰 🍿 Viewing Parties for Online Classes & More

We’re already seeing a lot of excitement about the upcoming classes. The schedule, though frequently changing, already reflects the diversity and depth of previous years. Take a moment to see what’s been posted so far:

RootsTech 2026 Schedule

In case you missed it, Bill Moore and Kyla Bayang have already started collaborations. On Friday, January 8th, shortly after the schedule was posted, they shared a livestream talking about the upcoming schedule. (See the full conversation at billmooreny.substack.com/p/live-with-bill-moore.)

I have a few ideas for sharing class suggestions and playlists. Lists of favorites would be easy in a list view.

Someone suggested “viewing parties,” which sounds like fun, though keep in mind, it would be limited to the online classes.

“The kids” do this kind of thing with movies and whatnot. Have a best-practice to suggest? There are several software solutions on the market. It’s not my expertise, but if you’re on it, let me help!

My thinking is that people could suggest classes they’re willing to host parties for, and provide a contact address. You’d be on your own to set it up, but my page can share the interest.

🗓️ Schedules & Time Zones

I can appreciate that for many people, event times synchronized to North American Mountain Standard Time (MST) can be hard to calculate on the fly. I’ve used an external tool for years, so let me help. I have already added major time windows to the calendar (see them here) and added an international clock widget to my Event and RootsTech pages.

Are there other ways I can help make clock calculations easier?5

🕳️🐇💨 Relatives? Maybe YOU Are MY Cousin!

Each year, the team at RootsTech releases a special show configuration for “Relatives at Rootstech” that connects their show registrant database to the main FamilySearch database. The interface shows how you are connected to other RootsTech attendees.

Though I was a doubter at first, by last year, I was all-in on this tool, which helped me discover tens of thousands of connections and cousins.

The problem is that Relatives at RootsTech isn’t open until a few weeks before the show starts. Based on a terrific insight from Kyla, I discovered that the FamilySearch “Famous People” listing is linked to the FamilySearch database and is accessible year-round at RelativeFinder.org, so we CAN get started now! Here’s their intro video:

To find each other, I’ve created a private “Ride Along” group called “Projectkin.” To get started, have your FamilySearch ID ready, then use FamilySearch to log in to RelativeFinder.org. Now…

• Tap on Groups in the top navigation bar, pull it down to select Join. In the resulting search box, enter Projectkin (yes, that’s one word 😉).

Once you’re in, you can see all the ways in which you are connected to others in the community. It’s honestly a lot of fun. Once you identify common ancestors, you can share what you know with your newly discovered, equally motivated cousins.6

A caution though: It’s a tad buggy and convoluted sometimes. Here’s a clip from my walk-through with . A hat-tip to Crystal for her patience.

As you’ll quickly discover, the more of your known tree is documented in FamilySearch, the better you’re able to use these tools to find and connect with cousins you may not already know. (FamilySearch has a not-so-secret plan to hook you on the service, 😉.)

Note: Though I believe they’re working hard to broaden the reach, I think the majority of FamilySearch subscribers are currently in the US and Canada, limiting the tool's global reach. Don’t be discouraged by low numbers at first.

Why Am I Doing This?

That’s always a good question. I’m sponsoring this RootsTech Ride Along as an individual because I know it can be useful. As Projectkin, I’m all about encouraging families get their stories told. As MissionGenealogy, I’m working hard to create a community clubhouse on Substack where we can connect year-round. From your enthusiasm last year, I could see that many of you felt the same way.

This kind of engagement is the best possible way to introduce who we are and what we’re doing to a large audience of highly motivated genealogists. We all want to share this joy with friends and family. Coincidentally, it also benefits the conference hosts, FamilySearch. I’m not looking for any sponsorship7, but their alignment helps since they ultimately control online access to the conference.

I’m not going to Utah again this year, so I’ll be joining the show from the cheapseats here in Berkeley, California. My North American PST time zone is conveniently positioned between the American continent and Europe to my east, and the Pacific to my west. Last year, when we vastly expanded the scope of the Ride Along, the feedback was terrific. This year, with a few input forms and streamlined tools,8 I think we can expand beyond Substack without a huge lift. We’ll find out!

To be sure, I’ll rely on many of you as collaborators and all of you for your support and engagement. I have come up with a few rules to make our lives a little easier during the show. I know efficiency is key to scale.

Notes: A Few Rules to Make This Work

Since this is all new, I want to avoid misunderstandings. Our shared posts should reflect our excitement about the show and topics that might interest other members of the community. There will be no fees exchanged, no product placements, none of that sort of thing.

1. I Reserve the Right to Decline to Include Posts

• Your posts shouldn’t be product pitches, include affiliate links, or other forms of placed media. No judgment, I will simply decline to post those.

• By using my Projectkin.org domain, I’ll be taking responsibility for linked posts, so I reserve the right not to embed or otherwise reference some material that feels out of scope, political, or otherwise inappropriate.

• If I’ve let something through that you feel is inappropriate, feel free to let me know.

2. Posts Should be Directly Relevant to RootsTech

On any given day, there’s a lot of interest in genealogy news, new features, and all sorts of topics.9 During the conference, influencers, bloggers, and an entire press team will cover vendor announcements, special deals, and offers. You don’t need me to reproduce those announcements.

• I’m totally fine with compedia and summaries that include references to show specials and that sort of thing.10

• I will be happy to share posts you’ve written about how a connection at the show transformed your research or something like that.

• I’m interested in stories about you, your research, and discoveries, not product pitches.

3. Posts Should be from Established Genealogy Community Members

I’m not sure yet how I’ll police this, but my goal is to help connect community members who are genuinely interested in genealogy and family history. This will necessarily be subjective, but I may ask for links to validate credibility.

4. Event Announcements & News Posts Belong Elsewhere

I’ve tried hard to keep a good sense of what I can do well and what others do better. I want to “stay in my lane,” as they say.

For scheduling the many special programs during RootsTech, I will use — and strongly recommend — ConferenceKeeper.org. I’m in awe of Tami Mize’s can’t-miss weekly mailing. The same goes for regular news-feeds at newsletters like Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, ’s Village Square and ’s Empty Branches on the Family Tree, and her Friday Finds list.

5. Posts Should be of High Quality and Your Own Work

I’d expect every post to be clearly written and your own work. I’m not interested in automated AI-generated copy or any form of plagiarism. I can accept a few exceptions to AI-generated content, if they’re contextualized as examples, for instance, or just part of automation.

I will, however, insist on your own work, perspective, and most of all, stories. The whole point is to connect at a human level about our shared interest in our family stories.

Have thoughts for me on this point? I’d love to hear them.

Think you already have a post for me, or have been cooking something up for the show? Bring it on! Let’s talk.

Right now, I just wanted to let you know this is happening and to solicit your feedback. As I get more ideas, I’m sure I’ll modify some details of the plan and expand others.

Title Image: Composite showing a VW Bus (from makamuki0 on Pixabay) in front of a 1939 Road map of the US from the McCauley Map Case Company (photo from the David Rumsey Map Collection).

As we enter 2026, this thriving family history and genealogy community is ready to go beyond Substack. Since arriving on Substack as Projectkin, I’ve actively encouraged both casual family historians and serious genealogists to join us.

And look at us now! Though still small, we’ve achieved a critical mass. We’ve developed an ethos of generosity, kindness, and creativity. You continually inspire me with your energy and openness to new ideas.

On the occasion of the new year, I think it’s precisely the right time to shift gears and more actively create pathways for collaboration across platforms. I see no reason why we can’t welcome family historians and genealogists to participate in this community without asking them to move their work to Substack. Bridges between platforms can be pretty natural. In fact, several of you have already been showing us how.

This post will celebrate examples of cross-platform “skybridges” and explain why I think they are essential to the community's vitality.

When we brought Projectkin to Substack,1 I committed to keeping it platform-independent. As a former startup founder, I knew a lot about the incentives for platforms.2 Whatever their ambitions, investors reliably push well-meaning entrepreneurs to maximize returns by finding ways to bind subscribers’ digital work to their platform. Photo, video, and other file formats are a baseline approach.3 Strategies that close subscriber lists and comment histories are also widely deployed.4

Substack isn’t perfect, but engagement features and exit options, such as downloadable content and subscriber lists, make it a compelling alternative.

Level Set with a Definition

The term “platform” has meanings in a range of fields from sport to science. In consumer software, a digital platform is an online infrastructure that allows people to communicate, collaborate, and often pay each other. Early web logs started as news summaries as chronological views of website changes, but soon added technical features such as CMS, syndication, and email for distribution. By the late ’90s and early 2000s, the category’s success inspired startups like LiveJournal, Blogger, and WordPress to build on it, adding commenting, authentication, and email notifications. Facebook’s walled-garden approach wasn’t far behind.

Over the years, blogs have been transformed with a range of media and distribution features. Their success has spawned new business categories like podcasting, webinars, and video sharing. As these services and their variations added payment processing and/or advertising, they became new platform categories serving both customers (e.g., podcasters) and their customers’ subscribers (readers, viewers, and other consumers).

Substack’s entry was quite late in 2017; as a result, they had to take a distinctly different approach to stand out from blogging platforms like WordPress. As they add media features, they’re reinventing the category.

Genealogy on Substack was Lonely

When I joined Substack as Projectkin’s publisher, I found a warm and generous community of fellow-travelers. The combination of writing, media, and citation features suits us as storytellers. The recommendation engine5 helped us find each other, and a payment system gave us the option to ditch advertising by adding paywalls and exclusive fee-based content.

Unfortunately, when I joined a little over two years ago, there just weren’t very many of us. Worse, most of our visitors were unfamiliar with Substack. They came from social sites like Facebook and Bluesky and found the interface confusing. Subscription nudges, while effective in converting new subscribers, were also annoying.

Without a critical mass, we lacked credibility. Visitors wandered away almost as readily as they arrived.

And yet, we persisted.

By my estimate, there were at least a few hundred genealogy and genealogy-adjacent publications here before me. I remember being particularly touched by the generosity of of Ancestory, of New Coats for Old Tales6 and GenStack’s . Robin had arrived shortly before me and shared my background as an entrepreneur, though had much more experience as a genealogist. We soon realized that we shared a common goal in growing the community.

By August 2024, we’d decided to create a focus that would help give the genealogy community a sense of belonging. That was the basis behind MissionGenealogy. Though Robin has since moved on to focus on family history content creators with GenealogyMatters, our Mission continues to welcome new community members with monthly roundtables. In 2025, stepped up to add a series of weekly tips to help everyone get comfortable here.

2025 Was the Quickening

During 2025, we saw luminaries in the Genealogy blogosphere enter the tent. , , , , and , to name a few. The stalwart joined both as an account and community leader, expanding the invitation to the membership of Geneabloggers. In April, a researcher and platform pioneer, , presented a talk for FamilyTreeWebinars about getting the most out of the platform. Just six months earlier, the Substack development team recognized both the growth and the potential for this segment by adding Genealogy as a Category visible in the Explore mode.7

It’s hard to say how big the Genealogy and Family History community is today (estimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands of publications)8, but it’s certainly no longer lonely. As described, the quickening of a community starts…

“Quietly at first. A comment here. An email there. Then the conversations got longer. The stories started tugging at each other, like they knew they belonged on the same shelf.”

A Twist on the Success Story

Instead of bragging about our success, let's accept that what we’ve accomplished so far establishes our credibility. Now it’s time to focus on building connections to other platforms.

