Capturing Family Memories
A recent health scare for an elderly member of the extended family, and my own father being in his mid-eighties, has reminded me recently of the risk of losing a significant amount of family history when my parent’s generation passes away from this life. Sometimes family members have done an excellent job recording personal histories, or keeping a diary or journal, helping to preserve some key memories. But what they cherished in written form, may not include some of the most vital memories that add color and excitement to life.
I’ve had to opportunity to interview older family and members of the community on a few occasions. My father-in-law is from the Netherlands, and was born during World War Two. So my wife and I wanted to capture some of his post-war childhood, as well as his experience immigrating to the United States in the 1950s. My approach to the interview demonstrated my inexperience. While I had an idea of what I wanted to ask, I didn’t prepare with questions, and largely just let the interview go where ever the conversation led. While that method may work at times, in this case, after my father-in-law answered questions, and shared experiences for some time, he was growing a little tired and wanted to stop. Just when it was getting good! Some of the questions I wanted to ask never got answered in that interview.
Nathan Day and his daughter interviewing an elderly member of the community
On another occasion, I was helping out as a volunteer for an Eagle Scout project. They were conducting interviews of elderly residents of a local assisted living care center. The interviews included video, and were going to be documented by a local organization. On that occasion, we were given a list of questions to ask during a timed interview. As a result, we were able to complete the interviews in a structured way, and asked each resident the exact same questions. The great thing about that experience is that the process felt much easier, and more organized.
I was recently made aware of a wonderful blog post by OurPublicRecords.org that shared “How to Interview Elderly Relatives”. They are a private organization, not connected with government sites, but have partnerships with websites to help with genealogical records. Related to the effort to capture family memories, they share in the blog post excellent guidance on how to conduct interviews to capture family memories. Some prompts OurPublicRecords.org provided for easy interview topics were:
Family traditions and customs
Holiday celebrations and locations
Cultural influences
Hometown descriptions
Childhood experiences
Historical events that occurred during their lifetime and how each one impacted the family
Family heirlooms, photos, or other items.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to interview a parent, or other family member, I hope that you will consider doing so. My Dad shared rich oral history to me and my brothers and sisters throughout our years growing up. As you can expect with any child, we loved the stories at the time, but never would have thought to write down or record what was being told. Now is the time to capture the events and stories.
Recording interviews is easier that it has ever been. My first interview efforts included tape recorders or video cameras. And something was bound to go wrong with the technology. You can use a laptop with a camera, as I did with the Eagle Scout project, and as a result of our time isolating with COVID, many are comfortable with using this technology. This also highlights that if you don’t live close to the family member you would like to interview, video conferencing might provide the opportunity to conduct the interview at any distance. The question then becomes where, or how to preserve the recording so that it is useful to you or other family members. This challenge can be answered by another interview recording method. Family Search offers a free Memories app for both Apple and Android phones that allows you to record audio directly into FamilySearch Memories. This helps you connect the interview directly to the person the memory is about.
So if its your first time conducting an interview for genealogical purposes, read through the OurPublicRecords.org blog. Come up with a plan. Identify your recording methods. And hurry to record the life experiences and perspective of as many family members as possible. The stories that will be gathered are more valuable than gold.