Templates for Family Historians.

A curated set of 8 keepsake and record-keeping templates — and the guides that go with them — for the person who keeps a family's history. Preserve the recipes handed down "by feel," organize where every important document lives, and record what a family passes on, in files you own and can print for every relative.

Every family has a keeper. This is for you.

In most families, one person becomes the keeper — the one who ends up with the photo boxes, who knows which cousin has grandma's ring, who is the only one who ever wrote down the holiday bread recipe. The problem is that a family's history is fragile in a specific way: the recipes were never written down, the stories live in one person's memory, and the documents are scattered across drawers and inboxes. These templates are built to hold that history so it survives — organized, recorded, and in a file you own rather than in one person's head.

The recipes are usually the first thing lost. The Family Recipe Heritage Keepsake Binder is built for exactly that — a Recipe Register that captures each dish's origin, the cook it came from, and the "a handful" amounts turned into real measurements, plus a cooks roster, a food-traditions tab, and a Sources tab for where every original card lives. Learn what a heritage recipe is, or start free with the One Recipe, Written Down printable — capture the one dish you'd most hate to lose.

Recipes are one thread; the spoken record is another, and it goes faster. The Life-Story & Memory Keepsake Journal is built for the interviewing side of family history: 200 questions across ten eras of a life, a coverage dashboard that shows which era of the life is still thin, a place to keep two relatives' versions of the same story side by side, and a photo-and-artifact log that flags anything still missing a person, a date, or a story. It is deliberately not genealogy — see what a legacy or memory book is for how a recorded recollection and a documented record differ, follow the walkthrough on capturing a parent's life story, or start free with the Three Stories to Capture First printable.

Recipes are one thread of a family's history; the records are another. The Estate & Life-Admin Binder organizes where a family's documents, accounts, insurance, and wishes live, the New-Baby / New-Parent Records Binder starts the record for the next generation, and a home inventory records the heirlooms and what they'd cost to replace. These organize and preserve records; they aren't genealogy software or professional archival, legal, or financial advice.

Pair them with the field guides below — a digital estate plan, a family emergency binder, and why a home inventory matters before you ever have to file a claim.