That made me realize that if my objective for Projectkin is to encourage more families to tell their stories,9 then I should focus on reaching more families. I don’t need to teach people to use Substack; it’s just one platform among many. As I’ve said many times, I believe it’s a good one, particularly for its support of standards-based media features.

So, let’s channel our energy into new and compelling ways to connect across boundaries. If we’re not proprietary about any one platform, we’re more likely to focus on our storytelling. I want to keep exploring bridges between platforms.

Connecting Platforms with “Skybridges”

The boundaries that separate platforms aren’t a bad thing; they’re natural, as each platform protects its interests. Our interests, however, extend across these boundaries. If platforms allow entry without paywalls and barriers, why not build skybridges between them so that we can more readily explore posts, recordings, and other stories?

A Simple Example

Substack, as a platform, has every interest in helping you find content within the platform. To do that, they’ve added the explore function on your home page. From there, you can see categories that allow you to search for others who share your interests. When you paste a link to another Substack in a post, the platform elegantly embeds the post. A link to another writer (using the “@” handle) embeds their name and tells them that you’ve mentioned them.

Those are elegant and powerful features, but they are not the only ways to link to external content. At Projectkin, I create my own visual links to external content to present it seamlessly. This is why I use screenshots of my calendar or event tiles to suggest you explore my calendar for events in your local time. Like this 👇 (Please excuse the shameless plug.)

Substack has nothing to do with either Zoom or the Tockify tool I use for events. Add a picture, put a link in the caption, that’s all there is to it. Why should integrations matter to readers?

Learning from the Best

We’ve seen some outstanding examples of hybrid platform strategies in 2025 as several experienced bloggers waded into Substack. They each have their own way to get the most out of the Substack community without giving up on their established sites and mailing lists. These are examples to learn from.

Here are a few that combine Substack with WordPress, YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, WeAre.xyz and more:

• who joined and me in January 2025 for “The Push & Pull of Platforms,” a special event for Projectkin.

  • In the talk, Jane described how she was integrating links to public pages on her WeAre.xyz blog and One-Place Study for her publications: and .

  • In contrast, Jennifer talked about how she had begun transitioning from a WordPress blog she’d managed for years to a Substack installation for TrackingDowntheFamily. Her Sunday Snippets posts create a weekly index of posts she enjoys on Substack and elsewhere. It also helps gain visibility for the posts she mentions.

• When Paul Chiddicks joined Substack, he was already very well known at ChiddicksFamilyTree.com, on social media as @chiddickstree, and the voice behind the “Dear Paul” column for the UK’s Family Tree Magazine.

  • It would make no sense for Paul to walk away from his digital presence on these platforms. Instead, he complements his WordPress blog with occasional posts on Substack with links back to his WordPress and publishes a weekly newsletter, “The Chiddicks Observer,” that highlights posts deserving added attention.

• With experience dating back to pre-internet bulletin boards and extending into a well-respected Facebook group, DearMYRTLE was very careful as she researched and then entered Substack, immediately establishing herself and transferring her credibility.

  • You’ll see her today with posts for DearMYRTLE’s Village Square where she highlights work from her bi-monthly live programs on YouTube: Mondays with Myrt and Myrt’s Book Club.

  • She also hosts with the same gusto, combining her posts with YouTube integrations.

  • Finally, DearMYRTLE also maintains an active role in Geneabloggers as an organization. With her guidance, the team is migrating its strategy for shoutouts and support to member bloggers.

• One of Substack’s most prolific writers also has the deepest roots of all: .

  • His arrival on the platform this Spring signaled a new phase for our multi-platform community. Not only has he produced near-daily posts directly on his Geneaholic publication and podcast, but he also continues to post on Blogger at Genea-Musings. I have no explanation for how he does it, but suspect Hermione’s time turner, 😉.

• In a post in October this year, Linda Stufflebean, who has been dropping one post a day to her blog Empty Branches on the Family Tree for years, shared a change in her own strategy.

  • In the post “Making Choices,” she described how she’ll stay on Substack but focus on her WordPress blog. She uses Feedly to manage incoming emails and occasionally comments or posts here. An example of her posts is “The Revolutionary War Experience of John Stufflebean,” one of her contributions to Stories250.

• Supporting this multi-platform approach from the beginning has been GenealogyMatters’ Robin Stewart, whose weekly newsletter, GenStack has scoured the internet each week for genealogy or family history blogs, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and books.

  • For this nascent Substack community, her tireless work compiling this list has created a reliable train of visibility that is potent for new writers and contributors.

• I’d be remiss to skip over one of our most generous and early contributors to the community, Tad Callin of .

  • His work for his Substack publication of the same name in early 2024 inspired a flurry of posts on the “My Sixteen” theme. In the process, he demonstrated ways to combine Substack with WikiTree. He created a terrific example where you can see the original post on Substack and the variation now on WordPress.

  • He inspired me to create a “My Sixteen” post, which in turn started a chain of connections that, through SEO and a Rolling Ball of Hay, introduced me to two cousins and over 400 years of genealogical connections. An amazing chain of connections.

These giants of the genealogy community humble me — and there are many more. Consistently, each has gone out of their way to support others and extend the reach of their posts across platforms.

When I launched my publication, I brought my experience in technology as the co-founder of a software platform. When I saw others struggling with the counterintuitive Substack interface, I jumped in to help. I put my energy into encouraging fellow travelers with tips, and learned more as I explained features.

Candidly, my guidance gave way to cheerleading. That’s not what I’m here for.

Reflecting on this cross-platform emphasis, you should see less of that in the coming year. I’m still enthusiastic, but I’ll be devoting less time to “Substack how-to” posts.10 This community has matured; you don’t need that from me. Substack’s own support pages at support.substack.com (and the widget at substack.com/support) are quite good. If you’re stuck, I’m always happy to help. The little product manager in my heart is always curious about new challenges, so please don’t hesitate to ask.

How We Tell Our Stories

Online platforms are only part of it. As Projectkin, I’ll be refining our programming to make it less Substack-specific. It should spark your creative mind and support you with strategies, inspiration, and resources you might not already have considered:

• Strategizing on techniques for managing your artifacts with Kathy Stone’s Kathy’s Corner.

• Then there’s our professional genealogist, Emma Cox, whose Emma Explores series will inspire you with thematic views, techniques, and research strategies.

• You can also count on us for a few specials like ’s special “Junk Journals” program in February.

• We’ll continue sharing your stories in video using both Zoom and Substack Live in Jennifer Jones’ Speakers’ Corner, and the American Revolution Stories250 series. In fact, on Sunday (or Monday in Asia/Pac), Jennifer will host the first Projectkin Live discussion of the year with two of our speakers next week:

  

• I’ll also revisit popular multi-day events like the RootsTech Ride Along and our the All About That Place series in collaboration with the UK’s Society of Genealogists, the Society for One-Place Studies, and the British Association of Local History.

• Substack Live? Yes, please.

  • I’ve now explored the desktop version and have an idea about how to add a chat stream to recordings. There’s more to come (and of course, I’ll share what I learn.)

• And yes, I have a few new ideas for 2026. Subscribe and stay tuned.

My approach has been to focus on live, community-building events. They are free and give us a way to get to know each other in conversations and personal connections. Our video recordings and commentaries give us the flexibility to time-shift across a diverse audience. I hope you can join us.

Our schedule is always available (and updated) at Projectkin.org/events.

Even as Substack’s support improves, we still need a safe place to ask each other questions about platforms — and genealogy. MissionGenealogy is here for you. With tips now contributed by so many of you, the publication11 has become the clubhouse we always intended it to be.

Join us in roundtable conversations this month — or next. Sessions are not recorded to ensure everyone feels comfortable asking even the seemingly basic questions. You’re not alone here. See MissionGenealogy.org/events.

It’s a Team Sport, and Everyone Plays a Role

However disciplined we are, the inertia of switching between platforms will still affect each of us differently. One person might stay on Blogger, for example, because they value familiarity over media features. Another person might export their posts from WordPress and jump to Substack because they value the integration of livestreamed videos. Still another may never publish a public blog post. That’s totally fine.

You be you, I’m delighted to welcome and celebrate you, your creativity, and your storytelling on any platform: public or private.

I like to think that online communities can offer guidance without the complexities of social encumbrances. Family history projects can spark battles over politics and procedures, only to crumble under the weight of family feelings. In a supportive environment, the nudges, tips, and even corrections community members share can be very helpful. That virtual hug, bit of inspiration, or “huzzah!” can make all the difference. As a community, we’re here for each other.

I’m delighted to be part of this dynamic gyre of activity. I hope you’ll join in on the fun from any platform.

If you’ve participated in any Projectkin events, you’ll probably know I have a peculiar penchant for scheduling programs for what I call Atlantic-friendly and Pacific-friendly start times.

There’s a method to the madness.

The globe spins around the sun every 24 hours. To synchronize modern clocks, we settled on a system of 24 time zones marked hourly relative to the local mean time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. Greenwich Mean Time (or GMT) is the basis for civil time in the UK.1 By a happy coincidence of geography, California lies on the Western edge of the Americas such that:

• UK and Europe lie to our East, and are 8-9 hours ahead of us.

• Australia, New Zealand, and Asia are roughly 15-19 hours ahead of us. (Using a quick mental model: 5-9 hours back and a day ahead.)

From California, this creates two natural time slots2:

• 🌞 A slot in the morning that’s preferable for the Atlantic coasts of Europe and convenient across the Americas:

  • 10 a.m. San Francisco, 1 p.m. Toronto, 6 p.m. London, 7 p.m. Paris

• 🫖 A slot in the afternoon that’s preferable for the Asian/Pacific nations and convenient across the Americas.

  • 4 p.m. San Francisco, 1 p.m. Wellington, 11 a.m. Sydney, 8 a.m. Perth.

Now Add Seasonal Changes

The trick, of course, is that in the Northern and Southern hemispheres we generally change our clocks to Spring forward and Fall back. If that’s not enough, our varying geography and politics won’t let us agree on a single global date for these changes. Instead, they take place regionally, leaving us scrambling to keep up.

This year, the changes occur in four stages over six weeks, starting on Sunday, September 28th. Each date affects relative time differences, so that scheduling can be very confusing. These are the key dates to keep in mind:

September

• Last Sunday, 28 Sept: New Zealand jumps ahead to daylight time, NZDT

October

• First Sunday, 5 Oct: Most states in Australia jump ahead to daylight time, AEDT, for example. Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia no longer do so.

• Last Sunday, 26 Oct: UK falls back from BST to GMT.

November

• First Sunday, 2-Nov: Most regions of the US and Canada will switch from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time. Mexico no longer observes DST.

Projectkin Events

As the seasons change, the start times for Projectkin events change with North American clocks. To anticipate local start times in your region, you may need to review the Projectkin Events calendar (which uses your local clock to calculate start times on any given day in the future) or online tools like WorldTimeBuddy3.

Planning for Order

The chart below visualizes Projectkin event start times in our four major Anglophone regions. Note the peculiar start times this creates in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK weeks before the North American “fall back” on November 2nd.

New: All Events at either Pacific or Atlantic-friendly times

In trying to sort through the subtle mysteries of these biannual time changes, I realized I still had a few events outside the Atlantic/Pacific time windows. Why not fix that?

So, starting on September 28th, the following events will be scheduled at either Pacific or Atlantic times:

• Kathy’s Corner: Historically, these events were a special case that started at 3/6 p.m. PT/ET (because my special host, , is in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where it was 4 p.m. MT).

