Podcast Episode 93: Plan and Write Your Family History with the Hybrid Genealogy Method - Interview with Kelly Mahoney

Meet Kelly Kohlenberg Mahoney, the author of the insightful book, Create a Family Genealogy Book. As a beta reader of this comprehensive guide, I couldn't help but be excited by Kelly's hybrid genealogy format, which simplifies the daunting task of writing family history. Let's explore what makes Kelly's approach unique and highly effective.

Watch the episode here:

Meet Kelly Mahoney

Kelly Mahoney is a dedicated family historian who has poured years of research and personal experience into creating a method that balances the lineage and storytelling aspects of genealogy. Her book, "Create a Family Genealogy Book," provides a detailed, step-by-step guide to compiling family histories in an organized and engaging manner.

The Hybrid Genealogy Format Explained

Goals of Family History Writing

When we set out to write our family history, we typically have two main goals:

1. Tracing Bloodlines: Understanding how individuals in the family are related.
2. Telling Their Story: Sharing the rich, personal stories that bring these ancestors to life.

The challenge lies in merging these two goals without causing confusion. Kelly's hybrid genealogy format addresses this problem beautifully.

The Hybrid Method

Kelly spent years developing an organizational format that allows for the seamless integration of bloodline tracing and storytelling. She outlines this method in her book, starting with the construction of the family tree and moving step-by-step through the process of formatting and organizing your genealogy work. This structured approach makes what seemed impossible, manageable.

"I wanted to do both when I was writing my family history, and it was almost impossible. When you have these stories and you have pictures, but then you're trying to trace bloodlines." - Kelly Mahoney

The Workbook Format

Interactive and User-friendly

Kelly's book is designed as a workbook. It not only explains how to compile your family history but also provides space for you to think, plan, and organize your own family tree. The workbook approach helps you apply the steps directly to your project, making the process interactive and easier to follow.

Visual Aids and Illustrations

Visual aids play a crucial role in understanding and applying the hybrid genealogy format. Kelly includes extensive illustrations in her book, which help clarify the steps. These diagrams provide a visual representation of where to place individuals on the family tree and how to organize their stories effectively.

Writing the Book: A Labor of Love

Time Investment

Kelly initially set out to write a simple 20-page guide but soon realized the complexity and depth required. The book expanded into a year-long project as she continually added valuable insights and tips. Her dedication ensured that the book covers not just the how-tos but also additional content to enrich your family stories.

Content Organization

One significant aspect Kelly highlights is the balance between the main flow of the book and the additional stories and pictures. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining continuity in tracing bloodlines without overwhelming the reader with lengthy stories. Kelly strategically places longer stories and additional content in appendices to keep the main text focused and clear.

Practical Advice for Family Historians

Starting Out: Map It Out

Kelly stresses the importance of mapping out your family history before diving into the writing process. She compares this to writing an outline for a school paper, which provides a framework and direction for your work. This preparation can save time and reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed.

"Had I stopped and figured out this is the order, this is how, you know, writing an outline. I mean, they do in college." - Kelly Mahoney

Revising Existing Work

For those who have already started or completed some sections of their family history, Kelly advises evaluating the current format to ensure it tells the story you want. Don't be afraid to reformat or move things around if they don't make sense. The goal is to present a clear and engaging narrative that others can follow easily.

Bringing Personality to Your Family History

Balancing Fact and Story

Kelly's method allows room for including personal perspectives and experiences with ancestors. While it's essential to present factual information, adding personal anecdotes and personality to the narrative makes the history more captivating and relatable.

"You want the facts, you want all that, but, they're people. They lived lives like they weren't just words on a page." - Kelly Mahoney

Telling the Story You Want to Tell

It's important to remember that each family historian brings a unique perspective. Feel free to focus on aspects of your ancestors' lives that resonate with you. Including your personal touch helps preserve the humanity and richness of their stories.

Final Thoughts: The Gift of Family History

Kelly's hybrid genealogy format offers an invaluable gift to families by preserving their heritage in a well-organized and accessible format. Even if you only write a small portion of your family history, the effort is worth it for the legacy it creates.

"The reason I did my family history book is I was the keeper of the lore. I was the one that was always interested in stuff. I had all the pictures, I did all the research, and if I did nothing with it, they'd be gone." - Kelly Mahoney

Get Your Copy

Interested in learning more about Kelly's method? You can find "Create a Family Genealogy Book" on Amazon. For more resources and information, visit Kelly's website at hybridgenealogy.com.

Thank you for joining us in exploring Kelly Mahoney's hybrid genealogy format. We hope this inspires you to start, continue, or refine your family history project and share the rich legacy of your ancestors with future generations.

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Transcript:

I'm Denyse and welcome to the podcast today, Kelly Kohlenberg Mahoney, who is going to share with us her book about writing family history. I had the privilege of being a beta reader for this book, and when it was still in the process of being published, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I just had to talk to her more, because writing family history is hard, and Kelly has made it easy. Kelly, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Denise. I'm really happy to be here.

