Mormon Life - Ultimate Family History Guide tag

{LDS How-to} Conduct a Family History Interview

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:03:00 -0700

by Sunny Morton
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Interviewing family members about family history can be like using a water pump - you might get a gush of stories that need to be "filtered" afterward. Or you might get just a few drops. Have you ever asked a relative about your family history? The experience is like lifting the handle on an old-fashioned water pump. You never know what’s going to come out. Maybe nothing: maybe the pump doesn’t work anymore or its source has run dry. Or you may prompt a sudden torrent that soaks your shoes and disappears into the ground before you can catch it. You may luck into a perfect stream of water—then find it too muddy to use.

Preparing for a family history interview is like preparing to collect water from that old pump. You may have to “prime the pump” before any information spouts forth. You need to be prepared to catch a burst of names or stories, and you may need to filter a bit before the content is meaningful.

Prime the pump
I find old-fashioned water pumps at parks and beaches, where they are used infrequently or only seasonally. To get the water flowing, I pump the handle several times. I listen for a gurgle in the pipe below and feel for a tell-tale resistance in the pumping rhythm before I expect results.

When we ask our relatives to remember names, dates, and stories, we are asking them to dig deep into memories they may not often access. Ease them into the process and wait patiently for them to recall things. Ask them to think about topics in advance: “When I see you this Christmas, will you please share some of your memories of Christmases past?”

My favorite “pump-priming” technique is a casual conversation. I ask about their lives in general: career, education, family. I let them lead the discussion and note whom and what they love to talk about—and which topics they avoid. I may ask whether they know much about their parents or grandparents. A conversation likes this serves several purposes beyond priming their memory pump. Showing sincere interest builds trust and rapport. Gathering facts helps me prepare meaningful interview questions. Knowing their pet topics and any emotional boundaries allows me to steer future conversations appropriately.

Catch the water
With some relatives, you never get beyond the pump-priming phase of a family history interview. Maybe they show no interest, have lost most of their memories, or simply aren’t available for an in-depth interview. They’ve gone dry. But when you can have a formal interview, have your bucket ready.

I mean this in two ways. First, be prepared. Do your homework with facts you already know. If your aunt worked in a factory, Google the name of the town and factory to see what you can learn about it (add the search term “history” if you get too many hits). Well-informed questions show you care and will elicit more meaningful answers. Prepare a list of open-ended questions (not ones that can be answered “yes” or “no”).

Second, record the conversation. Use a digital recorder if you can (don’t forget that many digital cameras take video), but don’t put off an interview for lack of current technology. Use a tape recorder or type or hand-write their answers. If a recorder makes you nervous, practice with it. If a recorder makes a relative nervous, compromise: put it out of sight, or just record audio instead of video. Promise to turn it off upon request. Never record without permission.

Purify the water
Just like groundwater, memories can be muddy when they first surface. They may be too vague to be meaningful: “my childhood was good.” They may be colored by emotions: “I don’t want to talk about my father.” They may wander off-topic before they fully answer a question.

Follow-up questions work like water purification. They clarify the facts and their significance. Use questions that capture who, what, when, where, why, and how. “So your childhood was good. Who made it special?” Say, “Tell me more.” Ask what he thought or felt. Sometimes your best response is a patient silence and an encouraging nod, to give someone time to reflect, process, and put things into words. If someone has really strong emotions, respect their right to them. After a pause, indicate your willingness to listen if they’d like to talk, or the choice to change the subject.

Your relative may go off-topic. Never be impatient; a family history interview is not the Inquisition. Listen for a while to see if this new topic is fruitful. If not, nudge her one direction or another. “You started to talk about the factory and then we got onto your mom’s illness. I am interested in learning more about both. Which can we talk about?”

By the end of the conversation, the hope is that your bucket will be full, so to speak, of clear, meaningful memories. All the patient pump-priming will be worth it. And you’ll likely find yourself returning to the wellspring of family memory again and again.

