16 Practical Genealogy Gifts for Family History Lovers
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I can understand why as I’ve spent time doing my own genealogy and family history research – it’s addicting!
You want to keep digging deeper into your past, into understanding who you are, who your ancestors were, for better or for worse. It’s a great mystery worth investigating and discovering!
It’s the fulfillment of Malachi’s promise that Elijah the prophet will come and turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5-6).
And the advent of technology has made genealogy research more accessible, feasible, and easier for millions of individuals around the world. It’s a wonderful time to be a genealogist!
If you want to gifts for genealogists you know, whether amateur ones, modern-day record-keepers, or professional researchers, the following are some amazing practical gifts to give them.
Call me frugal, or boring, but when it comes to gift giving and receiving, I much prefer to gift and receive something useful, something that will last.
It’s why things like lotions, treats, and cut flowers really don’t do it for me. My list won’t feature charms, lockets, T-shirts, family tree gift ideas, or custom maps (though if you are looking for such things, head to Etsy!)
No, my genealogy gift ideas are more for the modern family history recorders. They’re practical ways they can better understand who they are, share their histories with their own families, record and save current family history (i.e. their family’s life happening now).
My list of gifts for genealogists is more for the modern family history lover who wants to learn, store and explore.
May you be able to bless someone with these awesome, practical, gifts so they can record and learn their family histories.
Genealogy Gifts for Family History Lovers and Genealogists
Ancestry Gifts
DNA Kit
Uncover your ethnic mix, discover distant relatives, and find new details about your unique family history! It’s a simple DNA test using just your saliva (no needles involved).
With a pre-paid return mailer, you just drop it in the mail after completing your sample! Once the results are ready you’ll receive an email notifying you of the results and unlocking your past.
There are tons of DNA kits available that help you discover your family story, among other things like health reports! I have taken three different DNA tests! Check out my Ancestry DNA review, my 23andMe Review, and my Living DNA review.
Each one is slightly different in what information they give, but all of them gave pretty similar results (now that Ancestry DNA recently did a big update). I was able through my DNA testing to also discover an unknown half-uncle!
Wouldn’t that be a fun thing for our family history lover to discover??
But, hurry and order a kit by December 16th if you want it to arrive in time for Christmas!
Below are any of the current deals on DNA kits:
Ancestry.com Membership
If you know someone who’s hit a few dead-ends using free resources online, or who wants to dig deeper into their family tree, gift them an Ancestry.com Membership!
You can choose a few different membership options, like $99 for 6-month membership or $189 for 12-month membership for U.S. Discovery; or $149 for 6-month membership or $299 for a 12-month membership for World Explorer. These gift memberships are all access and include records on Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com Basic**, Fold3.com & AncestryAcademy.
To purchase a gift membership, just click on Gift Subscriptions in The Ancestry Store and select the membership start date when ordering.
Create Family History Binder
It’s always fun to share family history knowledge and information with others in your family in easily accessible ways.
Bringing favorite photographs and items out of storage and into the light is a great gift idea for genealogists! Frame old photos, blow them up and turn them into Canvas prints or Metal Prints! You could even create an awesome shadow memory box with photos and small mementos.
You can also usually find great deals on Canvas Prints on Groupon and LivingSocial for as little as $5!
Video and Photo Preservation Family History Gifts
Convert Old Tapes, VHS, Etc to Digital Files – $28+
If you have the know-how and the time and the equipment, you can digitally scan and archive old family photos, journals, documents, VHS tapes, slides, and film reels. And once they are digital, burn them onto an M-DISC so it’ll be archival.
With Legacybox you pick the box size, based on the amount of media they want converted, and send it to LegacyBox in the mail, and they’ll do all the work for you, returning the original items to you along with DVDs and thumb drives.
There are often local places that will do this as well, and other services online, but some are only for specific digital services like VHS to DVD.
Blog2Print
If you know someone who regularly updates a blog about their life and adventures, gift them a Blog2Print gift card and they can easily turn their blog into a book!
It pairs with blogs on WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Typepad. Books start at $19.95 for a softcover 20-page book, and $34.95 for a hardcover 20-page book.
You also have the option of doing a PDF version with unlimited pages for only $8.95 that you could then print and bind yourself.
Be aware that it can take a while for a blog and the book preview to load.
Create Photo Book with Old Family Photos
If you already have digital files of old photos, you could put them all together in a beautiful photo book as a sweet genealogy gift!
Shutterfly is a great place to create them, and are frequently running sales and offering discounts on their photo books (and everything else they offer too).
Chatbooks
Chatbooks makes it super easy to regularly print off pictures of your kids and your life, automatically.
