Draw Your Family Tree

One of the things that I highly recommend you do is to draw your family tree as you go along.  This can be done when you have a couple of names and can be taken with you when you visit your family to get them to check it for you.  Seeing something visually often helps others see things more clearly.  The idea of this is to be able to gather your thoughts and to prompt others to critique it – it isn’t meant as a form of presentation just yet.

Things to consider:

  1. Are you going to do the direct line as ascent? or
  2. Do you want a tree to show everyone including brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles etc.
  3. Do you want to do one for each of the family names you come across?

Ok, so while you are thinking about the above questions let’s get down to making a start.

What you will need:

  • A large piece of paper
  • A  pencil
  • Your notes

By doing it in pencil means that you can erase anything that does not look right to the individual but always keep a copy of the original just in case!

What to include:

  1. Full name
  2. Date of birth
  3. Place of birth
  4. Date of Marriage
  5. Place of Marriage
  6. Date of Death
  7. Place of Death

A couple of obvious rules:

  1. Always put the same generations on the same line.
  2. Follow the same structure – I tend to put males on the left and females on the right.

Drawing The Tree

  • Towards the bottom of the page in the center, put yourself as the main person or put in all of your brothers and sister if you prefer making sure that they are on the same line as yourself.
  • Put in your spouse.
  • If you or they have children, they would go beneath you on a different line as they are a different generation.
  • The line above would be your parents, aunts and uncles.
  • Above them would be their parents and so on.

I have done a quick layout for you to follow below.

Draw Family Tree

Draw Family Tree

For a better view, you can either click on the link or why not download it by right clicking on you mouse and ’save link as’ here.  I made this using Microsoft Publisher (just in case you want to do the same).  I hope you find it helpful.


Tips For Conducting An Effective Interview With Your Relatives

You may think that getting your family to share their stories will be easy but that’s not necessarily the case.  Some of them will love to talk about it and will chatter endlessly which of course is great as long as you are getting what you need.  Others may feel that you are invading their privacy and don’t really want to talk about their lives.  You’ll need to be aware of this to get the best out of it.

I have listed some ideas for you to follow:

  1. Plan and make a definite appointment with one of your relatives and stick to it! This will allow them to prepare.
  2. Draw up a list of questions beforehand (see below for ideas) and if possible share them with your relative.  Try to group them if possible into a priority order so that you cover the most important topics first.
  3. Ask them to get out all their old photo’s and any documents that may be of value.
  4. Take a decent notepad and pencils to the interview. If you plan to make a recording (highly recommended), be sure to have a digital recorder and batteries.  Always make sure that you have the interviewee’s agreement before doing this – some of them may not like it.
  5. Whichever method you are using (notes or a recording), make sure you record your name, the date, the place the interview is being conducted and the interviewee.
  6. Put them at their ease by explaining what it is you are trying to achieve.
  7. Make a point of telling them that they must let you know if there is anything that they don’t feel comfortable talking about so that you can skip over it.  Also, ask if there is anything that they would prefer you to keep private from others in the family – you never know and it will make them feel a lot better about discussing them with you.
  8. Follow a structure and stick to it as much as possible but don’t make the person feel uncomfortable by stopping them from talking about the things that they want to.
  9. Ask ‘open ended’ questions which encourage more than simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Try to obtain facts, feelings, stories and descriptions.
  10. Show interest. Take an active part in the conversation by guiding them through what you need to know but don’t  dominate it.
  11. Encourage them to show photographs of whoever it is you are talking about and take a digital photo of the photo.
  12. Use props whenever possible. Old photographs, favorite old songs and treasured items may bring memories flooding back.
  13. Don’t push for answers. Your relative may not wish to speak ill of the dead or may have other reasons for not wanting to share. Move on to something else.
  14. Use your prepared questions as a guideline, but don’t be afraid to let your relative go off on a tangent. They may have many things to say that you never thought to ask!
  15. Don’t interrupt or attempt to correct your relative; this can end an interview in a hurry!
  16. When you are done, be sure to thank your relative for her time.
  17. Start with a question or topic that you know will elicit a reply, such as a story you have heard her tell in the past

Tips:

  • Put your relative at ease by telling them that they will have a chance to see and approve of anything that you write before you share it with others.
  • Keep the interview length to no more than 1-2 hours at a stretch. It’s tiring for you and for the person being interviewed. This is supposed to be fun!
  • Consider preparing a transcript or written report as a tangible thank you to your relative for her participation.

