An 80th birthday or golden anniversary gift for the person who remembers the most · Ludara.AI

Big birthdays, anniversaries and family holidays

A gift that brings the whole family
together.

A century of family history, on one interactive map, linked with a family tree.

For a big birthday or a golden anniversary. In every family there is one person who still holds the whole thing, and everybody assumes there is still time to ask them properly.

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

The map shown here is our own family’s. 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 along the bottom

Above: the first Family Story Map, built from one grandmother’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

The night before you decide

She will say she does not need anything. She will mean it.

You have already been down the list. Another scarf. A voucher for a restaurant she will not want to sit in for three hours. Jewellery, which she will thank you for warmly and put in the drawer, next to the last one. Every one of them needs a shelf, in a house where every shelf is already full.

It is the same problem whether it is an eightieth birthday, a ninetieth, a golden wedding anniversary, Hanukkah, Christmas, or the first big family gathering in years. The trouble is not that she is hard to buy for. The trouble is that at eighty the things she still wants are not sold anywhere. She wants to be asked. She wants to know that somebody has written it down. She wants to be sure that when she is no longer at the table, everybody still sitting round it will know where they came from.

That is what this present is. Not an object. The family sitting down and saying: your life is worth mapping, and we did not want to leave it any longer.

What they open

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

One link opens in every language your family reads, 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 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 and their journey draws itself, from the house they were born in to the country they ended in. The grandchildren find themselves at the bottom of it, which is usually the moment they start paying attention.

The family tree: eighty six people across three branches and five generations, each 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, and the location. Print it, bind it and wrap it, so there is something in her hands on the day.

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

And a link is a hard thing to hand across a table while everyone watches. Every full map exports as a PDF book, place by place, with the photographs, the stories and the location of each one. She turns the pages first, in front of everybody, and opens the link when she has finished.

What actually happens on the day

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.

Somebody opens it on the biggest screen in the house. The journey draws itself across the map, and the first place opens: the town she was born in, a photograph, a few lines in her own words.

She bursts into tears. Nobody expected that, and for a moment nobody knows what to do, and it turns out to be the best thing that happens all day.

Then she starts talking. She tells you the story behind a photograph you have looked at your whole life without ever knowing what it was. She remembers a detail that is written down nowhere, and that she has not thought about in fifty years, and she remembers it only because she is looking at the street where it happened. She corrects you, twice.

That is the present. Everyone quiet, her talking, the grandchildren hearing it for the first time in their lives, and one of them holding up a phone to record, because it has finally occurred to somebody that this should be recorded.

Three generations of the Lando and Kliot family photographed together in a garden in Israel, the oldest sitting in the middle

This is our own family, in Israel. Theirs is the map you can open from this page, and it is the reason any of this exists.

The cake is finished by Sunday. The map is still there next year, when a cousin sends a photograph nobody had ever seen, and it goes where it belongs.

What families say

“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.”

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

The 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, and everything the family sends in the first year goes in at no extra cost.

About the date

Tell us when the birthday is in your message. We will help you gather the material, record the stories, and make every effort to prepare the map on time.

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. 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 her life. The town she was born in. The place the family was evacuated to. The street they first lived on here. We research each one and put all five on a real map with her 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

You already have the story written down: a memoir, a recording, a family history, a folder of documents. 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 and its location
  • 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, included

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

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

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.

Questions we are asked

About giving this as a gift.

What do you give a grandmother or grandfather who says they want nothing?

Something that is not an object. A Family Story Map is their own life on one interactive map: every town they lived in, their photographs where they belong, and their stories beside each place. It arrives as a link the whole family opens together, and as a printed book they can hold on the day.

What is a good present for grandparents who already have everything?

Not another object. A Family Story Map is their own life on one interactive map: every town they lived in, their photographs where they belong, and their stories beside each place. The family sends what it has, a memoir, some recordings, or a folder of photographs, and we research every place and build it. It opens from one link on any screen, in the languages the family reads, and it prints as a book. First Chapter, five researched places, is $195. A full map starts at $3,000.

What do you give grandparents who live in another country?

A link, not a parcel. Nothing to post and nothing to clear customs. The map opens on any screen wherever they are, and each relative reads it in the language they read, so a grandmother in Israel, a grandson in Boston and a cousin in Melbourne open the same thing on the same evening.

How long does it take, and can it be ready for the birthday?

Tell us the date in your first message and we will answer honestly. If the birthday is sooner than a full map allows, First Chapter, five researched places for $195, is ready in a week and can be given on the day, and the $195 comes off the full map later.

Can several people share the cost?

Yes, and most families do. Children, grandchildren and relatives abroad each put in what they can, and one link arrives on the morning of the birthday. It is far easier to fund together than to organise together, and nobody has to guess their taste or their size.

They are not comfortable with computers. Is this the wrong gift?

No. There is nothing to install, nothing to log into and no membership. It opens like a photograph, on whatever screen is in front of them. Somebody sits with them the first time, and after that they can go back to it alone as often as they like.

We have no written family history. Can you still make one?

Yes. Most families start with less than they think they need. A folder of documents, photographs with something written on the back, and an afternoon of what they still remember is a real beginning. The research is our part, not yours.

What if they correct it, or the family remembers more afterwards?

That is what usually happens, and it is planned for. Edits through the whole of the first year are included in every full map, so everything the family sends in that year goes in at no extra cost.

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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