Upcoming Events
November 2024 Board Meeting
November 2024 Board MeetingTo be held Live Virtual (via Zoom). Zoom link will be found with the confirmed event registration for the November 20... ...Read More...
RGS Writers Group
If you're trying to preserve your family history in a way others will want to read, this may be the group for you. We're nonprofessionals who want to stop procr... ...Read More...TIG Meeting - Doing a Deep Dive in Ancestry’s New York Collections with Annette Burke Lyttle, owner of Heritage Detective, LLC
Filling out a search form on Ancestry only returns a small percentage of the millions of records available on the site. There is so much more you can find by se... ...Read More...RGS Writers Group
If you're trying to preserve your family history in a way others will want to read, this may be the group for you. We're nonprofessionals who want to stop procr... ...Read More...Surprise! My Great-Grandfather was the Milkman! – A DNA Case Study
Jacob Rouse was born in 1804 in Pennsylvania and died in 1885 in Michigan. Since Jacob Rouse was my 3rd Great-Grandfather, I wanted to use DNA to discover who h... ...Read More...Holidays and Genealogy - a good time For Family Conversations
by Christine Booth
All the holiday gatherings in the next several weeks 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.
There are 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 check 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.