Questions you might like to ask

A note of caution – always make sure that the question is relevant to the individual – don’t ask them questions that you already know the answer to – but get them to confirm the information is correct.

  1. What is your full name?
  2. Were you named this for a reason?  Were you named after a saint, a family member, or is your name just a name your parents liked?
  3. Did you ever have a nickname.  What was it?  Who called you this and why?
  4. When were you born?  Where?
  5. Where did you grow up?  City, state?
  6. What was the house like?  How many rooms did it have?  How many (if any) bathrooms?  Do you have a photo of it?
  7. Did your house have electricity?
  8. Did you live in the city or in the country?
  9. Did you have a farm?  Did you have animals?  What kind? (only if relevant)
  10. What is your first childhood memory?
  11. How many members were in your family?
  12. Can you name them?  What are there ages in relation to you?
  13. What were your parents like?
  14. What were the names of your parents?
  15. What was your mother’s maiden name?
  16. Where did your parents come from?
  17. Did you get along with your brothers and sisters?
  18. What type of games did you play as a child? Explain them.
  19. Did you have any pets?  Did you have a favorite one?
  20. Did you go to church?  What church?  What was it like?  How old were you?
  21. Where you baptized?  When?
  22. Did  you have any family chores?  What were they?
  23. What were holidays like?  Christmas or Hanukah?  Easter or Passover?  Fourth of July?
  24. Did you have any special traditions that had been passed down from your parents or grandparents?
  25. What was school like?  What subjects did you like best?  What subjects did you hate?
  26. Where did you attend school?  High school?  College?  Beyond?
  27. Did you participate in any school activities?  Which ones?
  28. Who were your best friends in school?
  29. Who is the oldest family member you can recall as you were growing up?
  30. Do you know anything at all about him or her?
  31. Are they any stories that have been passed down about being related to famous or infamous people?
  32. Are they any special physical characteristics that run in your family?  Any mannerisms?

I hope you find these questions helpful.  You will find many more in my eBook ‘Tracing Your Family History – The Easy Way’ which can be found here.

Until next time, happy hunting!


Family History Tree

So you are interested in finding out more about your family history tree.  You may have seen TV shows which have sparked your interest.  Well, you are not alone!  This is one of the biggest growing hobbies out there at the moment but are you prepared?

This hobby can be the most absorbing thing that you can get into – it has a tendency to take over your life and I’m not joking here (smile).  A lot of people are put off because they think it is a difficult hobby but they would be wrong – is is really easy when you know how.

So, where to start?

Well if you read other blogs on this subject, they will all tell you the same thing – start with yourself.  I know, this sounds a bit boring because you already know all about yourself already this but bare with me here.

The idea is to capture as much as you can about yourself and then move on to your parents and so on.  Now the problem with parents is that they introduce another family!  Before long you will have that many family names – you don’t know what to do with them all!

So what do you do?

Well firstly you need to download my Genealogy forms document here which is free so don’t worry.

Once you have downloaded the document, you need to look for the Research Log, Pedigree chart and the Family Group sheet and print them out.

Use these to log everything there is to know about you and your family adding in as many notes as you can and all the dates you know of.  Don’t worry if you don’t know the information yet.

Once you have put all that you know together, you are then ready to go and talk to your parents or other family members to validate all the information.

I have provided a word document of all the questions I use that you can download here.

Now, from past experience, I would suggest that if you can get your hands on a Digital Recorder – you will find that it is a fabulous tool to assist you with the interview process.  It means that you can focus on the interview rather than taking notes all the time – I am useless at taking notes and end up missing half the information (grin).

During this process, you need to ask if there are any certificates and or other documents lying around that you could take copies of.  You can either scan them directly into you computer or take a digital photo of them and upload.  Always remember to return any information you take away with you.  The other thing to do is to let everyone know what you are doing and encourage them to give you any family related documents that they no longer want.

I know this sounds obvious, but asking for email addresses is something that many of us forget – these come in really handy if the family is spread across the country.  You can always send the questions to them on email if you can’t get to see them personally.  Secondly, when you are in the middle of researching one family line and you have questions, you can easily send an email asking for more info.  Always remember to share your findings so that your relations will keep be as helpful as possible – the more you learn, the more they learn.  Keep them informed as much as possible.

As you build up your data on each family member, things start to become a little confusing so you need to give some thought to how you are going to save all of your information.  I will cover this and more in my next post.

Until next time, have fun!