• From October forward, these programs will start at the Pacific-friendly hour of 4/7 p.m. PT/ET.

• Substack Live Previews: Since January 2025, this weekly program has been held on Sundays at 2/5/10 pm PT/ET/BST or Monday at 6/8 a.m. AEDT/NZDT. Though these events have been a hit, they impose a late hour in Europe and an unreasonably early hour in Asia/Pacific.4

• Starting on September 28, these programs float between Pacific and Atlantic-friendly times depending on our guests across the globe. See the calendar for specific events.

All of these changes have now been made to the Projectkin calendar, which you can always find at Projectkin.org/events.

Your Computer Calculates Start Times

Many don’t realize that their computer, phone, or tablet calculates program start times when viewing the Projectkin Events Calendar. This is done using a third-party service called Tockify.com, which hosts all event pages for Projectkin. From the Events page, you can expand the embedded calendar to fill your browser window by going to the Events Calendar and tapping on the Fullscreen button.

Expanded Calendar Views

With the calendar expanded to full screen, you can explore Tockify calendar view options:5

• Move forward and backward on the calendar by changing the date.

• Use Pinboard and Agenda views as an alternative to the Monthly view.6

• Use the search window to filter events by title. In the example below, all Speakers’ Corner events and previews are shown by entering the word “Speakers”

Last thoughts

As I make these changes to our calendar, it seems appropriate to pause for a moment to thank my incredible partners over this last year: , , and . We’ve also had the benefit of fantastic special guests, and of course, our member programs. Every one of our speakers contributes their time to these programs as a volunteer. Projectkin is platform independent, and we don’t accept sponsorships or affiliate funds. You can explore past programs at Projectkin.org/event-recordings. Your visits to their publications and discussion of their work are excellent ways to thank them.

Projectkin programming is offered for free because of the generous support of our Patrons. If you'd like to join us in our mission to encourage families to share their stories, we’d love to have you as a patron too.

3

Using WorldTimeBuddy, modify the calendar option when you project the start time for a future event.

A few weeks ago, I shared a post about a new program celebrating community stories about our ancestors 250 years ago.

Your feedback warmly supported the idea with suggestions, ideas, and volunteers. Within days, another idea was born.

Tell Our Stories Together

Now, I’m expanding that program to add interactive tools. The idea is to give us a way to explore more of these stories together. Now, I’m adding context with digital yarn connecting time and place.

My hope is that this will allow each of us to get an ancestral perspective on this historic period. Taken together, we’ll gain new insight into the period as a whole. It was the Age of Enlightenment, and revolutions were rocking the planet. Do you know where your ancestors were? Let’s share our stories.

Now it’s your turn

To kick things off, I’ve reworked my now familiar Map and Timeline tools to add stories submitted by , , , all of whom have signed up to join me during our special Stories250 Live Chats.

More stories have started to flow in, and you can already see how additions from and have begun to fill out the map and timeline view. Now, our shared stories appear together across the oceans and those remarkable decades:

There’s plenty of room to add more. I’d love to include your stories about the people in your family tree (direct or otherwise) who were active 50 years before and after July 4th, 1776 (roughly from 1726 to 1826).

My criteria are pretty simple:

• The post has already been published on Substack.

• The post centers on a time 50 years before or after July 4th, 1776, (roughly from 1726 to 1826).

• The lead characters in the story have some personal connection to you. (Don't have to be direct ancestors).

• The stories are true, to the best of your knowledge.

• You’re a Projectkin subscriber (it’s easy to be a free subscriber).

Do you already have one or more posts that meet these criteria? I’d love to include them.

Go ahead and submit your story using the form!

It asks just four questions (one of which is for your approval). Your posts stay exactly where they are. This will simply embed your hero image and link to references in your post. Go ahead and get started 👇. I’ll wait.

Sharing the Experience of History

While the US government and private organizations are gearing up for a series of official America250 commemorative events, I want Projectkin’s Stories250 programs to celebrate in a more personal way, devoid of politics.

This extraordinary period didn’t just happen to war heroes, loyalists, and patriots. It affected everyday people and changed history across the planet. As the British colonies in America absorbed the blood of loyalists, patriots, and non-combatants, wars toppled monarchs, and policy changes remade maps. This is the human history that directly affected our families.

These are our stories. It doesn’t matter whether your stories were written weeks, months, or years ago. The idea is to share our ancestral connection with the events at the time.

Start with Inspiration

To get things started, I’m honored to welcome, the New Zealand author behind both BJNL’s Genealogy and the Kyeburn Diggings One-Place Study, at my next Substack Live program on Sunday (acrosss the Americas and in Europe/Monday in Australia, New Zealand). Check the calendar event for the time and link in your local region:

Jane’s posts about two of her ancestors sparked this idea. Earlier this summer, Jane wrote about Samuel Gray (1752-1837), her fourth great-grandfather, who fought for the Patriots, and Richard Lang (1744-1817), a possible fourth great-grandfather. Jane memorably retells Richard Lang’s remarkable story in nine installments that follow him across the Southeast to Florida and back to Georgia.

These stories reminded me how unexpected our connections can be. Soon after my first post on the project, suggestions came flooding in, and volunteers signed up to participate in more of these Substack Live programs. I’m now booked for these through November, but I have plenty of room in my schedule for more.

Submit your story

At Projectkin, we’re a member-supported community on a mission to encourage families to capture and share their stories in any form. Our generous patrons support our operational expenses so that programming can be offered for free to everyone. Join us?

In a recent conversation, she shared a topic among professional historians I thought might interest us as we explore our family stories: micro-history. I’ve asked her to join us on Thursday, August 7th (or Friday, the 8th) in our Pacific-friendly time slot, and join me for a preview on Sunday, August 3rd (or Monday, the 4th) during my weekly Sustack Live.

Like all Projectkin events, both programs are free and will share the recordings with subscribers.

Micro-history is distinct from adding historical context to a story or embarking on a one-place study. As Lisa explains in this companion post,

“Micro-history sought to reconstruct the lived experience of regular people in a non-reductive way to understand how they interpreted and shaped their world and, in some cases, how they challenged it.”

ancestory

What is Micro-history?

Many years ago, when I was a history graduate student at NYU, I picked up a book entitled The Cheese and the Worms. It told the story of Menocchio, a miller in 16th century Friuli, who was put on trial for heresy. Menocchio spoke freely, challenging church orthodoxy, particularly around the divinity of Christ, the authority of the clergy, and the humani…

Read more

10 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Lisa Maguire

For many, this perspective can give us new insight into the genealogical details and stories we’ve learned about our ancestors’ lives. These are the lived experiences of ordinary people. It’s tempting to categorize their experiences in terms of the generalized themes of their time; this approach gives us a new way to understand them on their terms.

NOTE: As of December 2025, the program no longer requires that posts be hosted on Substack. While this was initially designed for the platform, we now welcome posts from WordPress, Blogger, YouTube, and any long-form platform with public access to posts.1

As an American who spent much of my childhood outside the mainland United States, I’ve been fascinated by the stories of my ancestors who lived here during the early years of our national story. So many of you, my friends in this genealogical pursuit, also have family who were touched by that revolution. Our ancestors’ roles in those remarkable years ranged from patriots to loyalists, servants to spies, and princes to paupers.

After speaking with many Projectkin members from around the English-speaking world, I’ve realized that we have a unique opportunity here to share the experiences of our ancestors across borders.

A Family View of History

Personal stories about historical events can be compelling ways for present and future generations to understand history. These stories create a context that can also be useful for assessing modern reinterpretations. Most importantly, they help us anticipate how future generations might interpret our current events.

I’ve planned a new series inviting members to share their stories with this audience to encourage this kind of storytelling. Each month, I’ll ask a guest to share one story as a post, then join me for a Substack Live event to talk about the story, the historical context, and to answer audience questions.

I welcome posts that describe daily life, specific events, and curiosities during this consequential period in world history. I’m most interested in tales not captured in history books. These are the unexpected stories that deserve more attention.

This is not about collecting war stories. I’m intentionally not limiting the series to verified patriots, war heroes, or events that occurred specifically during the American War of Independence (a.k.a., the Revolutionary War). I am, however, interested in the period leading up to and immediately following the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war between the American states and Britain in 1783.

I’m hoping this will create an opportunity for all of us to share stories about this transformative period with friends and family. Though research has shown me that many of my ancestors in the colonies during the late 18th century, I know our family stories are complicated and sometimes slightly contorted. I hope this will allow us to learn from each other and overcome the glorified myths.

For example, a common myth connects me to my maternal cousins. As kids, we were all apparently told that we were related to Betsy Ross, the fabled designer of the American flag. I don’t believe that story was intentionally passed on as a lie, yet it’s untrue.2 Betsy’s fame and two known war veterans in our maternal Ross line, have led to generations girls being named Elizabeth, Liz, Betty, or Betsy.3

The pull of a story is strong, and it gets even stronger when shared with an appreciative audience. Often, that’s true regardless of the veracity of a story. Modern politics and social media compound that tendency, making it easier than ever to gloss over nuance.

We’re not here for that. I want this effort to create a space where true family stories can be respectfully shared and discussed in context.

The Inspiration

In some ways, this idea expands on my Lafayette Project from earlier this year. That project coincided with the 200th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s tour of America, which took him to all 24 states nearly 50 years after the founding declaration was signed on July 4th, 1776. To build my timeline of Lafayette’s journey, I explored the significant historical events celebrated during the 13 months of his journey.4

While building the timeline, I learned about historical events I’d never heard of in my disjointed American History courses in high school. For example…

• James Armistead Lafayette’s crucial role as a spy in the lead-up to the Battle of Yorktown. (Suddenly, the Yorktown scene in Hamilton, where reference is made to a “man on the inside,” made a lot more sense!)

I’ve already been thinking about creating a shared timeline of the historical events leading up to the war, supplemented with links to member-contributed stories. I included a few in the Community Connection ribbon in my Lafayette Timeline. It turned out to be easy to link directly to member posts. I’d love your thoughts on whether this might be interesting.

Leave a comment

In developing this idea, I realized that I’d already seen many stories contributed by Substackers, either as analyses of historical facts or retellings of family stories during this revolutionary period. Among the surprises were…

• How the first Africans in America played complex roles in the Revolutionary War in Georgia and South Carolina, as retold by the historian Annette Laing in “The Resolution of Black Patriots.”

• ’s remarkable 9-part series about her ancestor, Richard Lang (1744-1817). Her series follows his shifting identity from Loyalist soldier to refugee, then Spanish citizen, and eventually an American citizen. You can start that series with Part 1 here.

• ’s recent post about “A German Teenager in the American Revolution,” made me realize that Hessian soldiers weren’t necessarily from Hesse.

At the time, I was working on stories about different Quaker lines in my family. They arrived in America in the 17th century and, over the next hundred years, migrated from the religious intolerance of New England to the less restrictive swamps and mountainous regions of North Carolina. Their stories, following traditional retellings, are full of piety and heroism.

In my inherited records, the human side has been blurred to celebrate their upstanding national contributions. I know their contributions were real, but I also wanted to peel back layers of lacquer to understand their involvement in the struggles of their time. Thoughtful academic work has started to explore this period in Quaker communities, but family stories can contextualize it and make it accessible to families.

Jumping ahead to modern times, part of the inspiration for all of this was the launched last month by two fantastic Substack writers, and . The idea is to collect our memories from the summer of 1976 when we, as Americans, celebrated the 200th anniversary of that first July Fourth.

