MONTICELLO — The Monticello Area Historical Society will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27 in the Zwingli UCC Lounge, 416 E. Lake Ave., Monticello. 

Following a short meeting, Jeanne Waelchi-Traut will talk on preserving family history with self-created photo books.

An advantage of self-created photo books is that people can make books about their own family history. Jeanne Waelchli-Traut will talk about how her family members have shared, listened and collected stories and photos to create books to preserve their own family histories. Each book tells of two life-changing generations: the generation of immigrants from Switzerland and the first generation of U.S. born citizens. Stories, photos and memories were contributed by parents, great-aunts and great-uncles, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins from both the United States and Switzerland. Jeanne will also tell about sources she uses to find unknown facts and dates. Her final step is writing, organizing and creating the books to share with family, so that everyone has these memories at their fingertips.

This is a free presentation and will start about 7:15 p.m. This is open to the public.