My grandmother, Christianne Rouzaud Caggiano, passed away last June at the age of 98 and a half. She was a legendary woman to me. As a teenager, she survived the Nazi occupation in Vichy, France, was hit by multiple hurricanes, and lost countless of her relatives during her lifetime.
When I inherited most of her belongings, I felt like I was witnessing a piece of history. But when we moved a few months later, it wasn’t practical to keep all of our items with us. This brought me to a crossroads. How can we honor and preserve the past without bringing it with us?
I’ve been thinking about this question as an heir to my grandmother’s legacy and as someone who values the richness of a full life. Advances in technology have made genealogy research more accessible and efficient. How will the industry continue to innovate in 2024? For Ancestry and Storied, the answer lies in dynamic, community-focused content.
Ancestry connects families and communities
Introduced at the 2023 family history conference RootsTech, Ancestry’s Storymaker Studio brings family discoveries to life with high-quality images and sound. According to Crista Cowan, Ancestry’s corporate genealogist, this technology represents the company’s commitment to responding to this moment.
“It’s not just about creating a story,” she says. “When we first launched Storymaker Studio, we modeled it after Instagram Stories. Now it’s much broader than that. You can attach audio files to your Stories, upload old photos and scan them. The Memories Platform within Ancestry provides a suite of tools to help you capture, create, and create stories around your family’s historical memories.”
In this way, Cowan says, Ancestry is democratizing the recording of family history. And all this is possible thanks to his Ancestry position in the market. The company, which started as a humble publisher of family history magazines and genealogy reference books, has grown to become a world leader in family history with more than 1 billion user-generated content records on the site. has grown to.