Gifts
A family history book, as a gift.
For parents, grandparents, the grandchildren, or your whole family. Give the discoveries you love a form they can open together, for an anniversary, a milestone birthday, a reunion, or Christmas. We build on the records, photographs and stories you have gathered, add the research your chosen book includes, and bring the family’s history into one telling.
Plan a family gift
Anniversary gifts
For a 50th or 60th wedding anniversary.
Two families joined on that day. The Joachim, the Legacy Volumes, is two Heritage Books, one for each side: each follows that side of the family back through the records to the old country and forward to the couple and their grandchildren: where each side came from, the parish, the house, the crossing, the years since. Around 300 pages each, hardbound, with the record plates and the maps beside the story. The Joachim includes 10 hardcover copies for each side of the family, 20 hardcover books in total. The children can give it together and open it with their parents at the anniversary dinner.
The Joachim begins with $4,475, then $4,475 at printing. Tell us your anniversary date so we can discuss and confirm a delivery schedule before you commission the books.
Other occasions for the Heritage Book
- For a 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th, or 90th birthday.
- A legacy gift for the grandchildren.
- For Christmas.
Timing
Can it be ready for the date?
Tell us the occasion and your hoped-for date before you commission the book. Research, design, printing and delivery all need time, and the schedule depends on the family and the agreed scope.
For Christmas or any fixed date, ask us what is possible. We will confirm the delivery schedule with you before you commission it. A date you request is a starting point for discussion.
If the book is a surprise, we work from the records and from the family members who are in on it, and contact no one you have not named.
Why a book
What the research says about experiences.
Twenty years of research at Cornell says people get more lasting enjoyment from money spent on experiences than from money spent on things. A trip is remembered and retold; a possession is compared and replaced. Van Boven and Gilovich showed it in 2003, and Gilovich, Kumar and Jampol gathered the reasons in 2015: an experience becomes part of who you are, it is shared with other people, and it improves in the telling.
Our view is that a book of your family’s history goes a step past that. It is an experience you did not have to be there for. You sit with the register entry for a great-grandmother’s baptism, the map of the village, the manifest with the family’s names on the crossing, and you take in what they lived through and think it over at your own table. It is the experiences of the people who came before you, absorbed and contemplated, and it does not end when the trip does. It can be opened again by the grandchildren. Experiences, taken to the next level. That is the case we make for the book as a gift.
Van Boven and Gilovich, “To Do or to Have? That Is the Question,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003. Gilovich, Kumar and Jampol, “A Wonderful Life: Experiential Consumption and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2015.
Questions about giving one
Before you give one.
The rest of the questions, on what we can find and how we work, are answered on the books page.
Who can give it?
Adult children can give a book to their parents; grandparents can give one to the grandchildren. Relatives can plan a gift together, or one person can commission it for the family.
What do you need from us to start?
Tell us who the gift is for, the occasion and any date you have in mind. Bring your existing research, or begin with the names and stories you know. Approximate dates and unanswered questions are welcome.
Can extra copies be made?
Yes. Families order a copy for each household, and siblings often commission the book together.
Bring the discoveries. Tell us who they are for.
Tell Daniel who will open the book, what you hope they will discover, and any occasion or date you have in mind. He can help you choose a book and confirm the scope and schedule before you commission it.
Plan a family giftBook a 15 minute call. You can also call 970-471-7747.