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Jul 2008 Issue
by LaRae Free Kerr
Oral interviews can sometimes be a little like wild horses – they can pull you in many directions. So corral your goals and return to those goals no matter how many times the interviewee breaks free. Following are topics you might cover in oral interviews, depending on your genealogical goals. These suggestions come from the upcoming book, The Least You Need to Do to Find Your Own True Ancestors.
• Ask for the names and relationships of family members as well as any dates and places of births, marriages and deaths the interviewee might recall. Oral interviews may reveal missing family members and provide details individuating people with the same or similar names. For example, in an interview, a relative told me there had been a child who died a year before he himself was born.
No evidence of such a birth or death could be found. Then this missing child was mentioned by another interviewee. So the child was added to the family group sheet.
• Simply ask what the person remembers about each person you name.
• Ask for the identification of people in pictures. Also ask for an identification of the place where the picture was taken. Photos often trigger memories, so if an interviewee has blanked, show pictures and ask about them.
• Ask for descriptions of individuals. Imagine my astonishment at finding out my Wadsworth family were red-headed. I’d written a whole book about them and nobody had bothered to tell me. Even my mother knew they were red-heads and hadn’t mentioned it. When I asked her why, she said she thought I knew. Well, Mom had seen those relatives in real life. I’d only seen them in black and white photos.
• Ask for occupations and vocations, what people were good at. This can lead to story after story. For example, an interviewee revealed one of my great aunts was a terrific bronc buster. She wore men’s bib overalls and made her living by training horses. She was shy, with long braids wound around her head. I would never have guessed she was that tough.
• Ask for religious persuasions and experiences. Such stories reveal the heart and soul of family members, their dedication, service and generosity. With this topic, you can get to the values the family shared. The Hatfields and McCoys believed in “an eye for an eye.” Our family believes in being honest, and we have the stories to prove it.
• Ask for places. You could ask why people moved from one place to another, why one child was off in Texas when the rest of the family was in Maine, etc. Even though more and more records can be found on the web, some records can be found only in the places where the family lived. The more you know about those places, the better chance you have to find the records.
• Ask why the family did certain things. Why did the family move from green England to dry Nevada, for example? Actually, it is good to ask “why?” throughout an interview. Why was thirteen-year-old Margery willing to marry 28-year-old Joshua? Why was this man making a 1000-mile round trip each week? Why did this woman make so many camp quilts?
• Ask for funny stories. How I laughed during the story of one great uncle whose wagon cover collapsed on him, trapping him. From then on he was called “Squash,” because he had been squashed in the wagon.
• Ask about famous people your interviewee knew and historical events they experienced. Some of the people you interview will probably carry a certain amount of fame themselves. Discover how and why. Had I not asked about famous people in our family, I’d have missed the well-known country singer whose cousin-ship was unknown to me.
• Ask for details about how your relatives lived. I asked an Aunt how they got water for the house. When she and my mother were small, they took buckets out to the ditch that ran in front of the house to get their water. The way we do things has changed exponentially in the last hundred years; ask for the details of the old days.
• Ask for family legends. Who is the oldest family member the person remembers? What stories did they hear about the earliest family members? There is often a thread of truth in family legends.
• Ask the interviewee to sing the family songs. Our musical family gathered around a microphone one day and recorded the songs our Grandmother had sung to us. These songs draw the greatest memories with them. Growing up, we worked while we sang, the music creating the rhythm not only of the breaking beans but of our heartbeats.
The most important things to remember about taking oral histories are to honor the interviewee and to request the information you really need for your research. Stay on track with your goals!
LaRae Free Kerr, M ED, can be reached at
Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org and Itsallrelatives.net.
