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Holidays and Genealogy - a good time For Family Conversations

by Christine Booth

All our holiday gatherings provide a great opportunity for starting or enhancing your genealogy research. Not everything is online - some of the best clues and answers can be found in conversations with your relatives.

Those conversations can start in a number of ways - actual interviews, asking everyone around the table the same question like What was your favorite memory of Grandpa?, or sharing a photo or recipe to get everyone's memories primed. Sometimes letting a conversation unfold generates the most interesting and often new family information and isn't seen as intimidating as direct interviews. Sharing a photo of family members with a background of the family home or the interior of grandma's house triggers very different comments from everyone. Piecing all the comments together, including the inevitable "No, I remember it this way", can oftentimes give you the core story. Even if you don't walk away with a complete account of "when the family moved into the house on Park Avenue", you may unearth a clue that leads you to another area of discovery.

Don't be discouraged if your initial attempts fail to get everyone talking. Recently I interviewed first cousins for a family history book. I had a list of six simple questions - most of which met with little response. But when I simply started talking about their parent and my memories, especially when I mentioned specific events or personality traits, their stories started to flow and each memory triggered another. I ended up with many new anecdotes that filled in gaps in our family timeline.

Check out the news article below for a number of creative and fun ideas for your family gatherings. There are also myriad articles, how-tos, and videos online to help you plan your family get-together, formal interview questions, or after-dinner genealogy games. Just Google away or view the website of your favorite database, magazine, or genealogist. Don't let another year go by without tapping into the wealth of information you have right around your dinner table.