Bicentennial Memory Project

Grassroots project to collect the memories of everyday Americans of the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations

The hormones of high school life complicate my memory of that summer. It was a presidential election year, and I’d recently returned from another semester overseas, this time in London. I was too young to vote, but I’d had my political awakening during the turbulent decade that included the Roe v. Wade decision, the end of the Vietnam War, the proposed ERA, and Nixon’s resignation.

My contribution to their project is still on my to-do list. In the meantime, I’ve been distracted by the political implications of the next significant milestone: the coming semi-quincentennial. Fifty years after the bicentennial, the spirit of our times has changed entirely. Whether you agree or disagree with the direction, foundational changes are underway in how we share our founding story.

The Opportunity: “Stories250”

I’ve consistently found that in Projectkin’s diverse, anglophone community, we’ve all benefited from stories centered around a common theme and historical timeline. Given the scope of generations, the “My Sixteen” theme, for example, had us exploring the mid-19th century together. We’ve shared stories of the American westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution's impacts in England.

This is a similar opportunity: Let’s share our family stories about the period around the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. I have already learned a great deal from all of you about historical context, facts, and techniques. I’m hopeful that the Substack Live component of the series will spotlight some of the best work among family historians on the platform.

The details

Projectkin has supported various forms of contributed content: Our Members’ Corner in 2024, the March 2025 RootsTech Ride Along, and our new Speakers’ Corner premiering next month. That experience has demonstrated how clearly defined requirements can help avoid misunderstandings. At its simplest level…

This series will include one guest-authored article each month plus the author’s guest appearance in a Substack Live session on the third Sunday/Monday of the month.

I will publish and email the selected post on my Projectkin publication under the author’s byline. The author’s profile description and a subscribe button will appear with the post. More about how this works.

Though only one guest post will appear on Projectkin, I welcome individual posts that might be part of a larger series on a guest’s publication. Authors are also welcome to cross-post their posts to their subscribers. To support your storytelling effort with the best possible visibility, I’ll make sure your guest post on Projectkin includes an index to other posts you may have written that are relevant to the same period.

As always, my mission is to encourage families to get their stories told — in any way that works. The goal for this project is to encourage each other with this thematic series. Though we’ll only be able to celebrate a small selection of stories, I’ve selected the arbitrary term, “Stories250,”5 that we can all use to draw on SEO to find other articles in this series, much as we did with “My Sixteen.”

How to Participate

To make this all work, there are just three requirements.

Requirements:

1. A Publication: Selected authors must have Substack accounts and have published two or more articles.

2. New Material: The chosen post must be new, though it may cover a person or topic covered in an existing post. (More about post proposals below.)

3. Substack Live: The author must be open to joining me on a short (20-30 minute) Substack Live program to discuss the new piece.6

There are a few constraints, however:

Posts

• Any Media: Posts can be in any Substack-supported media type: (Text, video, or audio). Stories don’t have to be entirely new, but posts do.

  • I’ll welcome authors who want to use the opportunity to retell a story in a new form, while linking to the original.

• Original: The material must be your work, and permissions must have been obtained for any included copyrighted material, such as photos or music.

• Factual: Stories should be accurate to the best of your knowledge.

• Collaborative Edits: I’ll offer light editing and adjustments to the layout. We will both approve the final copy before publication.

• Any length: Stories can be any length, though posts below 2,000 words tend to do better. You’re welcome to serialize your post to continue on your publication.

• Your Family: Your posts do not have to cover stories about the lives of your family members, though I will favor those that do.

Let’s Get You on the Calendar

Have an idea or want to talk something through now? I’d love to hear from you:

Once we agree on a topic and release date, I’ll get you scheduled on the calendar for the Substack Live program. From there, we’ll work against the deadline.7 As guests are selected, I’ll create a queue with just one guest per month until July 2026. You can see the list of dates, including those already booked, here:

Stories250 Livestream Dates

To be clear, this is about encouraging storytelling and sharing work that relates to the same extraordinary period in time. If you’d like, feel free to slip the phrase “Stories250” into your relevant posts to make them a little more visible to others exploring this remarkable 18th-century generation.

• See all posts and recorded Live sessions so far here:

Projectkin.org/stories250

Update: A Timeline & a Map

A few weeks after this initial post I realized how powerful a timeline and even a map could be for all of us to see where our ancestors fit into a shared timeline and on a map.

• So, voilá, I created one. Learn more and join in with stories published to your own Substack!

Let’s Start with a Conversation: August 17/18

To get a head-start on the series, I’ve invited Jane Chapman of in Wellington, New Zealand to join me on Substack Live on Sunday, 17 Aug (that’s Monday, 18 Aug in Australia and New Zealand), to talk about the series.

Many of you will recognize Jane for her nine-part series about Richard Lang (1744-1817), who was a Loyalist before becoming an American citizen, or perhaps for her post about Samuel Gray (1752-1837), who fought for the Continental Army.

BJNL's Genealogy

Samuel Gray - Veteran of the American Revolutionary War

I have a number of ancestors who fought in the American Revolutionary War, some were Loyalists and some were Patriots…

Read more

a year ago · 12 likes · 16 comments · Jane Chapman

Our conversation will explore the ideas behind the series and how Substackers can make the most of it. I hope you can join us on Substack Live on August 17th (or 18th across the International Date Line). Details below:

Then, I realized that publicly naming and thanking them might return some of their kindness with a bit of visibility for their publications and work. Projectkin isn’t very big, but our community is incredibly engaged.

So here I am, delighted to recommend the publications of every one of our remarkable Patrons. You’ll find a selection of them at Projectkin.org/patrons.

This listing is still just a sampling of our generous subscribers and contributors. I’ve made inclusion optional, asking each first for an explicit opt-in. Some would prefer to maintain their privacy. Others have not had time to confirm their participation so watch for periodic updates.

If you join Projectkin supporters at the Patrons’ tier by upgrading to a paid subscription, you’ll find the sign-up details in my welcome email.

But wait, why don’t we put YOU on the map?

A crazy idea occurred to me: Why not put members on a map? It happened during my live chat with on my weekly Substack Live program. We were talking about the queue for the member-powered Speakers’ Corner series. I’d just been creating a map view of Patrons, when I realized:

Why not create a handy map of members so that everyone can get to know each other? We already benefit from their diverse comments, with a map view we’ll know to ask for their insights related to ancestral roots, travel and the like.

Here’s the thing.

There are a lot of you now.1 So I needed to come up with something easy and extensible. Then, it hit me. To use Google’s MyMaps feature to create a map showing everyone's location, all I needed was a way to associate physical addresses with Substack accounts.

It turns out that’s easy. All I had to do was ask.

Projectkin’s patrons had already been kind enough to share their mailing addresses,2 and everyone seemed to appreciate the view. To include all subscribers, I’d simply have to ask members if they wanted to appear on the map, too. So, here’s the map with locations of select Patrons.

Let’s make it a Members’ Map.

Instead of limiting this map to patrons, I see no reason why I can’t add all of you — if you opt in, of course. All I need is your mailing address.

If you’d like to participate, here’s the simple Google form:

PUT ME ON THE MAP

I appreciate that home addresses are an essential piece of protected personal information, so I devised a couple of guardrails and a little something to sweeten the deal.

• First, I built the map referencing only the city, state/province, and country. That way, no one’s personal information is even on the map.

• The map includes references you, AND your Substack publication. What a great way to showcase your work to a ready-made family history community.

• Next, a little test will ensure that everyone on the map is a Projectkin subscriber in good standing. I reserve the right to filter out trolls by validating accounts with authentic posts and comments.3 I validate the list against my current subscribers to ensure it is accurate and up-to-date.

• Finally, as a thank you, I’ll include an optional field for your street address. I’d love to send you a postcard as a thank you if you're comfortable sharing it. I can commit to sending one to the first 100 people, anywhere in the world4. After that, I’ll have to restock and see about a periodic rotation. I love receiving postcards too. 😉

Though it won’t be instantaneous, I’ll do my best to keep the map routinely refreshed and updated. So, you want in? You’ll find the form at Projectkin.org/members-map-form.

What You See Depends on Your Point of View 👀

While this project was already fun, I now see it as more than that. We each bring our local perspective to our family history. While researching our stories, many of us have discovered tales of our ancestors' travels, discoveries, and migrations to other lands. These stories may connect us with far-away lands — or to each other. Now, with this tool, we’ll have a way to learn about these places from the people who live there today.

Today, most of us have English as our first language. Although this common language may divide us, the larger opportunity lies in sharing resources and perspectives among friends in this community of family historians.

I hope you’ll decide to put yourself and your publication on the map too. Join us, won’t you?

Join the Members Map

Why I’m Adding a Patron Tier

Since launching Projectkin on Substack nearly 18 months ago, I have wanted to keep my focus on encouraging families to explore, capture, and preserve their stories — in any form that works. I built Projectkin.org to celebrate family stories, their value to individuals today, and the role they would play for future generations. The mission led me to include not only recipes to help people get started, but also techniques for maintaining and preserving originals, archives, and stories — in any imaginable form and format.

Before Substack, this kind of thing could only be done with a custom-developed site supported by sponsored content or advertising. Substack’s business model was a game-changer because it allowed me to avoid the distortions of traditional publishing. I could be scrupulously platform-independent, not sell anything, yet shape the community from shared goodwill.

Remarkably, that’s starting to happen.

I envisioned recouping my investment of time by publishing a nonfiction book that might introduce these ideas to a larger audience. The events and lively discussion groups already percolating around Projectkin would support the book with inspiration and ideas, while the distribution of the book could help bring the concept to more families.

There were a few unexpected bumps along the way.

By late 2023, just a few months after launching the Projectkin.Substack.com, publication several of you shared that my free model created a problem for you. The relationship felt unbalanced. Accepting free content, support, and services didn’t feel right. Several free subscribers told me in all candor that they wanted a way to contribute, express gratitude, or at least help defray expenses.

After some debate, I added a tip jar at BuyMeACoffee because using Substack’s payment system felt like overkill. Sure enough, your generous “coffee” contributions have been astounding. You’ve collectively paid our Projectkin expenses for Zoom and other tools. I’m deeply grateful.

Taken together, I’ve drawn three conclusions I never expected:

1. WE are Projectkin together.

You’re an extraordinarily generous community. You’ve reached out with thoughtful comments, active participation, and generous support. So far, more than thirty of you have stepped up to write, present, or actively engage with me in Projectkin posts and programs. Your voice, encouragement, and guidance have helped me examine and refine the ideas about family storytelling that brought me here. You’ve inspired each other and transformed me. I don’t want to do anything that might constrain your participation.

2. Maybe I CAN write that book. 🤔

Even if I initially self-publish it, a book will force me to articulate what I see as these principles. It’ll be an honor to include your brilliant ideas, crediting you, and sharing the joy of discoveries. These are principles we’re refining together in this community. This has become a laboratory, forum, and startup garage. A book will help us to spread this simple idea of the importance of family history storytelling.

Which brings me to my third realization.

3. Substack needs me to offer a paid tier.

While I’ve been a big supporter of Substack, I’ve not contributed a dime to their bottom line. Worse, by configuring my tip jar off-site, I’ve effectively been sending funds to their competitors. As I approach another subscriber-count milestone, their gentle nudges about a paid tier have grown louder.

The nudges have also been accompanied by what feels like a slowdown in new subscriptions. It could be my imagination, but it wouldn’t be surprising either. Payments must be factored into Substack’s algorithm for introducing new posts and publications. “Bestseller” and “Rising” categories, prominently displayed on your home screen, are always paid. (More in the On Substack publication.) It’s a good strategy for them as that’s how they make money.

