A Family Story Map: Your Family History on One Interactive Map · Ludara.AI
Start it this month The perfect family gift for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year. Or a big birthday. Start now and the gift is ready in a month. A memoir, a folder of documents and photographs, or ten minutes of you recording your parents’ stories on your phone at the table: whatever you have is enough for us to start. We build a map of your family journeys through history, linked to a family tree.
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A Family Story Map

A hundred years of your family,
and every road they walked.

Some families have a memoir, a box of photographs, a folder of documents, a family tree from Ancestry or MyHeritage. Others can still press record and capture their relatives’ stories around a family holiday table. Any of it is enough to begin.

We take what you have and put it back where it happened. All the people, all the places, all the stories. On one Family Story Map, interconnected with a Family Tree. Interactive, shareable, printable as a PDF. No app to install, no membership fee.

Book a call with us Open a real family map Five places $195 · Full map $3,000

This one is our own family’s map. We published it on purpose, so you can see exactly what you would be getting. Yours stays private unless you tell us otherwise.

The whole family map with the journey drawn: numbered stops running from Belarus and Lithuania through Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to Israel, then across the Atlantic to Los Angeles and Boston, with region filters for Belarus, Russia, East, Ukraine, Israel and the United States along the bottom

Above: the first Family Story Map, built from one family’s memoir. One tap numbers the stops in the order they happened, from Bobruisk and Vitebsk out to the Urals and Kazakhstan, on to Los Angeles and Boston, and home to Israel. Every place is listed down the side with its portrait and its dates, every pin opens into its photograph and its story, and the regions along the bottom filter the map to one chapter at a time.

See it in use

Video: the Family Story Map open on a laptop, the journey drawn across Europe and North America, with a place card open beside it
35
places mapped
86
family members on the tree
7
countries lived in
3
continents
3
languages, one link, everyone at once
178
years of family journeys

This one began as audio. A mother sat down and recorded the stories she still remembered, and those recordings became a memoir of more than a hundred pages that almost nobody in the family read. The map is what finally got read. Every place located and checked, every photograph from the family’s own archive.

What families say

In their own words.

“Wow! The map brought my family together from across the globe. Relatives from Belarus and Israel are reviewing it together, in different languages, and discussing today.”
“I had no idea my great-grandmother was a soldier in the Second World War, at just eighteen years old!”
“Now my mother’s stories about evacuation and the boat from Marseille make sense. She was in tears when I showed this map to her and thanked you tremendously.”
“Your product is creating such meaningful treasure for families.”

What the family gets

1A century of journeys, in the language each of them reads.

One link opens in Hebrew, Russian or English, and each reader picks their own. Stories, names, tree and every button switch together. Shown with the family’s permission.

A place card open over the map: the archive portrait of an eighteen-year-old woman in uniform, the family member connected to the place, the year 1943, and the passage from the memoir describing her crossing of the Dnieper

Open a place and the story is waiting. The archive photograph, who in the family is connected to it, the passage from the memoir in the writer’s own words, and a line on what stands there today. Nothing paraphrased, nothing invented.

2A family tree, interconnected with the map.

Every person in the stories has a place in the tree, with a photograph where the family has one. Click any person to reveal their journey and their stories.

The family tree: generations of three branches, each person with their name in three languages and a pin linking them to the map

3A book of family stories, to print or save.

Any selection of places becomes a PDF book: the photograph, the story in the family’s own words, the memoir page it came from, and the coordinates of the place. Print it at home, save it, or send it to a relative.

The exported PDF: each place laid out with its archive photograph shown whole, the story in full, and the coordinates of the place printed in full

What this actually is

We are storytellers, not a genealogy service.

We bring relatives together, from across the world and across generations, to visualize, read and relive their history.

Who it’s for

A gift that connects generations.

Most families come to us for one of three reasons. Each one has a page of its own, written for it.

Three generations of one family photographed together in a garden, the oldest sitting in the middle

A big birthday

She says she needs nothing, and she means it. This is her life in stories, places and pictures, talked about at the table and on every grandchild’s phone, across continents and languages.

A gift for a big birthday › A place card open on the map: an archive portrait of a young woman in uniform above the title The Dnieper Crossing

In memory of someone who has died

Their life in stories, places and photographs, retold for everyone to remember and cherish.

In memory › A family journey drawn across the Atlantic, from the United States to Europe, Israel and Kazakhstan

Where the family came from

For families whose story spans continents. Show the journey they made escaping wars, looking for a better future, following love. To preserve the roots, celebrate their lives and know where you came from.

Show your children where you came from ›

And one thing that is true whichever reason brought you: the dates are already on paper somewhere. What no archive holds is who your grandmother was at twenty, why she said yes to him, and what she was brave enough to do next. Ask her, and it goes on the map in her own voice.

How it works

You send what you have. We do the rest.

01

You send your material

A memoir, an interview recording, a tree file, a shoebox of photographs, or just a list of names and towns.

02

We research and locate

We find each place as it exists today, including towns that were renamed, and check every one against the record.

03

We build and translate

Your map goes live on a private link, in the languages your family reads, with the tree, the path and the photographs in place.