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Sunny McClellan Morton is a Latter-day Saint heritage writer and author of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories. Learn more about her at sunnymorton.com.

{LDS How-to} Start Writing Your Life Story Now

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:19:00 -0700

by Sunny Morton
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Does the daunting thought of writing your life story overwhelm your desire to record it? Take a deep breath. The project is entirely doable if you start with a few simple steps. Recently my friend Cindy Johnson expressed frustration that she hasn’t recorded her richly-lived life in journals. “Now I’ll have to resort to writing my memoirs!” she lamented. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Whether you’ve kept regular diaries or not, you may easily find yourself like Cindy—wanting to write your life story but overwhelmed by the prospect. There are so many reasons to write: to share life lessons, relive cherished memories, introduce ourselves to future generations, or acknowledge the hand of the Lord in our lives. But life isn’t just one story. It’s a series of stories about events, people, circumstances, struggles, and growth. Some of these stories unfold simultaneously and some aren’t over yet. Some are painful; some are half-forgotten. We’re not even sure what some of them mean. So where do we start?

Start with What’s Interesting
Some people think they should begin their story-telling with the story of their births. But you don’t remember your own birth, and it’s likely not your most interesting story, anyway. Don’t bore yourself at the outset. Instead, begin with a memory that is:

   ·   interesting or meaningful to you right now;
   ·   clear and vivid; or
   ·   on your mind lately.

The point is to get something on paper without getting stalled by hazy memories, raw emotions, or boredom.

Write a few of these interesting, vivid memories before attempting a full life history. You’ll get your memories flowing and find your story-telling voice. You’ll be drawn into your own story, which will give you the motivation to tell more.

Fill in the Blanks
Don’t forget to give your stories some substance. Do you describe your “characters” (including you)? Do you provide meaningful details: how something smelled or looked, or what you thought of Uncle Merle’s toupee? Who changes in the story, and how and why? (That’s the meaning of the story, which you may not even discover until you write it.)

After you’ve got a few stories under your belt, consider putting them into a logical, readable order. What do you see emerging? A narrative that follows you through every step of life? Several episodes about the most important events? Stories about family relationships or friendships? There’s no rule that says you need to chronicle every part of your life. You might not even want to.

At some point, you may want to fill in some blanks between the tales you’ve told. You may want to create a timeline to organize and prioritize your writing. Consider using a life-story journal like my new book, My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories, which gives you story-telling tips and prompts, and an overall structure for organizing your memories.

Consider Others
A story about your childhood—or teenage or mid-life years—will include the people who shaped it. Do you have the right to share their private pains and joys? Should you describe sibling rivalries, parents’ character flaws, or a spouse’s temper?

Each writer will solve these dilemmas differently. It may be possible to write around someone’s secret that really isn’t ours to share, or doesn’t bear directly on our lives. When someone’s personal life directly affected our lives, we can still consider what we say with compassion for those who might in turn be affected by what we say.

Don’t Forget the Happy Stories
Every life has times worth celebrating. Moments when testimony and character are built, when love and loyalty and faith are rewarded, people show their best selves, or a hard-won goal has been achieved. Moments when we feel the Lord’s grace, or the mercy or kindness of others. These are all worth recording—both for our own sake and the sake of those who might read our stories.

Are happy stories boring? Not if you write them well. Use the same techniques mentioned above: meaningful details, characters with strengths and weaknesses, and honest portrayal of how and why people changed. Include details that build suspense or really show what you were up against. Don’t forget the funny parts. Tell how you felt at the turning point of the story—grateful, humbled, speechless, changed, surprised, moved, confused, angry, blindsided—and why.

Just Do It
Remember, nobody can tell your story like you can. You were there. You know what you felt. Even if you have had the same lifestyle or career pattern as most of the people you know, your experience of these will be unique. Your conversations, moments of clarity, humor, triumphs and trials all have their own special flavor. The way you reacted to a chain of events is always your own story.

