Hallmark Magazine

Researching your family roots is easier than ever before and a great way to bring the generations together. Here, some useful tips to get you started.

WITH THE RIGHT PREPARATION, it’s easy to get people to share their stories. These seven tips will help you conduct a successful family interview.

1. If at all possible, plan to do your interview in person and in your relative’s home. The more comfortable your subject feels, the more you’ll learn.

2. Prepare a list of questions and share them with your relative before the two of you sit down, so that both of you have a sense of what you’ll be talking about.

3. Gather any information you already have about your family as a starting point. Your interview will be more productive (and you’ll have more questions to ask) if you begin with a baseline of knowledge—like the fact that your mother had three sisters or her family came from Norway.

4. Visual cues are a great help in prompting memories. Ask your relative to get out any photo albums or framed pictures of older family members, or bring along some that you have.

5. If your relative has a box of cherished cards or letters, ask to go through them together—it’s another way to encourage recall of specific times and events.

6. Use a tape recorder as a backup to your note taking. The recording itself may become a cherished keepsake.

7. The more your interview feels like a conversation, the more comfortable your subject will be. Don’t interrupt or correct, and don’t be afraid to let your interviewee go off on a tangent. You may learn things you never thought to ask about.

THE BEST QUESTIONS for a family interview require more than “yes” or “no” answers. Asking for descriptions and feelings will help you elicit the most interesting responses. Use these 5 questions to get you started.

1. Do you know the story of how your parents met?

2. What’s your earliest childhood memory?

3. Who was the oldest relative you remember meeting when you were a child? What do you know about him or her?

4. What was your favorite meal as a child? Do you have any recipes passed down by family members?

5. What did your childhood home look like?

Resources to Create Your Family Tree

Starting Out
The main library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City claims to have the world’s largest trove of genealogical materials—more than 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed records. Check the church’s free online index at familysearch.org.

Best of the Web
Ancestry.com is one of the largest searchable sites and may be worth the $155 annual fee (or at least the free two-week trial) for its huge collection of U.S. records from the 1600s to the present day. At ellisisland.org, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation site, you can view records from 1892 to 1924 and images of ship manifests.

Census Material
These reveal much more information than age, household and address. The 1870 census, for example, asked the monetary value of household possessions. In 1900, mothers had to list the children they’d had, and say how many were still alive (sadly, that second number was often significantly lower).

The DNA Factor
New DNA services can take you further back than records. With a cheek swab, you can trace your genetic connection to ethnic groups worldwide (dnatribes.com, $200). National Geographic’s Genographic Project ($100) will tell you the migration route your ancestors took thousands of years ago, and men can find out from dnaancestryproject.com ($200 for advanced testing) whether they are descended from Genghis Khan (8 percent of Asian men) or Niall Noigiallach, king of Ireland (2 percent of New York Irishmen).

How did you create your family tree?

No Current Comments Be the first to post a reply.

No Current Comments
Be the first to post a reply.