Conclusion:

Taken together, this tells me I can’t continue to grow Projectkin without introducing a premium tier. Funds will generally support our expenses (such as Zoom and the calendar), potentially provide remuneration of some kind for our speakers, and possibly enable the development of new types of programs.

Presenting “Projectkin Patrons”

Starting today, my new “Patron” tier for Projectkin begins at the minimum level allowed by Substack. The idea is to celebrate the orchestra seats while creating box seats for patrons who want to participate in a more meaningful way.

Here’s the plan:

• Projectkin Subscribers — All subscribers to Projectkin at the free level will still have unfettered access to all programming, recordings, and live discussions.

I expect the free level will always be the largest group. Their active involvement in the community helps foster creative ideas and unexpected solutions. I don’t want to do anything that might discourage new subscribers.

In all cases, I want to ensure that the core of our programming remains unrestricted for free subscribers.

The introduction of a Patron tier invites subscribers to help support the operational costs and programming for Projectkin.

Patron levels

• Supporters — Those who sign up to contribute on a periodic subscription basis. (Monthly or yearly paid plans: US$5/month or US$50/year.)

• Champions — Those who commit to a one-time cash payment. (Substack’s Founder level: US$100.)

• Contributors — Those who add to the Projectkin publication with programming, participation as guests, or contributed posts. (I’ll grant these members complimentary one-year Patron-level subscriptions.)

To be clear, when my posts, recordings, and other content are free, all I have to offer Patrons amounts to thank-you gifts and special access.

The way I see it, these patron-level subscriptions are just a step up from the BuyMeACoffee page I used until now. The difference is that with these Substack tiers, I can invite Patrons to special insider discussions featuring program feedback and suggestions.

If patrons find it valuable, I’ll gladly share my thinking and drafts for my in-progress book. Once the book is in production, I’ll share special access with Patrons. My goal is to spread our message about family stories. All of you are already evangelists for the idea.

UPDATE: A few weeks after releasing this post, it dawned on me to expand it to include a map of members and invite all patrons to join that map as well.

• Learn more in this post:

  If you somehow missed the initial opportunity or have questions, leave me a message here:

A Note about Contributors

Since the beginning, I’ve described myself as the “ringleader.” I use this term in tribute to the writers, guests, and co-hosts who have contributed to Projectkin with their programs and posts. I’ve come to rely on all of you for advice, guidance, and brilliant suggestions.

Among our long-standing contributors are pros like and Emma Cox with their monthly series, Kathy’s Corner and Emma Explores. Other contributors include , and , who have supported Projectkin with limited series, Live Events, Project Recipes, Specials, and Member Posts.

To date, all of these materials have been contributed without honoraria or any other form of remuneration. Defining these Patron tiers allows me to express my gratitude to this group by offering complimentary subscriptions. It’s only a small token of my appreciation.

Where I’m Headed

I’m in the earliest stages of work on this book. I’ve managed technical documentation and proposal publishing teams, but this will be my first book. It’ll be a non-fiction piece, and I expect to invest in an editor, illustrator, and self-publishing. I am not looking for Projectkin to fund production.

I’m hoping that with exposure and the lively engagement of the community, we can draw the resources for wider distribution and greater visibility. The goal for the book is very much like that for Projectkin. I want to inspire families to share their stories, in any form that works for them. I’ll discuss the benefits of storytelling and explore the creative forms stories can take today. The idea is to galvanize individuals to get started with specific project ideas as creative “recipes” anyone can follow to get started.

In book form, I’ll have the opportunity to reach families who may never discover Substack, effectively introducing the ideas to new audiences. I’d like to think this is good for all of us. Readers of the book will be invited to join this vibrant community, explore ideas, and contribute suggestions.

Everyone has a family, but who tells their story?

Projects let us explore, capture, and preserve our stories for ourselves and future generations. Let’s embrace the journey and get started together!

Since launching the on Substack nearly 18 months ago, I’ve evolved my strategy for access to our programs. Initially, they were for subscribers only, but I’ve realized that these free programs are our best calling cards to introduce the genealogy community to Projectkin.

From the start, the goal for programs like Kathy’s Corner, Emma Explores, and Project Recipes has been to encourage families to tell their stories. Modest moments in daily life can be revealing to our descendants when viewed in the context of history. Consider the diaries, documents, and old photographs we’ve inherited from our ancestors.

Starting this week, we’re now making our most popular series, Kathy’s Corner, Emma Explores, and Project Recipes available on podcasting apps. For each program, you’ll now see podcast app buttons as an option1. I’ve started with just four2 podcasting services.

• Apple Podcasting

• Spotify Podcasts

• Pocketcasts

• YouTube Podcasts3

For ongoing discussions, links to resources, recordings, and recipes, be sure to come back to the Projectkin pages for each of these program series pages with easy-to-remember links:

• Kathy’s Corner: Projectkin.org/kathys-corner

• Emma Explores: Projectkin.org/emma-explores

• Project Recipes: Projectkin.org/recipes

From each Substack video post, you’ll find the valuable resources and materials referenced in the program as well as linked comments from our members.

This is a work in progress. Configuring podcasting tools isn’t difficult, but it takes some patience and focus. I wanted to start with these most popular of our programs to see what you think. Please share your thoughts in the comments or drop me a direct message.

If you like this approach, I’ll be happy to expand access across our program catalog.

Announcing a Special “Project Recipe” Event on April 17.

Events marking the bicentennial of the Farewell Tour of the Marquis de Lafayette have been celebrated across the Eastern third of the United States since late last summer. As a family historian with roots in the British colonial period, I wondered whether my ancestors might have met the Marquis on his tour.

The exploration brought me to a partnership with the American Friends of Lafayette and a role in the April 2025 celebration in Lafayette, California. In a new program in April, we’ll discuss the project, what worked, and how you might build on it.

Register here to join us:

“Who Might Have Met the Marquis de Lafayette?”

That simple question sent me down fur-lined rabbit holes on an exploration of both history and technology. I soon landed on an interactive timeline tool that would let me tell the story of his visit in each city, town, and village on his route. The “ah-ha!” moment came when I realized that a timeline would make it easy to see how one person’s connection to the story might overlay with someone else’s.

In a post I released in November 2024, I set it as a challenge to create a recipe for creating an interactive timeline as a storytelling artifact that could be shared with a community. The event on April 17th will let me share with all of you how I did this and how it could be used to share other stories.

My project is now complete and part of the April 2025 bicentennial celebrations in Lafayette, California.

The project recipe presentation will include three elements:

• The timeline: Built using an open-source Javascript tool for journalists. I’ll share how to use it and discuss how it might be repurposed for family history use cases. You can explore it now at Projectkin.org/lafayette-timeline.

• Specific instructions for repurposing this historical data I’ve compiled about Lafayette.

• An explanation of how this interactive online tool can be used with a community to help connect individuals with a shared past using the example of the community event in Lafayette, California.

Background:

I was aware of the Northwestern University Knight Lab and its open-source tools for journalists, but my biggest challenge was finding an accurate source for the historical data. My November post helped connect me with the Acalanes Chapter of the DAR, and their Regent graciously introduced me to the board at the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL). Their tools and resources have been key to telling this story.

About Lafayette

This remarkable Frenchman was a bonafide hero of the American Revolution. He played a direct role in significant battles like Bunker Hill and Yorktown. Further, his cash contributions and connections with the court of Louis VI helped turn the tide in the war.1

The Marquis de Lafayette’s Tour of America took him to all 24 states in the young country over 13 months with grand gatherings in most every city, town, and village. Lafayette’s tour coincided with an early 19th century boom in local newspapers. They captured the detailed journey of the “Nation’s Guest” with enough detail to make a genealogist swoon. That fact made it fun to research his journey from town to town.

Note: An idea for a community extension to this project would be to compile a list of people and specifically Revolutionary War veterans mentioned in newspaper listings in each town he visited. The records are available now.

Acknowledgment

This project would not have been possible without the support of my sisters in the Acalanes Chapter of the DAR and the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL), and the Lafayette Historical Society (LHS) in Lafayette, California. Their tools and resources have been key to telling this story. I’ll share more about their help and our project in Lafayette, California, at our Project Recipe event in April. Register here.

At Projectkin, we’re a global community, so creating a sense of community in an online world can be awkward. It’s not impossible, though. A generation of bulletin board and blogging innovators has taught us a few best practices. I hope this post helps you understand what we’re all about and gives you the pointers to get the most out of the community.

It’s all about family stories

If you’ve found your way here, you’ll know we’re a community of family historians hooked on stories. Stories help us understand not only our ancestors and the world they lived in, but also the world around us today.

We’ve been defining ourselves as families with every origin story told. These stories help us teach our children about shared values and offer guidance during times of stress. They also provide motivation, encouragement, and the courage to take risks.

Why talk about “Projects?”

When we started, a Projectkin subscriber suggested the term “projects” precisely because it is so all-encompassing. From poetry to film, there were already countless ways to tell a story. With the advent of media-rich creative tools, there are now ten thousand forms, too. The trick is to select among those options to capture, preserve, and share your story with the people to whom it will matter most.

Our role as a community is to encourage creativity by supporting each other with ideas, resources, and techniques. (The enthusiasm is a bonus!)

WHAT is Projectkin?

Projectkin is the name I gave to our publication on the Substack platform, but we also host events on Zoom, a YouTube channel, and a lively community of collaborators.

Using rich media tools, we’ve been able to recreate an online community where we get to know each other and care about our stories. We are also here by choice. Substack’s attitude about “exit rights” ensures that I can take my email list and media with me should I choose to decamp to another platform. That’s vital. I see my relationship with you, not the platform.

Since many of you are new to Substack, I’ve made an effort to learn the ins and outs so that I can help you get the most out of the rich features.

To join, do I just subscribe, that’s it?

Yep, it’s pretty much that simple.

Our online events are an excellent way to get to know each other as real people, and everyone is welcome. All of our community events are also free. Every event is recorded, and recordings are shared directly with members via email. Comments, chats, and more events keep the conversation going between meetings. Learn more about our events here:

Current Events

And explore our archive of recorded events here. They’re even available as podcast shows here.

What’s a Project Recipe, and is food involved?

Great question. Unfortunately, since the events are online it’s a BYO thing..

Ideas, as they say, are a dime a dozen. What’s interesting is when someone has completed a project and is willing to take the time to explain

• What they did,

• How they did it, and

• What they might do differently next time.

A Project Recipe narrows all possible approaches down to one project that’s been completed. We then share that project as a step-by-step recipe, including resources and more. In that sense, it’s like a recipe you’d use in the kitchen. I borrowed a bit from the New York Times Cooking app to establish a standard format for all recipes. To learn more about our approach to projects, see “Project Recipes » Step-by-step creativity.”

Recipes are just one kind of event. We also have events where professionals in photo organizing and genealogy share insights to help get you going. You won’t want to miss:

• Kathy’s Corner featuring

• Emma Explores featuring

• A limited series about How We Memorialize featuring

• Special programs covering a range of subjects, from One Place Studies to tackling challenging topics.

Can I see recordings?

Of course! Recordings, resources, recipes, and other goodies are all available for free to both subscribers and the merely curious. Recordings are sent via email to all subscribing Projectkin members as soon as possible after events are over.