So get started. Write something down. Then write something else. One story is better than none; two stories are even better, and so forth. You don’t have to tell your whole life in one sitting. Tell it the same way you lived it—one story at a time.

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Sunny McClellan Morton is a Latter-day Saint heritage writer and author of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories. Learn more about her at sunnymorton.com.

{LDS How-to} Jumpstart Your Family History

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:03:00 -0700

by Sunny Morton
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: You’ve finally realized how much you don’t know about your family stories, and you want to learn them. But you’re no genealogist. How can you start capturing your heritage today in a fun and interesting way?

1) Learn at home from:

Your own memories. There’s probably more stored in your memory banks than you think. Start a notebook or computer file in which you record any family stories that come to mind. Fill out as much as you can on a pedigree chart, which shows you several sets of parents at a glance, or on family group sheets, which each show one set of parents and their children. Pray for sharper recall of these stories and facts or opportunities to rediscover them.

Your loved ones’ memories. Ask a relative to help you fill in the blanks on your charts. Contact anyone in the family who has done some genealogy or who has all the clan documents or photos. Gather favorite stories from loved ones. (The next segment of this series will give you detailed tips on how to interview family members.)

Family paperwork. Look for birth, marriage, and death certificates; baby books; family Bibles; funeral and burial paperwork; school and church records; news clippings; old medical or insurance paperwork; legal documents; letters and diaries; books of remembrance or family histories; and photographs. Watch for names, dates, and places but also descriptions of people and their stories.

2) Narrow your focus. Family trees branch rapidly as you move further into the past. How can you choose where to focus your investigation? Ask yourself these questions:

•    Is any relative’s memory or health fading? Capture endangered memories first.
•    What fascinates you? Are you curious about who may have served in a war, immigrated, joined the Church, died in the Spanish flu epidemic? Chase those topics you care about most.
•    What information is most available to you right now? Which people or stories could you document most easily? Pick that low-lying fruit before reaching higher.

Next, decide whether to learn a little bit about many generations or a lot about one person or generation. There are advantages to each. Reaching far into the past helps you identify your ethnic heritage(s), immigrant ancestors, family migration patterns, and more ancestors for whom temple ordinances may be performed. Delving more deeply into a few lives allows you to “get to know” those who have gone before, the better to appreciate their characters, choices and circumstances.

3) Search out more information. Billions of individual records have been extracted from government, church, and other sources and entered into huge databases that you can find online. Go to lds.org's new Family History section and click on "Search Online Records." Stop by a FamilySearch Center near you (click here to find one) to use other popular databases like ancestry.com for free.

When you find a record that appears to relate to your family, consider it carefully. Does the information match what you already have? If not, which source do you trust more? Could this easily belong to a different family of the same surname? Try to view a digital image or track down the original to verify what it says. Ask a FamilySearch Center volunteer for help locating original records. Keep notes on where you find every piece of information.

4) Flesh out the stories. Names, dates, and places can be boring without personalities and stories to bring them to life. Use what you know to learn more. Read old letters or stories carefully: what do they tell you about a relative’s personality, tastes, or attitudes? Take a fact and run with it: if grandpa was a firefighter in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, contact the local historical society or Google the town’s history to see what else you can learn about his fire company.

When personal accounts of ancestors don’t exist, study the culture, town, or era in which they lived. Visit a historic site to get a general sense of their lives. Quote the stories of people like them. Find books or documentaries on everyday life during that time or the experiences of particular ethnic or laborers’ groups. If you are tracing many generations, look at where they lived over a long period of time. See if their migrations match a larger national, regional, or cultural pattern.

5) Share family history meaningfully. Your discoveries will do no good if they sit in a file. Share short snippets in conversations. Type up interviews and write up what your research reveals. (Check out part one of this series, “Write a Family History Others Want to Read,” for more guidelines.) Print heritage books and give them as gifts. At lds.org's Family History section, click on "Getting Started with Family History" to learn how Latter-day Saints can build a family tree online and arrange for temple ordinances to be performed.

