Historical Preservation
Keep your family's history — stories, photos, documents, and biographical details — safe and passed down across generations, privately.
What is Historical Preservation?
Historical Preservation is how A2Me helps your family keep its history — generational stories, photos, documents, and biographical details — safe and passed down across generations, all kept privately within your family.
It isn't a single tool. Instead, it's delivered through several A2Me features working together: Journals for long-form family stories, recipes, and reflections; Story Builder for guided prompts that draw out memories; Legacy Accounts for memorial profiles that preserve deceased relatives in the family tree; and Yearbook for an annual compilation of highlights.
Used together, these features let your family capture memories as they happen, preserve the relatives who came before, and compile it all into a private archive that grows richer every year — ready to hand to the next generation.
Why It Matters
Family history is fragile. Stories live only in the memory of the people who tell them. Photos sit in shoeboxes and on phones scattered across relatives' homes. Biographical details — where someone was born, who they married, the work they did — fade with each passing year. Once a generation is gone, much of it is lost for good.
Historical Preservation on A2Me gives your family one private place to gather all of it. Write down the stories in Journals, let Story Builder surface memories you'd never think to record, keep relatives who've passed present in the family tree with Legacy Accounts, and let each year's highlights collect in your Yearbook. Nothing is sold, advertised, or shown to strangers — it's preserved for the people who matter most.
How It Works
- 1
Capture stories
Capture stories with Story Builder and write them up in Journals.
- 2
Preserve relatives who've passed
Preserve relatives who've passed in Legacy Accounts so they stay in the family tree.
- 3
Compile yearly highlights
Compile each year's highlights in your Yearbook.
- 4
Keep it in your private family archive
Everything stays in your private family archive, ready to pass to the next generation.
Example Usage
Scenario: The Okafor family wants to make sure their history survives for the grandchildren who haven't been born yet.
Ada opens Story Builder, which prompts her with questions about her childhood. Her answers become the start of a long Journal entry about the village she grew up in, complete with scanned photos and her mother's recipe for jollof rice.
She also creates a Legacy Account for her late father so he keeps his place in the family tree, and relatives add their own memories and photographs of him.
At the end of the year, the family's highlights are compiled into their Yearbook. Years later, a grandchild who never met Ada's father can open the private family archive, read her stories, see the photos, and understand exactly where they come from.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Historical Preservation mean on A2Me?
Historical Preservation is how A2Me helps your family keep its history — generational stories, photos, documents, and biographical details — safe and passed down across generations, all privately within your family. It isn't a single tool; it's the result of using several A2Me features together.
Which features are involved in Historical Preservation?
Historical Preservation is delivered through Journals (long-form family stories, recipes, and reflections), Story Builder (guided prompts that draw out memories), Legacy Accounts (memorial profiles that preserve deceased relatives in the family tree), and Yearbook (an annual compilation of highlights). Used together, these features capture, organize, and pass down your family's history.
Is my family history private?
Yes. Everything you preserve stays inside your private family archive on A2Me. There are no ads and no public algorithmic feed — your stories, photos, documents, and biographical details are kept for your family, not the open internet.
Can future generations access it?
Yes. That's the entire point. The stories you write in Journals, the memories drawn out by Story Builder, the relatives preserved in Legacy Accounts, and the highlights compiled in your Yearbook all stay in your family archive, ready to be passed to the next generation.
How do I get started with Historical Preservation?
Start by capturing a few stories with Story Builder and writing them up in Journals. Add relatives who've passed away as Legacy Accounts so they stay in the family tree, and let each year's highlights collect in your Yearbook. There's no single setup step — you build your family history over time as you use these features.
Do I need a premium account to preserve my family history?
Journals, Story Builder, and Legacy Accounts are part of the core A2Me experience, so you can begin preserving stories, memories, and relatives right away. Yearbook is part of A2Me's premium offering for families who want an annual compiled archive of their highlights.
Related Features
Start preserving your family's history
Journals, Story Builder, and Legacy Accounts come with every A2Me account.
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