Although digging through census records, death certificates, newspaper clippings, etc. is fun, I’m learning that much of the wealth and key information we need as genealogists is held in the living memory of family members. One approach to capturing this knowledge is journaling. But, regretably we don’t always find the time nor do we always know what to write.
Interviewing, thus becomes an important part of family history work. Especially in this age of podcasting, interviews of family members can become easily accessible and provide irreplacable knowledge that helps us get to know our ancestors and provides the “missing links” to help us find the archival information we’re looking for. Additionally, your grandparents would probably be thrilled if you sat down and talked with them for an hour.
Of course, the challenge is learning how to draw out and capture the information needed. My experience talking with family members about their family history has been like traversing a hypertext document online–the discussion jumps from one person to another to another, and sometimes, it’s hard to keep it all straight without some serious grounding in the family organization.
So where do we learn how to interview, and how do we capture this information from our relatives without making them feel like they’re participating in an interrogation? More on that topic in a future post.