They will take your Instagram (or Facebook or Google Photos) photos (and captions) and put them into a cute 6″ x 6″ softcover photo book, already beautifully formatted for you, for just $10/month plus taxes but it ships for free!
Get a Chatbooks Gift Certificate for your favorite Photo sharer in your life, and help them turn their gorgeous photos into physical versions that they can scroll, I mean flip, through whenever they want, no Internet or computer required!
We’ve been using Chatbooks all year now and I and the kids LOVE getting them in the mail every month. Great quality, so easy, and so affordable!
Genealogy Gifts for Recording Family History Memories
When you hear “Family History” you often think about ancestors and deceased family members, but part of family history is recording what you are doing now so that your future descendants can know you, their future great-great-grandmother or grandfather or long-lost cousin.
The following are amazing gift ideas for people who love preserving, recording, or capturing their on-going histories happening now.
Life Story
If you’ve ever wished you could get your great-grandmother’s life story captured and recorded and preserved forever, before she passes, so she could share her wisdom, her experiences, her life, with you and your loved ones forever, then you need to check out Evalogue.Life.
Evalogue.Life specializes in helping people finish their life stories. They have a small team of professional interviewers, writers, editors, video and layout people who create amazing, professional life story interviews!
Many people want to write their life story but are overwhelmed and do not know where to start. This method can be quite a breakthrough and most people enjoy and look forward to each session. This give takes this process from feeling like a burden and turns it into a joy.
Once finished, people can decide if they want the audio transcribed, written into a story, or used as the basis for short videos.
Plus right now you can get a deal on a package of 6 life story interviews for $155 off! Six interviews is the ideal number to help people finish a whole life story. Don’t forget to use WHATSUPFAGANS to save 5% more too!
Family Photo Session
Gifting someone a photo session is a great gift for genealogists!
Plan on booking a session for the Family Reunion, or for an individual’s family (who may be getting together for the holidays anyway).
Hire your favorite local photographer (and pick up a deal on them through Groupon if you’re lucky) or simply book a session at JCPenney.
Thanks to digital cameras and camera phones, people snap new photos regularly, sometimes multiple pictures each and every day!
But, not all cameras are doing a great job capturing the awesomeness that is our lives.
Think about gifting a new, better camera to your loved one! I used to have a Nikon D5500. Others like the Canon EOS Rebel.
I now have a Sony Alpha a6000 which is great for recording video, is mirrorless, and much lighter than the bulky DSLRs.
Better Photography Skills
Sometimes, it really doesn’t matter how great of a camera someone has, their pictures still stink because they have no idea how to take good pictures, yet.
It can totally be worth it to gift your frequent picture-taking friend or family member a photography class!
Help them take better pictures that they will actually want to frame, print, and keep for years and years to come!
I recently received them to review and they are all so great! They make an excellent gift for people wanting to improve their photos of their kids or grandkids with a smartphone or DSLR, as well as just general good photography tips.
You can use code FAGAN5 to take $5 off per order and get free shipping (US only). Plus, if you order more than one Snap Happy Mom cheat sheet deck, you get $5 off per deck!
I absolutely love a good journal! There is something special about seeing your ancestor’s handwriting (no matter how hard it is to read) and to read exactly what they were thinking, feeling, and doing at certain ages and points in their life.
Journals are an awesome gift for family history lovers! (You can also use a journal to keep track of your family history adventures and finding when doing genealogy research!) It’s one of my favorite things to love as I’ve kept a journal since I was 11 years old.
Recording and writing down your thoughts is more fun with an awesome pen. You can pick up a beautiful hand-crafted one from Etsy, or buy some from an office store, or online at places like Amazon.
I hope that my list of genealogy gift ideas for modern family history lovers, memory, and record keepers, gave you some great ideas! Gifting practical gifts that help memories live on forever, is something I fully support!
Good idea is to create family tree as a Christmas gift. You need to download your tree into a standalone family tree application such as Treemily. There you will be able to produce and print a variety of trees. With Treemily, you can also choose which pieces of information go into the charts and reports, whether to include notes and sources, pictures, colors and fonts, organization of the chart, etc.
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Jenny @ Unremarkable Files says
Great ideas!
Melissa says
Great ideas! Thank you!
Treemily says
Good idea is to create family tree as a Christmas gift. You need to download your tree into a standalone family tree application such as Treemily. There you will be able to produce and print a variety of trees. With Treemily, you can also choose which pieces of information go into the charts and reports, whether to include notes and sources, pictures, colors and fonts, organization of the chart, etc.