Publisher for you family history or memoir?

Checkout the December 2007 copy of The Writer - (I'm not sure if the library subscribes).
Page 14 has a breakthrough story about Betty Grant Henshaw, who wrote an account of growing up in the Oklahoma Hills during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression era.
At 60 years of age she decided to try her hand at writing, took writing classes, joined a writing group and wrote stories about her life.
Then, recognizing that they did not hang together, she drew up an outline (something she said that she should have done at the beginning) and created a book length novel. She spent the next 10 years attending writing conferences, talking to agents and sending out samples of her work, only to receive rejections.
The breakthrough came when a writer friend recognized that her work told the history of the era and suggested she submit it to a university press.

Texas Tech University presses jumped at the chance to publish her memoir and provided editing support and cover design. The book 'Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story' is a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.
Publication through a university press could apply to any one of several works read in our group.

In a similar vain, page 30 has a six-page step-by-step article by Moira Allen on "How to Write a Family History", which includes interesting sidebars on the 'crazy-quilt memoir' (an alternative to the usual chronological approach), and using birthday letters and tales from the family newsletter as source material.