Real work finished by real family historians.
Featured Chronicles
Every chronicle here started as a pile of research, a folder of records, and a family story that hadn't been written yet.
Lark M. Dalin — Montana
Ancestor: Joseph Kieran and Catherine "Kate" Myres (1864–1905) | County Monaghan and County Galway, Ireland → Butte, Montana
Her story:
"Writing this story required two things: years of careful genealogical research, and help turning that research into a narrative worthy of the people it describes."
Lark's great-grandfather Joseph Kieran left Ireland for the copper mines of Butte, Montana in 1887. His wife Kate followed from County Galway in 1895. What Lark had: census records, city directories, newspaper clippings, passenger manifests, a handful of family photos, and cemetery records scattered across years of research. What she didn't have: a way to turn it into a story her family could read.
Excerpt:
The headframes cast shadows, both literal and figurative, over the families who lived in their proximity. Wooden houses clustered so tightly around the mine yards that children played within sight of the hoists and women hung laundry where mine dust settled on the lines. The shadows represented more than the absence of sunlight: they marked the constant presence of danger, the risk of cave-ins and explosions, the making of widows and orphans, the lung disease that came from breathing copper dust, and the precarious economics of boom-and-bust metal prices.This is the story of one Irish family who lived and loved and lost in those shadows.
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Completed using the STORI method with AI assistance. Written with Claude, revised extensively by the author.
Ellen Forderer — North Dakota
Ancestor: Kermit LeRoy Fredrickson (1923–1989) | Ismay, Montana → Minneapolis, Minnesota → Camp Roberts, California
Her story:
"This story would not have happened without taking Denyse's writing class. For decades, I've preserved our family history through genealogy scrapbooks, combining photographs and journaling. Writing short chronicles captures what pictures alone cannot."
Ellen's father rarely talked about his Korean War years, even with her. What she knew came in fragments: a hernia that changed everything, a converted chicken coop in California, classes of young soldiers heading to combat. She pieced together military records, family stories, and historical research to understand what he actually did during the war — and why it mattered.
Excerpt:
Kermit watched them go. He was not a hero. He had not seen combat. He had survived by accident — a hernia, lost records, and bureaucratic details about railroad work. But he had spent the life that chance gave him doing the invisible work correctly: teaching young men how to keep their units talking, how to maintain lines under pressure, how to understand that shortcuts could get someone killed.
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Completed during the 10-Day Chronicle Writing Sprint, Lab 3. Written with AI assistance, revised extensively by the author.
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