Substack users can freely explore posts and recordings and add their insights in comments. Transcripts are now searchable, and clips can be generated to share on social media and in Substack’s own Notes channel. Join the conversation from your browser or the convenient Substack mobile app.

Hold up. How is Projectkin free?

Great question. Yes, it free because this is important work. To make it work, we keep costs low and welcome generous contributions from Patrons. Learn more on our About page.

Quite simply, I’m able to support this community as a free space because of the economies of scale this platform provides. Substack is designed to create a space for writers to earn money for the work they love to do. Their fee structure ensures that they make money when publications charge for membership.

Substack doesn’t charge me to create a publication or manage subscribers. Though I manage operations very tightly, I do have expenses. During the first 18 months since our launch on Substack, we’ve managed to cover operational costs (like Zoom and the calendaring tool we use for Events) with member contributions in the form of “Tips.”

Starting in the middle of 2025, I’ve transitioned to the Substack payments mechanism by introducing a paid “Patron” tier. A small number of Patrons chip in with their paid subscriptions to support community operations even as programming remains free. To learn more about the approach, please read “Introducing Projectkin’s Patron Tier.” Of course, you’d be very welcome to join the small cadre of Patrons. Learn more about this approach, our policies, and me on our About page.

⮕ Did you know you can subscribe to support a publication, without stuffing your inbox? It’s a nifty trick and the kind of thing we share all the time.1

We’d love to welcome you in.

I’ve been honored by the extraordinary support I’ve received since launching Projectkin. Our vibrant community has grown by supporting and encouraging each other.

If you’re comfortable sharing it, a voice of support would mean a great deal to me and would be very influential to others. Take a moment to recommend us and add a few words about why. I’ll add yours to the rotation of 3 “blurbs” on our Welcome page.

Add a Recommendation

Note: Substack has more on how this works. Most importantly, you can only do this if you have a Substack (newsletter/publication) of your own. 😉

Finally, I’d love to know what brought you here. That will tell me what to invest more time in — or what other newsletters I might recommend for you:

Thank you again! Reach out anytime with questions:

Bluesky, Mastodon & Substack

(Edited for clarity)

Starting this week, I will focus my social media conversations for Projectkin on Bluesky and Mastodon. Our community will remain on Substack, with allowances for other platforms.

Though I don’t plan to close my accounts on those platforms, I no longer plan to share posts and new content there. Here’s why:

Since Elon Musk’s splashy entrance into the Twitter building in October 2022, I have watched social media priorities shift away from open, respectful dialogue. Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of changes to Meta platforms and company policies last week has led me to rethink my approach to social media in general and specifically for Projectkin. 

As the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it in 1983, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Devaluing content moderation in favor of active, if unmoored, debate suggests that every statement of fact is open to negotiation. I understand why that is good for advertising-based platforms, but I don’t believe it is true. Unfortunately, we’ve already seen how running a platform without content moderation undermines civil discourse and community collaboration.

Since our launch, Projectkin has significantly benefited from diverse, multinational social media communities. Hashtags and groups helped us find and recognize each other as birds of a feather, each flocking to family history and genealogy topics from different points of view. Posts and events created introductions and allowed us to get to know each other and our interests and perspectives. Over time, we’ve become friends, contributors, and advocates in a growing community. 

I’ve realized that though we’re hooked on social media we’re not tethered to platforms.1

The changes at X and Meta have made it impossible for me to continue promoting and supporting them with our posts, so I’m making some changes:

Online Conversations:

Bluesky: Projectkin.bsky.social

I’m already most active on BlueSky, often posting several times per day. You’ll find us in lists and following hashtags like #Genealogy, #FamilyHistory, #OnePlaceStudy, #OneNameStudy, #OnePlaceWednesday, #GenHour, and similar hashtags.

Mastodon: toot.community/@projectkinorg

I’ve been on Mastodon since 2023 and have loved the joy and warmth of the community. I further respect the inherent independence of the Fediverse architecture. Unfortunately, the architecture has created complexity that has slowed the adoption of the platform. I’ll continue to post here as @Projectkinorg. You will find us following hashtags like #Geneadon, #Genealogy and #FamilyHistory.

Substack Notes: Projectkin.Substack.com/notes

Substack introduced Notes in April 2023. Despite early prognostications, it’s become less of a competitor to Twitter and more of a valuable compliment to Substack newsletters and blogs. As a community-building tool, it creates a way to contextualize and share any writing, media, or posts with your subscribers and followers while referencing, boosting, or echoing others.

• For example, , my collaborator in , has used Notes to circulate a can’t-miss weekly newsletter about the Genealogy community on Substack called GenStack.

On Substack, Platform Independent

I anticipate keeping our community free and on Substack. Unlike social platforms, Substack began as a newsletter platform. Instead of advertising, the business is funded by a fee on what writers earn from paid subscriptions. To compete in the newsletter segment, they ensure that writers retain ownership of their email lists and content. That model ensures that writers can take their newsletters elsewhere if something changes that makes the platform untenable. As it stands now, I benefit every day from the recommendations, referrals, and the growing Family History and Genealogy community on Substack.2

Sharing & Staying Connected

I’ve always subscribed to a “pay-it-forward” ethos, which has driven me to select a platform that allows anyone to view recordings and materials without subscribing. With quality writing and programs, prospective members return for more, ultimately joining the community and contributing. I believe two additional social platforms are essential to support this model: YouTube and LinkedIn.

YouTube: YouTube.com/@projectkin

Substack recently added a new feature that has made it easy to share our videos on YouTube and expose them to a larger audience. I’ve used it to replicate our recordings on my existing Projectkin YouTube channel. The combination of Substack and YouTube means you can now easily share and cross-post our material on almost any other platform or websites. Platform tools make attribution easy.

LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/company/projectkinorg

With its focus on business-to-business connections, LinkedIn provides Projectkin with a way to connect to collaborators who may not have a presence on the web or in social media. Some posts will be exclusively on the company page, others may be cross-posted to my personal page at Linkedin.com/in/barbaratien.

Next Steps

Over the coming days, I’ll post summaries of this statement to channels hosted on X.com and Meta. Though this change saddens me, I hope that, in time, the market will return to a renewed commitment to the hard work of communication.

Channels hosted by Meta — posting no longer

• Instagram.com/projectkinorg

• Facebook.com/projectkinorg

• Threads.net/@projectkinorg

Channel hosted by X.com (formerly Twitter.) — posting no longer

• X.com/projectkinorg

Channels where we’re now engaging actively:

• Bluesky: Projectkin.bsky.social

• Mastodon: toot.community/@projectkinorg

• Others

  Auto-posting recordings: YouTube: Youtube.com/@projectkin

  Collaborations with professionals (as appropriate): LinkedIn

  • Company: Linkedin.com/company/projectkin

  • Personal: Linkedin.com/in/barbaratien

Final thoughts

This has left me with two other platforms I’d previously been posting to but remain undecided on: Pinterest and TikTok. I'm leaning toward withdrawing from both, but welcome your thoughts.

You are welcome to contact me personally. I want to keep fights about social media out of the remarkable genealogy, family history, and storytelling community developing on Substack.

After a long and restful break, I’m back. As I settle into year-end reflections and New Year’s resolutions, it seems time to share some of the new approaches and programs I have planned for 2025.

Thank you, members!

First, I want to thank all of you for what we’ve accomplished as a community since our launch on Substack a little over 13 months ago. You can probably tell from the activity level, comments, and support that things are hopping. What you might not realize is…

• 35% of our new members have joined based on your recommendations. Even more remarkable, that’s with just 7% of you recommending Projectkin.1 (Truly, thank you!) The art of recommendations is subtle. I’m touched that you took the time to figure it out and recommended us.

• The is now read across 48 US states and 29 countries. Even more remarkably, only 60% of you are here in the United States. In the last 30 days, nearly 50% of you subscribed outside the US.2 That tells me that our international growth continues to be robust. That’s exactly what I was hoping to achieve.3

  

• Nearly 30% of you are also members of , my top site for “Audience Overlap,”4

  • In the last year, of and I have become good friends and now collaborate on a shared effort to help genealogists and family historians appreciate the magic we’re brewing here on Substack.

    ⮕ We’ve called this collaboration .56 Take a look and join us.

  • If you need to convince another family historian or genealogist to join us on Substack, send them here or to .

Events

In a way, Projectkin started with events at Ponga, my previous startup7. I noticed our members enjoyed connecting as much with each other as with the material our speakers presented. I’m indebted to for graciously letting us continue her Kathy’s Corner series for Ponga even after we took the platform offline.

Since then, we’ve grown and expanded with several new series. Each started as an idea or collaboration. Consider the six-part Forget-me-not series with or our ongoing Emma Explores series with Emma Cox.

Each of our programs is like a recording in front of a “live studio audience” in that many more people see (or skim through8) them as videos. You can see the complete list of coming events here or view it on a calendar here. All events are free. After registering, you’ll get a safe, personal link via email from Zoom.

So, what’s new?

In 2025, I plan to build on what’s working best. We start with speakers to ground us in the basics:

• Handling our family archives: Kathy’s Corner

  This popular monthly session focuses on a challenge for every family historian: Sorting and digitizing collections of inherited family photos and artifacts. Our speaker, Projectkin member Kathy Stone, has decades of experience as a professional photo organizer and is now working on her family history projects. You’ll find past episodes at Projectkin.org/kathys-corner. The recurring event is scheduled on Zoom.

• Researching the stories: Emma Explores

  As a professional genealogist, Emma Cox explores archives, churchyards, and online to compile histories, charts, tours, and books for clients. She also interviews experts on her podcast, Journeys into Genealogy, and a substack of the same name. For Projectkin, Emma shares her learnings in themes that inspire the rest of us to explore these angles with our own families. You’ll find the archive at Projectkin.org/emma-explores. You’ll find event dates and registration links here.

• Creative projects and insightful approaches: Project Recipes

  With a bit of Julia Child-like magic, you'll see how our special guests put a digital project together to capture a family story. Recordings, recipes, and resources are emailed to all members following the conclusion of each event. You’ll find the archive at Projectkin.org/recipes. Each event is scheduled individually as speakers become available. Interested in sharing a project? Email me!

As members come to me with ideas or unexpected bits of inspiration, I’ve found that they easily flow into special limited-run programs. For example, between January and March, we’ll enjoy the last three programs in ’s series:

• Forget-me-not: How We Memorialize

  This incredible series, with its fourth through sixth episodes scheduled in this first quarter, brings us into thoughtful discussions about loss, memory, and celebration. In each episode, interviews experts and ordinary people about the extraordinary process of remembering those who’ve passed. It’s both touching and inspiring.

  

  • Jane has just announced the details for episodes 4, 5, and 6.9 Learn more below:

    • Episode 4: January 21/22: Rhonda Lauritzen

    • Episode 5: February 18/19: James R. (Bob) Hagerty

    • Episode 6: March 18/19: Ailsa Piper

  The series archive is at Projectkin.org/forget-me-not. The events are scheduled in our calendar.

We first met Jane as a member of Projectkin. By May 2024, she had volunteered to present a special program, “Beginning, Middle & End,” which served as a “taster” for her series of workshops for her newsletter, . Projectkin has been smitten with her work since.

New Programs

Complete Events Calendar

In Q1 2025, I’ll be introducing more special new programs. If we find a fit, they may become part of new programs for topics like Platforms and One-Place Studies. Initially, recordings for these programs will be archived with our past special programs in Projectkin.org/specials.

