1. Decide on your scope. For years, my family genealogy/history newsletters were to descendants of my grandparents (starting with about 70 and moving up to 103 descendants now).
I am now doing newsletters (yes, it's plural now) from my great-grandparents down. Since there are "cousins" in each family not concerned with others, I have separate newsletters for the descendant branches. So, my fist cousins get all of the newsletters, but my second cousins only get the newsletter for that common ancestor.
2. Don't be afraid to repeat stuff as the years go by. I repeat my family newsletters - histories every 2-4 years, when I find the time, and have been doing so for 20 years. You will find some folks just missed an issue and the little ones grow up and never read one the one from 1976. So, don't be afraid to repeat stuff. Besides you're usually finding out new stuff to add to the repeat, anyway.
3. Find some mechanism to keep that address list up to date. There is no secret here except communication. This is the hardest part of the newsletter actually is finding everybody. I have now lost track of one branch and am looking everywhere for them.
4. Don't forget to get copies of your history to older members of your family that may not be directly related to you. Maybe your grandmother's brothers' widow in the nursing home, etc. They really enjoy reading about the family and can be a valuable source of information.
1. An introductory letter with new genealogical discoveries and family news.
2. A page on weddings, births, graduations, deaths and the like since the last letter.
3. Family histories. I always repeat the history of my grandparents in the newsletter to my cousins and the histories of my g-grandparents in the other letters to "extended" families. Then, there's always new stuff, history of the area in which they settled, a history or cultural notes of the country they were from, a new ancestor found, new cousins found, the ship the ancestor migrated over on, etc.
4. Some interesting data, if I have time, from Access: a list of birthdays, spouses, (don't forget the spouses!) how many of us are in different states, and so on.
5. A family tree. I usually just show a descendant listing from grandparents down. And then a separate ascendant tree for each grandparent. (or great grandparents for the extended family newsletters).
6. An address list of everybody you have. I organize mine by family. The younger ones can't figure out who's who with an alphabetical address list. In fact, us "elders" can't either when the younger ones marry and the girls have a different name than we knew them by when they were growing up.
Anyway, the above is some tips on what works for me. But, every family is different and every author/genealogist has a different perspective.
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Copyright, 1997, Norris M. Taylor, Jr.