Ask While You Still Can

Ask While You Still Can.

Welcome to Stuck in the Branches. Every other record in this series will still be there next year. The people in your family will not. This guide is about the one part of family history that has a deadline on it, and how to do it well while you still have the chance.

The Only Record That Expires.

Census pages, church books and headstones are patient. They will wait for you. A ninety year old aunt will not, and neither will her memory. If you do only one thing after this guide, make a phone call this week. Everything else in genealogy can be done later.

Start With the Oldest, Then the Talker.

Make a short list of your living relatives, oldest first. Then move one name to the top: the one who loves to tell stories. The oldest person holds the furthest back memories, but the talker will give you three hours and a hundred leads, and will tell you who else to call.

Call the In-Laws Too.

Do not only call blood relatives. An aunt who married in remembers the wedding, the house and the names around the table, and she will often say things a daughter would not. People who married into a family are frequently the best witnesses it has.

Before You Call, Do Your Homework.

Spend twenty minutes before you dial. Write down the names, dates and places you already have for that branch, so you can ask about the gaps instead of asking somebody to recite a tree. Bring three or four photographs, and bring one specific question you genuinely want answered.

Ask Permission to Record.

Ask if you can record, and say why: so you can listen properly instead of scribbling. Almost everyone says yes. Your phone already has a voice recorder, and a video call can be recorded with one click. If they say no, respect it completely and take notes by hand instead.

One Hour, Not Four.

Keep the first session to about an hour. Older relatives tire, and a tired memory produces guesses. Three good conversations beat one exhausting one, and coming back a second time is itself a gift to somebody who does not get many visitors.

Never Open With Dates.

Here is the mistake almost everybody makes. They open with, when was your mother born, and the person freezes, because it sounds like a test they are failing. Dates come from documents. People come for stories. Open somewhere warm and let the facts arrive inside the answers.

Open With a Place or an Object.

Start with a house, a kitchen, a car, a job or a holiday. Tell me about your grandmother's kitchen. What did your father do for work. What was the first house you remember. These questions have no wrong answers, and the names and the dates come tumbling out on their own.

Bring Photographs to the Table.

Photographs are the best question you will ever ask. Put one down and say, who is this. People who cannot recall a year will recall the day that photograph was taken, who was standing just out of frame, and what happened afterwards. Write the names on a copy in pencil, never on the original.

Follow the Tangent.

When they wander off your question, let them. The tangent is usually where the real information is. You can always steer back later, and very often you will not need to. Your list of questions is a safety net, not a script.

Handle the Hard Parts Gently.

Every family has a death, a divorce, a disappearance, a child nobody mentions. Ask once, softly, and accept the answer you get. If they change the subject, let them change it. A relationship you keep is worth more than a fact you forced, and people often come back to it themselves another day.

The Names on the Back.

Ask what is in the boxes, the albums and the drawers. Photographs, letters, funeral cards, family bibles, military papers, and the backs of pictures where somebody wrote a name in pencil. A family bible page with births and deaths written in it is a genuine record, not a keepsake.

Scan It There, Do Not Borrow It.

Do not take the box home, however kindly it is offered. Things go missing and families remember. Photograph everything flat with your phone instead, in good daylight, including the back of each photo and the inside covers of the bible. You keep the copy, they keep the original, and nobody is anxious.

Label It While You Still Know.

Before you leave, write down what each photograph is, who identified it and on what date. An unlabelled scan in a folder is almost as lost as the photograph you never found. The entire point of this exercise is that somebody finally wrote it down.

When They Say I Do Not Remember.

I do not remember is not the end of the conversation. Try a different door: a smell, a song, a street name, a sibling. Or hand them a photograph. Memory works by association, so the way in matters more than the question. And never correct them with a document. You will get far less for the rest of the afternoon.

Write Down What They Said, Not What Is True.

Record what they told you as what they told you. Aunt Rose said her mother was born in Palermo in nineteen oh two. That is a real piece of evidence, with a named source, that you can test later against a record. Even if it turns out to be wrong, it is often the clue that finds the right answer.

Write It Up Within a Day.

Do the write up within twenty four hours, while you can still hear their voice in your head. Keep the recording, but type the names, dates, places and leads into your notes along with the date of the conversation and who you spoke to. That becomes a source you can cite for the rest of your research.

Part 3: Keep It Straight, the forms and the notes

Send Something Back.

Send them something afterwards. A copy of the photograph you scanned, a written version of the story they told, a printout of the branch they helped you fill in. It costs you nothing, it makes the next conversation easy, and it tells the whole family this project is a gift rather than an interrogation.

Make the call this week.

This is the one part of family history with a deadline on it. Pick one person, call them this week, and ask them about a kitchen. Everything else in this series will keep. We are here when you get stuck.