January

• January 9/10 (Pacific): Push & Pull of Platforms with and . Family history is a team sport. A routine day might include coaxing elders' stories, transcribing ancestors' letters, and sharing stories with nephews and nieces. We’ll speak with two members managing their own way through a changing marketplace for platforms where we can share our stories. (See footnote 9, this is “Pacific” time.)

February

• February 6th (Atlantic): One-Place Studies: Part 1 of 2 | Getting Up and Running with Janet Barrie of the Society for One-Place Studies. When Projectkin joined the All About That Place series in September 2024, many members were new to One-Place Studies. While it intuitively fits in a project-based exploration of family history, the discipline is new to many of us. This two-part series will ground us in best practices following the principles developed by Janet Few over a decade ago in her groundbreaking guide to one-place studies, “Putting Your Ancestors in their Place.”

• February 13th (Atlantic): Howard & Elvira: Love and the German Chocolate Cake Family myths and lore can live right under your nose. In this delightful program, one of the Projectkin community's most talented writers, dives into a story to take you into the library, through the kitchen, and onto the plate. It's the perfect story to put you in the mood for Valentine's Day. Be sure to register to get in on this special event.

  

• February 15th (special time, 8/11 AM PT/ET): Riding a Cabinet Card into Indiana’s Historic Past. I am giving this talk as part of a regular meeting of the NWIGS or the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society.

March

• March 6th (Atlantic): One-Place Studies: Part 2 of 2 | Taking It Further with Janet Barrie of the Society for One-Place Studies. As a follow-up to part 1 (which you may watch live or as a recording), we will look at what to do with the material you collected in part 1.

In addition to these Projectkin events, I’m also co-hosting Gatherings with for . Starting in 2025, these two monthly events will combine the separate functions of our 2024 Roundtable and Office Hours programs. Our events are held on the first and second week of each month in the Americas. Roundtables allowed us to share our genealogical work and gain insights into techniques, while Office Hours allowed us to trade tips for using Substack for family history. Combined each program will run about 90 minutes and be timed for the convenience of our members in the Atlantic and Pacific regions:

• Tuesday/Wednesday, January 7th/8th (Pacific) at 4/7 PM PT/ET in the Americas and across the International Date Line, on Wednesday from 8 AM in Hong Kong to 1 PM in New Zealand.

• Tuesday, January 14th (Atlantic.) at 10 AM / 1 PM PT/ET in the Americas and 6 PM GMT/1900 CET.

Learn more about these events and register at MissionGenealogy.org/events.

Can I get YOUR feedback?

I know, it’s a lot. Am I hosting the right kinds of events? Is it helpful to you? Do you have ideas about programs you would like to share or that you would like to see? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Add them in the comments or drop me a message directly:

Transparency: How is this still free?

When I founded Projectkin, I decided it should be a community, not a revenue source. As a technologist and product person, I have other means to make money. I wanted participation to be genuine and voluntary. To make that work, this space had to be platform-independent and transparent. You should not see any ads, affiliate links, or platform pitches. That independence allows us all to be both objective and creative.

In the spirit of transparency and with over a year of experience, let me expand on the explanation I started on my Projectkin About page.

The key is the Substack business model. Combining web and video hosting, email, and membership functions, their model saves me $50-70/month. Other tools I need to deliver this Projectkin community include a Pro account for Zoom and the Tockify calendar tool.10 In 2024, members generously shared enough “tips” in the Buy Me a Coffee platform to perfectly11 cover my Zoom expenses during 2024. I’m frankly astonished and deeply grateful. Your contributions are always appreciated but never required.

Substack also offers robust paid options, including a top-tier “supporter” level for one-time donations above $50. One of you described this as “PBS model,” which is apt — and a good fit for us. I’m now exploring ideas for valuable elements I might offer as that gift. I’ll hold off until I have something worthy. In the meantime, I’d love your thoughts.

To get started in 2025

Finally, as many of you know, I call myself the “ringleader” here at Projectkin. Unlike a company or service, this is a community. The way I see it, my job is to spark ideas and help you inspire each other. I’m here to spin plates. In that spirit…

Let’s dazzle each other with something new: LIVE

Starting on Sunday, January 5th, at 2 PM Pacific, (See WorldTimeBuddy to calculate your local time,) I’ve planned a short weekly video broadcast of ~15-20 minutes) about coming events in the week.

This is a Live broadcast, so there’s no Zoom registration.

• You’ll watch the live video on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/@projectkin or, conveniently, Projectkin.org/youtube 😉, where a link to the live session should appear. 🤞

• I’ll take your questions in our member chat section at Projectkin.org/chat.

• I’ll post the recording in both member chat as well as on YouTube12.

This week will join me as a special guest to talk (among other things,) about our new programs starting on January 7th/8th. 🎉

UPDATE: It worked! Watch the recording here. And YES, we’re doing THIS again next week. Soon it’ll be on the Projectkin Calendar. 🎉:

I love building things. I give myself bonus points if I can turn a project into a “recipe” others can follow. This post describes a sideburner project I started a few weeks ago. While working on it, I realized there may be others interested in collaborating with me on it — or maybe building it into something else. That’s what we’re here for at Projectkin! Read on…

Background

This starts with the compelling story of a French aristocrat widely celebrated as an American hero: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, or, as described more simply in our American history books, the Marquis de Lafayette. His compelling story is wound into our national narrative:

A dashing young French military officer comes to America and bonds with the charismatic leader of the continental army. He soon joins fight for the independence of this a colony from a rival nation. Forty years later, he returns to tour the nation, now expanded now to 24 states. The country welcomes him with a celebration in city and town he visits over 13 months. The national tour would be timed ahead of national celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the nation’s Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1826.

Were your ancestors alive then? Did they meet Lafayette?

Project: Baseline facts for interactive timelines & maps

Proper historians (which I am not) have extensively covered the facts of Lafayette’s visit. There’s little for me to add to the national story. As an American with roots in this continent predating this period, I was immediately curious whether any of my family’s ancestors might have greeted Lafayette during his tour. I have no diaries, letters, or other documentary evidence that my ancestors met the Marquis. That’s okay.

I soon realized that historical circumstances turned the project into a game to determine whether it was possible. This made me think deeply about how news traveled then and why someone might risk a journey of hours or days to meet the Frenchman. The project had become both fun and educational.

Lafayette’s journey in 1824, which covered so many American states, is widely documented and celebrated. A contemporaneous journal kept by his secretary, Auguste Levasseur, includes day-by-day activities. I could use these materials sources and focus on creating a generic tool anyone could use.

How YOU can play along

To play with “what-if” scenarios, I started with a generic JavaScript timeline created for journalists, developed for the Knight Lab, to help me contextualize stops on Lafayette’s 13-month tour. I wanted to see where his stops coincided with locations my ancestors might have lived—or traveled to—at the time.

The resulting tool is conceptually straightforward. It leverages existing data about Lafayette’s journey, structured into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet data combines with the Knight Lab code to produce an interactive timeline. I used a variation on that data with the Google My Maps tool to complement it with an interactive map.

The bulk of the labor for this project is structuring Lafayette’s tour data into a spreadsheet. Fortunately, that data can easily be repurposed so that anyone can use it to see where their family members were at the time.

How it works

To find out where my ancestors might have encountered Lafayette’s tour, I first needed to capture each stop's location and contextualize it into the timeline.

Google Sheet

Since all of this data is subject to error and open to scrutiny, the base data is currently maintained in a single, publicly shared Google sheet with separate tabs for:

od1

• This must be the first tab in your sheet. The terminology, format, and placement of the data required by the Knight Lab timeline tool.

• I created a copy of that form with modifications for formatting so that I could see what I was doing, then ensured that each cell was mirrored on the od1 tab. This may not be necessary, but I found it very helpful.

Knight Lab Timeline

The Knight Lab at Northwestern University is a collaborative environment for developing “open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers.” The TimelineJS tool I’ve used is among their most popular. I first learned about its use in Family History projects in this post by for .

You’ll see my latest in-progress version below. Note that the timeline updates as changes are made to the spreadsheet. (Tap below to view and explore the timeline)1

Next Steps

While custom development would produce more elegant solutions, this approach is extensible—and importantly — free. I will continue to solidify the components so anyone can use the solution as a Project Recipe to see where their ancestors fit into Lafayette’s visit timeline. To get there, I still need to…

• Update and curate highlights from Lafayette’s Itinerary: The original itinerary description was based on material drawn from Wikipedia and unstructured research. I have. now replaced that with detail graciously provided by the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL). This ☝️ updated version will be part of local celebrations in Lafayette, California in March and April 2025.

  • As of this update in February 2025, this is still a work in progress.

• I’ve abandoned my original effort to combine the timeline with a map of Lafayette’s travels. The interactive AFL map at Lafayette200.org covers this challenge well. I highly recommend using Google Maps as a powerful free resource for any other project.

Want to play, too?

My schooling in American history was abysmal. Before starting this project, I had only a sketchy understanding of Lafayette’s journey or its impact on the country two hundred years ago.

Once I started thinking about my family's connection to this story, I was hooked.

To start the exploration, I filtered through my family tree's list of nearly a dozen Revolutionary War veterans. Only four were still alive during the months of the Marquis’ journey. I haven’t even begun to look for descendants.

To create a shared space, I added ribbon along the bottom labeled “Community Connection.” The idea is to have a shared place to list our connections in this story.2

Look like fun? Join me! I have a simple form with eight questions. That’s all I need to add your kin to the timeline! (Give me 24 hours, and I’ll post an update.)

Add your kin to the timeline

Vision for extensions

After exploring this idea, I realized its basic mechanics would apply just as easily to ANY shared journey. All you would need are:

• A baseline set of facts to use to create the timeline and map.

• Incremental detail for individual lives. These might be for your family members or those of a shared community or social group.

The resulting visualization gives you the context to consider individual lives and shared experiences in a given time and place.

Examples

The Knight Lab team has published a dozen or more examples on their Timeline page; the difference is the idea of inserting your relative's stories during these events. Others can then reuse one expertly curated timeline to create custom variations. Consider, for example:

• Arrivals at Ellis Island in New York, Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, or any other immigration point—anywhere in the world.

• The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, Midwest, and West, or Puritan emigrations from England.

• Migrations all define important milestones in family history, and understanding how one family fits in a larger context could be helpful.

• I’ve found many published battle timelines for WWII. Using this method, a private timeline created from a spreadsheet would give different family or community members the context to appreciate each other’s stories.

Any of these examples might be published as a public timeline. The difference is that this tool creates something where you can see when something else occurred on the same timeline. Plus, since the timeline structure can be shared, anyone can build on a timeline created by someone else.

As with any project, you need to appreciate how this combination of tools might be used to tell a story. As with any work published, your representations create expectations for the validity of the historical facts you present. You also incur obligations to respect copyrights, including citations and resource references.

Which reminds me: See an error? Let me know. I’ll get after it.

I wanted to share this draft with for several reasons.

• First, I think this Lafayette version, in finished form, may be helpful to communities and social groups during this bicentennial year. The kind team at the American Friends of Lafayette are very supportive on this point.

• Second, this project is a natural for collaborations. I look forward to your insights and contributions to using this tool to share other stories. For example, I think genealogy and historical societies may have some worthy projects.

• Finally, this kind of project helps demonstrate how the narrative facts of any local, national, or international story can provide a context for family stories.

  ⮕ I’m all about ways to create that compelling honey-pot of stories extended family in your shared history.

So, what do YOU think?

Are you interested in working with me on this Lafayette story? Do you have another story like it? Let me know in the comments, or send me a message!