Okay, great. I am really happy you're here, too, because I just love talking to you, number one. Likewise, meeting another self published author in the genealogy community is a thrill, because publishing in genealogy is hard. Whether you're talking about your family history or you're talking about how to write your family history or how to research, putting into words exactly what it is that happened or how to do things is not easy. And I just, I want to applaud you because you made it very, very easy in this book.

So Kelly's book is create a family genealogy book. And she has something called the hybrid genealogy format. So could you give us a little overview for what your hybrid genealogy format is? It is. So when you're writing a family history book, you generally have two goals, right?

You want to trace bloodlines. You want to see how people are related to each other and the others. You want to tell their story. And I wanted to do both when I was writing my family history, and it was almost impossible, like how when you have these stories and you have pictures, but then you're trying to trace bllines, it was like this. This is impossible.

And so I spent a few years, like, tinkering, and, I mean, there's gotta be a way to do this. And so I finally developed a method that, an organizational format that you can do both, and it's possible to do both. And so in my book, it lays out it is just a step by step. You start with your family tree and you start formatting and you start organizing, and if you just go step by step and it's like, okay, yeah, this can be done.

It can be done. So that's the hybrid is tracing bud lines and telling story and pictures and all of that together. Yeah. And you didn it, like, just fantastically in the book. So let me just explain that this book is really like a workbook.

So you explain how to do it, and then you give people space to do the thinking and planning and work it all out for their own family tree. So how. How long I do have to ask, how long did it take you to write this book about writing family history?
So it was supposed to be a 20 page, like, hey, here, he can do this. And it turned into a year of, why should add this? Oh, I should put that in there. Yeah. So it was almost a year of, yeah, like, wanting to get everything that I wanted in there and not just how to do it, but other stuff in addition to that, you know, how to add to your story and all of that.

And so I'm like, if I'm go going toa do this, I'want to do it right. So about a year? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic.

I would assumed it took you longer, so I think it pretty good, like, because there's a lot in here. You have illustrated this book, and I I'll put up some screenshots, you know, for people, just one or two, just so they get a sense of, you know, what it is. But you have extensive illustrations in here, which really help. Right. Rather than me read the words and then try to visualize in my head what is it I'm supposed to be doing in this part.

You have diagrammed it all, and it's like, oh, okay. I put grandpa in here, and then, you know, I put grandma over here, and then her family goes on this side, because I've run into this, like, I start writing my family history, and it's fine if you're just talking about one generation, but as soon as you go to tie these folks together, it all gets jumbled. I'm like, where do I start? One person, where do I end the next? Okay.

Absolutely. Because, I mean, any one person has three relationships. They are a child of their parents, they are a spouse, and they are a parent to children. And so it's not a linear thing, and that's hard. Yeah.

And rather than me try to reinvent the wheel and try to figure it out myself, I loved having this book because, as you said, you spent years writing your own family history and then broke down the process of how you accomplished it into the book. So I don't have to spend years myself trying to figure out how to write my family history. I can just use your method and just follow it. Exactly. Which is brilliant.
Yeah. So tell the audience how you decided between what went in your family history and what you put in the appendix. Like the appendices that it boiled down to continuity in the book. The flow of the book, to be able to trace the bloodlines, was really important, and so I didn't want to put pages and pages of pictures, stories that were two or three pages long, because that breaks the flow of. Okay, here's the parents, here's the children.

And to be able to trace them page to page. That's how you're tracing the bloodlines. And so basically, if I had a few pictures I wanted to put in. Yes. Because it makes the story interesting.

You know, you're reading about these ancestors and you're seeing their faces at the same time. Little stories. But if it got to be more than a page or two, I would either. They would get their own little separate page, like, okay, here's a really cool story. I don't want to break up the text.

I'm just going toa give it his own little special page or it would go into the appendix. You know, I had a few stories in my family history. One was like 20 pages long, but I didn't want. I wanted to include it. Like, it was a really important, interesting story.

And that was. That's what it did it for me. I tried to put it in the text, and if I just. Okay, I got lost, you know, with the bloodlines and with the family tree. Then you got kicked out.

Yeah, yeah. I think the example you gave in the book was military service. So you wanted to feature someone's military service, but it didn't. It was extensive. Right.
There's a lot there to cover and, yeah, when you re. You want to pull that out and do it justice and not exactly wash it between the rest of the information and the. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was brilliant because, again, I've run into the same situation.

And unfortunately, when you're writing, you can't do a video montage. You can't just, like, take people into a dream world where you can go explore this other thing and then come back. But you've managed to do it through the use of setting out the stories in boxes or putting them in the appendix, which I thought that was great. Let's go on with what is your biggest advice to family historians who are in maybe just starting to write their family history? Maybe they feel like they're to the point where they're ready to wrap it up.

What advice do you give them in terms of next steps? When they're beginning to write? Yeah, yeah. Let's start with that. Let's start with when they're beginning to write their family history.

