The nine women who write the family history blog Genealogy Ensemble have fleshed out the dashes between the dates on their family trees, chosen their favourite stories about their ancestors and published them in a new book called "In Beads in a Necklace: Family Stories from Genealogy Ensemble."

Inspired by family myths, heirlooms, letters, and vintage photographs, these are historically accurate stories with a huge heart. They describe the lives of merchants and military men, society ladies and filles du roi, reverends, rogues, medical men, restless women, cooks and farmers, each of whom was somehow related to one of the book's authors.

These ancestors lived between 1650 and 1970 and hail from Montreal, rural Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, the United States and other places around the world.