Update: Presentation of Lafayette Timeline Tool

In April 2025, I presented the timeline as a Project Recipe. In the following recording, you can see exactly how I put the timeline together.

Fun fact: It’s the same baseline tool as my Stories250 initiative. Once you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This gives you a preview of my talk on Nov. 14. Join us, won’t you?

Register for "Story Magic" 14-Nov

Project Thinking

As you do your genealogical research to capture the facts of your ancestors’ lives, narratives spill out. The narrative threads of stories help us understand what we’ve learned and connect us to our community and place in history.

Stories, however, aren’t just a reiteration of facts into a logical stream. They capture the moment and spark your imagination — and curiosity. Looking into the history of technology, you can see how we’ve continuously tried to apply innovations to the stories in our family history.

Consider stereography, desktop publishing, or home movies. Looking back, you can see how family history experiments pushed new media forward. What started with rub-on letters zoomed past desktop publishing to blogging platforms, streaming video, computer vision, javascript, and AI.

I waded into my family history after a 30-year career riding technology waves. First, I wanted to update the material I’d inherited and add my own spin. Next I started to think about what a modern spin even meant.

Today, we have so many inspiring ways to capture, preserve, and share our stories that we can get lost in the various media types and platforms. Worse, the incentives of platform vendors can be at odds with our goals of preserving stories for future generations.

How often have you been eager to dive into a project — because you can. You might tell yourself it’s a “proof of concept.” Did you test the result? Did you continue the experiment? Is it something more now?

At Projectkin, we think a lot about generational storytelling in this technology-saturated world. Today, we have many options to produce stories but little encouragement to source, preserve, and contextualize our work. Doing so takes a mind shift that changes the effort from technological experiments to exercises in storytelling.

When we tackle a story as a project, we’re free to consider the right technology to serve a specific purpose. We can focus on the quality of the work — and the workflow that will maintain the final output.

The magic — and challenges — of projects

Modern projects can be magical, but they also create challenges. Will the result of the effort produce an object or artifact that can be passed down to future generations? Will digital artifacts be meaningful—or even readable—in the future? Examining the stories and artifacts our ancestors left behind can help us anticipate how our project work will affect our descendants.

Since our start, we’ve been privileged to have , a personal archivist with decades of experience join us for a monthly talk. In her Kathy’s Corner series, she shares insights on the safest ways to preserve artifacts passed down to us as heirlooms. Those mementos, photographs, recordings, and printed materials are imbued with history. Our modern tools let us extend the life of these artifacts by preserving originals and using digital copies to explore their stories. Creatively remixing digital versions lets us revisit the family narrative with modern sensibilities.

Consider, for example, an elder retelling their lived memories of historical milestones, or movements.

A generation ago, that story might have been captured in a printed and published book or perhaps a personal letter. Today, ordinary people have ready access to the technology to record the elder on video then combine their storytelling into an

• edited video that contextualizes the story with digitized photographs of the places, people, and things they’re describing.

• a live slide show program that combines the elder’s voice with photos and artifacts and an interactive discussion with family members.

• a self-published photo book that includes collage-based arrangements of photographs with descriptive text.

• a self-published booklet, article, or blog post including a written narrative shared in a newsletter with extended family members

A simple story can be modified in endless ways to suit available time, budget, and objectives.

Don’t shoe-horn a story into a platform:

Find platform(s) to fit the story

Too often, platform companies push us to share stories in ways that fit their platform. That’s reasonable; they’re selling a platform. They’ll make the task easy, fun, and inexpensive. While those are important benefits, I encourage people to step back and focus on the whole problem they’re trying to solve.

Take the example of a family history calendar as a Christmas gift. Do you want to create a family history calendar, or are you doing that because this platform makes that fun and easy? What’s the real goal? Is it a shared family history context throughout the year? If they use the platform to create the calendar, is it preserving the source materials and the final output? How does it help with the real goal?

Projectkin’s Project Recipes were designed to help family historians become more comfortable with new storytelling forms without compromising genealogical principles. With each recipe, you’ll see that we try to present storytelling solutions that:

• Preserve artifacts and organize digital archives.

• Add to a family narrative with material from reliable sources.

• Are truthful to the facts and honest with citations.

• Use standards-based digital forms with open access so that future generations can use it as the basis for their own projects.

• Be long-lasting, using archival-safe materials for production.

Platform independence lets us explore tough questions about purpose, archiving, and backups. These are the kinds of questions that many technology vendors skirt past as inconvenient or irrelevant to their revenue goals.

Are stories genealogical facts?

Since the first cave paintings, we’ve manipulated stories to fit our communications objectives. We simplify, amplify, or expand on our tales to suit our audiences, their literacy, and their interests. Why would it be different for the stories that capture and share our family history? It isn’t. It can get complicated even if our goals are to be truthful and separate facts from fiction.

Hundreds of years ago, when only a few had access to books, archives, and source documents, history was a rarified field. As documentarians, scholars could be trusted to capture facts consistently and preserve them for history. We see a long tradition of genealogical work done to the standards of academic scholars. Peer review through historical and genealogical societies created a means to maintain standards.

As literacy and publishing access expanded to individuals and families, these formal standards fell away to creative storytellers and voracious readers. The contemporaneous facts captured in the hand-written letters, sketched family trees, and marginalia on photographs become fodder for our family stories. Truth wasn’t always a priority.

With the dawn of desktop publishing in the 1980s and then the web in the 1990s, storytelling expanded with new forms of media and engagement. In the 21st century, social media, streaming video, and generative AI have pushed media formats even further. Collaborative trees, at-scale digitization, and DNA analytical techniques entered this landscape to revolutionize access to genealogical records.

Everything Looks Like a Nail

Family storytelling can—and has—benefited from all of these new media forms. The problem is that we get so excited about new technologies we want to use them. It’s a fancy new hammer. We start looking for things we can do with this new toy. Newness alone can make it fun.

The problem is compounded when editorial material in websites, blogs, and newsletters gush about the tool when platform vendors offer financial incentives.

The answer lies in community.

The good news is that we are not doing this alone as family historians. While we draw on our families for heirlooms, documents, and anecdotes, a community of fellow travelers is here trying to do the same thing with their kin. Working together, we can lean on one another for best practices, insights, and sanity checks.

Let’s take a simple example from a decor blog-worthy afternoon project: Framing and adding old family photos to a “family tree wall.”

It seems like a fun home decor project, and it is. But — when you look at such a project as an effort at family history storytelling, you realize there’s much more to it.

Don’t lecture: Elevate, support & encourage.

It’s easy to slip into outrage and the castigating language of a convert. Instead, I recommend you stay focused on the goal. Remember the problem you’re trying to solve.

If you also want families to preserve their inheritances of artifacts, then help them. No one should be castigated for hard work. Help them digitize their favorite pieces. Ask them why they’re important. Show them how originals might have been damaged in earlier generations (and how to prevent further damage by preserving originals and only displaying copies).

I formed Projectkin to encourage families everywhere to share their stories. I’d seen how a community could inspire me. As a community, we have shared powerful stories and improved on each other’s ideas. Contextualizing stories and unwrapping secrets is hard work. Our Projectkin community multiplies the available inspiration, investment, and support.

Through events, conversations, and articles, we won’t just suggest projects like “family tree walls.” We’ll help each other with ladders and measuring tape. We share insights for using the display to inspire younger generations with accomplishments or engage them with QR code-linked questions and comments.

New Media Isn’t New to Family History

Consider how we engage in storytelling traditions around holidays, birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries. We’re already working on the creative magic of projects to celebrate special occasions. Sometimes, these are done on our own as amateurs. When the budget allows, we bring in the talents of professionals.

In virtually all cases today, these projects leverage modern digital technologies for convenience and economy…

• Rehearsal dinners or wedding receptions include slide shows of the celebrants as babies, young children, and lovebirds.

• Life story videos are screened at memorial services.

• Bespoke photo books and biographies are lovingly produced as gifts at milestone anniversaries and birthdays.

• Websites and family archives capture a family story for public or private exploration.

We often consider creative projects like these to be on a continuum. On one end are expensive, special-occasion gifts, and on the other are simple, disposable crafts. While the forms may have changed, I expect this continuum has been consistent across the ages. Our challenge today is unleashing creativity while maintaining the discipline of preservationists’ workflows.

Mindset and Magic

When you think of family history stories as projects, magic happens. The key difference is in mindset. When you treat these kinds of projects as contributing to the fabric of your family history, you’ll take the time to find the best media available to tell the story. You’ll also explore your genealogical records to get the facts right, archive the digital artifacts, document sources, capture the context, and preserve the project final in archival forms for future generations. It doesn’t matter whether the project was a photo calendar or a feature-length film.

As I shared in a “My Sixteen” post, my cousins and I were fortunate to receive a beautiful family history narrative my grandmother wrote and self-published in 1948.

The book is very much in the tradition of the 19th and early 20th-century family history books she drew on for resources. It includes long discussions of lineage, skips over inconvenient truths, and focuses on the positive messages one would want descendants to remember. In a memorable line, my grandmother describes her husband’s Victorian grandmother, Mary Sering Jaques.1

“She had high ideals which she instilled into all her children and was both thrifty and very generous. She helped her neighbors in want or illness and she and her husband ‘met all life's tasks marvelously’ as her daughter said.”2

I expect it was also written with its living audience in mind, a half-dozen or more of whom were lineage society members.

Family history storytelling has a job to do

Sometimes, the purpose of a story is not obvious. It could be as simple as conveying facts. How those facts are conveyed can say a great deal. On occasion, it’s a formal responsibility for celebration or memorialization. In the case of the Ancestor Wall, it might simply be to brighten up a dingy corner.

Planning, designing, and executing a project starts with being clear about goals. Planning around quality standards, timelines, and budgets has a remarkable way of forcing the articulation of unspoken priorities. By keeping your goal in mind, you can focus on the near-term goal while deferring other elements for a later project.

For example, you might have a project to deliver a memory book as a means of therapy for an aging elder3 struggling with the symptoms of dementia. While collecting background, you may put an effort into capturing your loved one’s memories in recordings so that they might be useful archival footage for future projects.

The original recordings may be uninteresting to the generation that heard the voices growing up. A decade or two later, such recordings of an ancestor’s dialect may be fascinating to a new generation. Projects may be designed for the benefit of the kids, but it’s okay if it takes them years for descendant generations to unpack the context and meaning.4

Storytelling is too important to be glossed over, trivialized, or ignored. There isn’t one best project or story. You’ll also likely create many projects; no one of them will be your life’s work.

Let’s explore this together: Join me for “Story Magic”

Join me in a live talk on November 14 and add your voice to the conversation. The program is scheduled for 10 AM PT, 1 PM ET, 5 PM GMT, 19:00 CET, and 7 AM NZDT on November 15.

I hope to inspire you to capture and share your family stories with your family and future generations. By registering, you’ll get a personal link you can use to join the Zoom event.

Join us 14-November

Like all Projectkin events, it’s free and independent of platforms. We don’t allow sponsorships or affiliates, and our modest expenses are supported entirely by voluntary contributions.

More about Projectkin

Projectkin is a community for family historians of all ages, skills, and interests. We meet in an online forum hosted on Substack and at virtual events hosted on Zoom to share ideas, projects, and inspiration. We’re hooked on stories that will engage our siblings and children in the stories of our shared past. We’re also intensely platform-independent. We don’t accept affiliates or sponsorships and only accept modest “coffee” contributions to help support our operational expenses.