Dear Ainslee, I wonder if you are trying to write a narrative of the life of your ancestor or if you are trying to put the family genealogy (descendancy) in the book? I have compiled two books for my family and they were essentially descendancy oriented. I did this because I have no contact with the people who knew my ancestors - they died long before I was aware that I had ancestors..........so a collection of the genealogy of the descendants was prepared for them. There are two kinds of these books that could have been done. One way is to just mention the names of the descendants - no dates, no places and the other way is to include the names, dates of birth, marriage and death as well as place of the events. In the first example, someone coming along after you would have no idea if they had the right family or the right time period or the right location. Especially so if the surname is a common name and a number of families of that name were known to reside in the area. I am related to the SCHULTZ and TROST names and there are a number of families of that name in the area where I was born but all of them descend from different pioneer families.....so it is important to me to find the correct family to do my research. Without any identifying information other than a name, it would be extremely difficult to be assured one had the correct family. In the second example, there is no doubt as to which family you refer. Full names, dates and places of events are of more use to those who come after us to be able to identify the correct family and then continue the research. However, there are some people who do not want their births, marriages and places of those events published in a book. To my way of thinking this is a silly attitude. The government knows when and where one was born or married. The postman knows where they currently live as does the phone company, the plumber, the school district, the city council worker to send rate notices and the election committee for the electoral rolls and the list goes on............. In today's society Privacy is not an option. If you wish to just write a narrative, that is a story of the family and its doings, then it might require loads of enquiry and much research into the history of the area from which they came and the area's in which they live. That seems like an overwhelming task since there might be a real scarcity of information or there might be more stuff than you can poke a stick at. Either you will have a book of two or three pages or a book of over 1,000 pages depending on the amount of information available. A poll of your relatives might be unproductive because you will probably end up with as many opinions as you have relatives. Go with your instincts - you are the writer and it is your family. hope this helps, Beverly. [email protected]