This week I had a great experience on Ancestry.com. I decided to try out the new audio storytelling feature for Family Trees, and I learned something about my family—and our country—that I didn’t know before.

The new feature allows you to send an e-mail invitation to a family member, asking them to record a family memory for your Family Tree. The invitation includes a phone number they can call and a PIN number for security reasons. The family member simply calls the number, narrates the story into the phone, enters the PIN number when prompted, and then hangs up.

Since I’m close to my grandfather (and he’s fairly computer savvy), I sent him an e-mail invitation and then followed it up with a personal call, telling him about the e-mail invitation and what I wanted him to do.

I fully expected him to record a story about “riding the rails” as a teenager, courting my grandmother, or working as a Link Trainer instructor in the Army Air Corps during World War II. These are all stories I’ve heard, and enjoyed, numerous times before.

The story was not about any of these things; it was about missiles stored by the U.S. government in underground silos.

One night, my grandpa, who worked for Marathon Oil Company in Sidney, Nebraska, received a 2 a.m. call from the plant; they wanted him to check the gas levels at one of their wells.

He drove out to the well, made the inspections, and afterwards noticed some activity and lights around the base of an underground missile silo nearby. Normally there was not much activity around these sites, purposely hidden in the landscape. Grandpa approached the site and was met by a friendly soldier. He told Grandpa that he was conducting a training exercise and had set off an alarm to catch the attention of fellow soldiers at a base 100 miles away in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He was waiting to see how long it took them to arrive after receiving the signal.

Underground missile silos? Grandpa? I did a quick Internet search and discovered that these underground missiles were called Minutemen Missiles, and that they could reach targets a continent away. 1,000 Minutemen Missile sites were planted underground in inconspicuous locations throughout the Great Plains as a part of national security during the Cold War.

TELLING OUR FAMILY TALES
We all have special family stories like this one. Some get told around the dinner table time and time again. Others, like the one from my grandpa, stay hidden until we invite people to tell them.

It’s important that we gather and record both kinds of stories for ourselves and our posterity to enjoy for generations to come.

In the following paragraphs, I will explain how to use the new Ancestry.com audio storytelling feature to record your own memories or to invite a family member to do so.

Each story can be up to twelve minutes long, and you can record as many stories as you want. Here’s how it works.

FINDING THE AUDIO LINKS
You can attach an audio story from several places on your Family Tree. On the Family Tree homepage, there are two links for attaching audio (see figure 1).

If you choose one of these links, the audio clip will attach to your tree, but not to a specific individual. However, you can select an individual or individuals to attach it to later.

Figure1:Two links for adding an audio story on your Family Tree homepage.

You can also select the audio feature from one of two spots on an individual’s page in your Family Tree (see figure 2). If you select one of these two options, the audio story will attach to that individual. You can choose to have it attached to other individuals later as well.

Figure 2: Two links for adding an audio story on an individual page.

MAKING THE RECORDING
After selecting an audio link from your homepage or an individual’s page, you will see a window (see figure 3) inviting you to record your own story or to send an e-mail invitation to a family member to record his or her own memory.

Figure 3: “Record Your Family History” window.

Recording Your Own Story
To record your own story, click Begin My Story. Another window appears, prompting you to enter your phone number. Click Call Me.

In a matter of seconds you will receive a call from Ancestry. When you pick up the phone, an automated voice will instruct you to press “1” to begin recording. Just talk into the phone and your story will be recorded.

To end the call, press # or hang up. Your story will be attached to your tree or to the individual you specified.

Inviting a Family Member to Share His or Her Story
If you select the option to invite a family member, a window will appear prompting you to enter your name and the e-mail address of the person you want to send your invitation to. A custom e-mail message is prepared for you; however, you can modify it to say whatever you want.

The message the individual receives provides them with a phone number to call and a PIN number to enter when they call (see figure 4). (The PIN number is a security feature. It also lets Ancestry know where to save the recording.)

Figure 4: An audio story e-mail invitation.

TITLE YOUR AUDIO STORY
All stories recorded on your tree are collected on the “Audio” tab of your Family Tree homepage (see figure 5).

Figure 5: Audio stories listed on the “Audio” tab.

One nice feature about the audio stories is that you can provide each with a title, brief description, and the location and date when the story occurred.

To title your story and add other identifying information, click on the story link you want to edit; then click the “Edit Information” link at the top, left-hand side of the page (see figure 6). A separate page will appear, prompting you to enter the information in the appropriate fields.

Figure 6: “Edit Information” link for an audio story.

MAKING YOUR TREE COME ALIVE
The new audio feature on Ancestry.com is an exciting feature that adds life and vitality to your tree. Every family has stories, and often it is the well-rehearsed stories that get lost—because we’re so familiar with them we don’t think to record them.

Other times, it’s the stories like my grandfather’s that get lost—because we never thought to ask.

Once you start recording your memories on your Family Tree and sharing them with other members of your family, you’ll be surprised how addicting it is. Everyone will want to record their own stories. Everyone will want to listen to others’ stories.

In the future, you can also look forward to seeing several new audio features show up on Family Trees to make the process even more fun, and even more inviting.

A question generator is in the works to help you prompt someone’s memory and gather even richer stories. And two-way calling, also on the horizon, will allow you to record a conference call. You can capture yourself asking your grandmother questions as she tells you about her wedding.

There’s something special about being able to hear a family story in the voice of a family member. So if you haven’t already, be sure to take advantage of this great opportunity to preserve your family’s unique stories. You never know what your family will share.

Jana Lloyd is editor of the Ancestry Monthly newsletter. She can be reached at AMUeditor@ancestry.com but cannot assist with personal research questions.