Share your Appalachian family history and stories
Welcome to our front porch.
Here, we invite you to share the threads of your family's history and the stories woven into the rich tapestry of Appalachia. Your memories, big or small, are precious. They help us understand, preserve, and celebrate the unique spirit of this land and its people.
What stories are we looking for?
We invite people to share family stories, local history, and lived experiences connected to Appalachia. This may include stories about work, farming, mining, mills, railroads, moonshining, migration, military service, faith, folk practices, music, foodways, home remedies, crafts, community gatherings, old roads, lost places, environmental changes, or how a town or family has changed over time.
We are especially interested in the ordinary stories that rarely make it into history books—the things grandparents told at the kitchen table, stories attached to old photographs or objects, and memories that help explain how Appalachian people lived, adapted, worked, celebrated, and cared for one another. Stories from Indigenous, Black, immigrant, LGBTQ+, disabled, and other Appalachian communities whose experiences have often been overlooked are also welcome.
The goal is not to decide which stories are "Appalachian enough." It is to help preserve the many voices that make up Appalachia.
How your story helps preserve Appalachian heritage
The main goal is to help preserve Appalachian history in the voices of the people who lived it, inherited it, or carry its memory. Shared stories can help document local history, identify places or traditions that may be at risk of being forgotten, and show how larger changes in industry, land use, migration, environment, and community life were experienced by ordinary people.
Contributions may also help guide future educational resources, preservation work, research questions, and community projects. A story will never be used publicly without clear permission and appropriate credit or anonymity based on the contributor’s wishes.
We steward these stories; we do not take them.
Share your story in your own way
People should be able to share a story in the way that feels most natural to them. They may write it out, record an audio or video story, upload old photographs or documents with a caption, or simply send a short memory that they do not want to lose. Not everyone is comfortable writing, and a story does not need to be polished or formally researched to matter.
Contributors should be able to tell us what they know, what they were told, and what they are unsure about. We can follow up when more information or permission is needed.
The goal is to make preserving a story feel as simple as telling it to someone who is willing to listen.
Your story, respected and preserved
We want people to feel that their story was received with respect, care, and genuine interest. They should know that sharing a family memory, photograph, recording, or piece of local history is not the same as giving it away.
The story remains theirs.
We want contributors to understand how their material may be used, choose whether they are credited or remain anonymous, and be asked before anything is shared publicly. Most of all, we hope they leave feeling that someone listened and that what their family or community carried was worth remembering.
The Appalachian Juju Public Initiative should feel like a careful steward of these stories, not an organization collecting them simply because it can.