I would absolutely say map it out. You know, I mean, I made the mistake of, okay, I have all this information I've been researching for ten years. I want to start writing the story as I picked a family. Let me start with this one. And I started going, but then the further I got, I'm like, okay, no, that doesn't make sense.
I need to reorder this. Like, had I stopped and figured out this is the order, this is how, you know, writing an outline. I mean, they do in college. Like, if you're in high school or college, write a paper, do the outline first. That absolutely gives you their framework, and it's not as overwhelming because you know exactly where you're headed next, and it helps you write what you're currently writing.

And, yeah, that would be my biggest, biggest, you know, and, like, in the book, it's like, here's the tree, here's the outline. It makes the rest so much easier. It really does. So actually, we're going toa use what we learned in school for a change. Yes.
Shock and amazement time. We'you, know, like, oh, this stuff in school, I didn't. It's not useful to me, but actually, here's something useful from school that we should have paid attention to, the outlining process. And so it sounds like family historians are trying to be maybe a little too loosey goosey or fly see to their pants a little. I mean, it's not a bad thing.

Like, when you're telling a story, you just want to write the story. But when you're talking about a family history and genealogy, like, it's not just a story. It's, there's parts and there's components and, yeah, so it's, I wanted to rush the story part. I'm like, I have all these great pictures and information. I just want to get that down.
But I realized I wasted a lot of time by trying to do that first before I decided how I was going to format the book. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Now, for the people that are, have written a bunch of family history, what's your advice to them? Like, what, what should they do with it now?

Like, is there a way that they can evaluate it? You know, like, you know? Or should they just start to squeeze it? Should they go back and outline it? Like, or make sure?

I'm not sure. Yeah, you absolutely can. I mean, I mean, I got ridiculous. Like, I, I mean, my family history book was 450 pages. Like, it was a monster of a book.
And I got halfway through and I realized I don't like the format, so. Oh, my husband heard about that one. Yeah, I went and I went back, and it's like, if I'm go, going toa do it, I want to do it right. And so I went back, and, I mean, that's the benefit of doing it on a computer, and you can just, you know, move things around. And that's what I would do.

Like, look at what you have and say, does this make sense? Is it telling the story that I want to tell? And if it's jumbled to you and you're the person that knows the information, it's going to be twice as jumbled to anybody else who tries to read it, you know? So don't be afraid to just start over. Don't be afraid to take it and move things around for it to make sense.

Wow, that's. That's wonderful. I like your perspective of telling the story you want to tell. You know, make sure that you're telling a story you want to tell, because I think sometimes we've heard that we need to, like, be very aloof and be very factual and just sort of very distant from our ancestors and not really act like we know who these people are in any sense. And I'm kind of, you know, I've kind of changed my opinion on that.

You know, I really feel like it's okay for people to put a little of their personality into the book and their perspective. Each person that encounters their ancestors has a different experience of them. Let's just say, like, a different way that they interpret or look at their ancestors, and they mean different things to them. Different people jump out to different members of my family. People that I'and abered with don't necessarily mean anything to other folks, so.

Exactly. And, yeah, it's just, in my opinion, if it was too cool and aloof, too objective, like, to me, it defeats the purpose. Like, you want the facts, you want all that, but, like, they're people. They lived lives like they weren't just words on a page. And that's kind of what I wanted to put forth when my book is like, yes, here's all the factual information.

But these were our people, and they, like, went through struggles and they had joys. They had started, like, to add as much as that as I could. Like, that's the interesting part to me, the humanity of it, not just here's when they were born, here's when they died. Yeah, yeah. It's.

It's more than that. At least me. I love it. I love it. So what parting thoughts?
Do you want to leave folks in terms of writing their family history and using your hybrid genealogy format? I think the biggest thing, at least for me, is you have the opportunity to give such a gift. I mean, the reason I did my family history book is I was the keeper of the lore. I was the one that was always interested in stuff. I had all the pictures, I did all the research, and if I did nothing with it, they'd be gone.
And so that was a huge driver for me. And so even if you can just get a little bit down, just, even if you don't do the whole, you know, bloodlines and family tree, just the stories, just the pictures, get something to share it with other family members that would be interested. And, you know, that's the biggest thing, is just getting it. And if you want to do something like that, and it's overwhelming. And it is overwhelming.

My book would absolutely help you narrow things down and organize things. You could do extremely difficult book using my book, or you can do a simple one u but like you've said with your stuff, just do something. Just get something on paper and you won't regret it. You know, like, he'll be happy to have something to share. Absolutely.

100%. I love everything you just said, and I totally agree. It doesn't have to be 450 pages. It can be four pages. Like, just write something, you know, and you can start assembling your family history using the book.

So this is the book again. Whoop. Create a family genealogy book by Kelly Knberg Mahoney. And how can people get in touch with you and find the book? Most importantly, it is on Amazon.

And then my website is hybridineealogy.com dot. Oh, excellent. Hybrid genogy.com. very simple. I love it.

Very simple. Y. Sticking with your theme, I think that's important. I tried. All right, thanks, Kelly, for talking to us, giving us an intro to the book.

I hope people check the book out and stop frustrating themselves and writing their genealogy so that they can go from written to published, because that's our goal. We want to get it done and in people's hands. So thank you again for being on the podcastk you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

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