Have a Family Story to Tell?

Are We Related?

If you are one of my relatives (even if we haven’t met yet) and would like to share more food and family stories, I welcome you. You can write up your family story in the form you want, following the simple rules below. If you are new to writing for the Internet, feel free to ask me for clarification. Or you can send me an e-mail–or several e-mails–with your family story and I will excerpt information for an article (this offer is ONLY for my relatives).

Are We Not Related?

Although Ancestors in Aprons focuses on my own family and my ancestors, I welcome non-relatives’ stories about  food and family, too.  Please be sure to follow the few simple rules.

Family Story Rules for Ancestors in Aprons

1. Be sure that your article includes a family STORY.  It does not have to be long and involved, but should include at least one interesting character who is doing something.

2. I prefer that your family story be one that you were reminded of by some food, recipe or some object that has been passed down to you. It is not absolutely essential that it has to do with food, but that is a good place to start.

3. Do you have a picture of the person, the object, the house, the food?  Pictures must be digital, and it saves me work if you send them to me by e-mail in a format that does not exceed 600 pixels on the largest side, in a .jpg format.

Since many of these photos may be old ones, scan them,( or get them scanned at an office supply, photo, or drugstore) and send the scanned copy. It is not recommended to photocopy (Xerox©) old photos because the light exposure is not good for them.

Finally, be sure that you have the rights to the photos. Do not use one that you find on the Internet unless it is clearly marked Creative Commons or common domain, or you can contact someone for permission.

4. Recipes. The article does not have to include a recipe. If you ARE including a recipe, please include a picture of the finished product. If you have a hand-written recipe, it would be nice to have a picture of that, too. Don’t worry about the formatting. The recipes can be written the way they were received, with notes from you to clarify old-fashioned directions, if you wish.

5. Captions. Please send along a caption with the name of any people (if you know them) in the photo, where it was taken and who took the photo (if you know). If it is a photo used with Creative Commons license, then I need a link back to the url where you got it.

6. Your article needs to be between 300 words and 1200 words. 700-900 is best (not counting recipe).

7. I reserve the right to reject material I do not think is appropriate and to lightly edit things I receive.

8. If you are familiar with WordPress, please e-mail me about the possibility of you producing the article yourself on my editing page.

9.  Include a couple of sentences identifying yourself, and not more than two links you would like to include. (If you have a website or blog.) And a headshot, or photo of you I can crop to get a headshot.

10. Style-wise, I try to include birth-death years in parens after people names the first time they are introduced.  And include names of towns/states whenever possible.  Makes it possible for people to find our stories more easily.

One more thing, if your story is time sensitive (for instance a Christmas story or a Mother’s Day story), I will need to have it at least a month in advance notice.

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