04

It grows with your family

Once the family sees the map, new photographs and memories surface. Edits are included through the whole of the first year, and update rounds can be added after that whenever you need them.

Start with what you have

A memoir, a recording, or a folder of documents.

The richest material of all is a written memoir. Someone has already sat with the family, asked the patient questions, chosen what matters and shaped it into a story, and the map can be built almost straight from those pages. If a memoir writer is working with your family, their work is exactly what we hope to receive.

Where the memoir has not been written yet, recent technology lets us begin from the voice itself. A map interlinked with the family tree can be built from audio recordings directly, or from a folder of documents and photographs. So this holiday season, when the whole family is around one table, put a phone in the middle, ask three questions and press record. Ten minutes of someone talking is a beginning, in any language or several mixed together. You do not need to transcribe it, tidy it, or know where any of the places are. That is our work.

Record your mother while she still remembers, and we will put it on the map.

Get the holiday table card

The printable card is free, in English, Hebrew and Russian, with no sign up.

The printed card: three questions to ask at the holiday table this year

Try five places first, for $195 ›

What it costs

One payment. No subscription, ever.

A map built from a written family history starts at $3,000. It is commissioned work, made once for one family, not a template. Something the family keeps, and hands on. Set it beside what one big family celebration costs. The evening ends. This does not.

First Chapter

$195
five places, one payment

You do not have to decide about the whole family today. Send us five places from your family’s history. The town your grandmother was born in. The port they left from. The street they first lived on here. We research each one, find it even if it has been renamed twice, and put all five on a real map with your family’s own words beside them.

One language, ready in a week. If you go on to the full family map afterwards, the whole $195 comes off the price.

Five researched places on a map, and that is what it is. The family tree, the whole journey drawn in the order it happened, the additional languages, the PDF book and the year of edits belong to the full map. This is the way in, not a smaller version of it.

A Family Story Map

$3,000

We can build it from a memoir, or a folder of documents, or a page of names and dates. We do the rest.

What is included

  • Every place read out of your material, located and verified, including towns that were renamed
  • One language, and up to 40 places and 100 people on the tree, which covers most family histories
  • The family’s own words at each place, quoted exactly. In any additional language they are translated faithfully, never rewritten or embellished
  • Your own photographs, scanned, cleaned and placed where they belong
  • Wherever it fits we add an illustration made for your story, or find a freely licensed historic image and credit every one.
  • A line on each place as it stands today
  • The family tree, linked to the map: tap a person and their journey draws itself
  • The whole journey as one path, in the order it happened
  • A PDF book, laid out place by place, each with its photograph, its story, the memoir page it came from, and the geodesic coordinates of the place printed in full
  • Where the record is unclear, or two sources disagree, we come back to you rather than guess
  • Edits through the whole of the first year. Once the family sees the map they start remembering, and everything they send in that year goes in at no extra cost
  • The Archive Edition, when the map is frozen at the end of the first year: the whole map as one folder you download, that opens and runs on any computer with no internet

Yours to keep

  • You pay once. Hosting is included for five years and there is no annual fee. Edits are accepted through the whole of the first year, for as long as the family keeps remembering. At the end of that year the map is frozen.
  • You get the whole map as a file. Then we send you the Archive Edition as a zip: one folder you download, holding the map with its terrain and town names, the Family Tree, every photograph, every story in every language your map carries, and the PDF book. Unzip it on any Windows or Mac computer, open one file, and the whole map runs. No internet, no hosting, no account, no password, no web developer and nothing more to pay. Nothing in it calls out to a server, so there is nothing that can be switched off.
  • The PDF book is yours to save and print, with every place, photograph and story.
  • The material stays yours. Your photographs, your text, your family’s words, never licensed, sold or used anywhere else.
Three generations of one family at a laptop, looking at their Family Story Map together
The same map, on your and your family’s computers.

Add to any map

Each additional language, produced in full: the stories, the tree, the interface and the PDF book$1,000
A larger family: more than 40 places, or more than 100 people on the treepriced individually
A further update round: everything the family has sent since, added in one pass, in every language your map carries. Bought when you want one, never on a schedule$600
The Archive Box, shipped to any address: the PDF book printed and bound as a hardcover, and the Archive Edition on a USB drive, both in one box. Made when the map is frozen at the end of the first year, so the book is printed from the finished map$500

Tell us which languages your family reads and we confirm them in the offer, before you commit to anything.

Privacy

A family story is not a publication. Your map is never listed on Google or any other search engine, and it cannot be found by searching for your family’s name. It opens only for someone who has the direct link. Send that link to any family member, anywhere, and it opens for them on any device, with nothing to sign in to and nothing to install. If you want more than that:

  • Password protected, $500. We can lock the map so that it opens only after a password. You name the readers on your own private page, each one gets a password of their own, and you can add or remove people whenever you like. Included for the five years of hosting, with no yearly fee.

We never publish a family’s map, quote it, or show it as an example without written permission.

Let’s talk about your family.

Book a free 15 minute Zoom call with us to discuss how we can help make your family stories come alive. We reply by email within one business day to set a time.

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