Everything you learn about your heritage builds your relationships with relatives, both the living and the dead. After all, these are the folks with whom you hope to spend eternity! So get started today, with little efforts or big ones. Soon you’ll know enough to spot an ancestor, whether you find them now in old records or someday in the halls of heaven.

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Sunny McClellan Morton is a Latter-day Saint heritage writer and author of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories. Learn more about her at sunnymorton.com.

{LDS How-to} Write a Family History Worth Reading

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:06:00 -0700

by Sunny Morton
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: This is the first of a four-part series on family history, so keep checking back each week for more great advice!

Some people think they can’t write an interesting family history. “My ancestors were boring,” they say. There’s nothing to tell.” Others find too much drama in the past, and find it painful or embarrassing to record. Still others haven’t taken interest in writing their family stories at all.

The truth is that all family histories are fascinating, and all of us can write them well. It just takes careful research, imagination, and a willingness to add your own voice. Use these five strategies to write a captivating narrative of anyone’s life story.

1. Find stories in the facts. Study names, dates, and places to see what stories they tell you. Was your great-grandmother’s youngest child born five months after his father died? Did your aunt move 600 miles away from home as a teenaged bride?

Study larger facts about your ancestor’s culture, history, religion, occupation, etc. What was life like for that Southern sharecropper or poor Russian immigrant? Get more tips on this kind of research from Bringing Your Family History to Life through Social History by Katherine Scott Sturdevant.

2. Gather living memories. If your family history project covers recent generations, interview your relatives. Ask what were the most important relationships and events in someone’s life and why. Ask for sensory details (What did he look like? How did it smell at the machine shop?). Ask for that person’s opinions or feelings about the way things happened.

The more respect you show for someone else’s memories and opinions, the more interesting stories you are likely to get. Listen closely and ask specific followup questions. Don’t judge or condemn perspectives different from yours. Be willing to depart from your interview questions to listen to what the speaker wants to say. Show compassion for difficult memories or tender feelings.

3. Lead with an interesting story. “Silas Hornsby was born 11 August 1804 inNewport, Rhode Island. . . .” Are you bored yet? I am. When you begin writing your family stories, don’t start with someone’s birth unless it’s a real whopper of a story.

Instead, pretend you have 30 seconds to interest a total stranger in the lives of your great-grandparents (or whomever you’re writing about). What would you tell them? What do you find unique, ironic, amazing, or inspiring about that generation or person? Was there a life event or turning point that you find poignant? Put that first, then go back and tell the rest of that person’s story.

4. Think creatively—while sticking to the facts. Let’s say your great-grandparents lost six of their eight children as infants. You have no proof of how they felt, but you can imagine it. Your imagination can make their story more vivid.

“I can only imagine how they felt each time they buried another tiny body,” you write. “Four died in the winter. It must have been like a repeating nightmare each time they hacked a small grave from the frozen, rocky soil.” The phrases “I can imagine” and “It must have been” show which parts of the story the writer is filling in with imagination.

5. Show yourself. You can put yourself in the story even if you’re writing about ancestors who lived hundreds of years ago. Your thoughts and emotions can substitute for theirs, which may be lost to time. I’ve given you one example already, in which the writer imagines what something must have felt like.

You can also write about the process of discovering your family stories. For example: “After years of searching for any details about her life, I suddenly had her diary sitting in front of me. Suddenly I was nervous about who she would turn out to be. My hand trembled as I turned the first page.”

If you don’t want to put yourself into the story, at least explain why you have written it. Ian Frazier, who lost his parents, does this in his book Family: “I wanted my parents’ lives to have meant something. . . . I didn’t care if the meanings were far-flung or vague or even trivial. I wanted to pursue them. I hoped maybe I could find a meaning that would defeat death.”

“Meanings that defeat death?” There’s nothing boring about that! Isn’t that what family history is all about? So don’t be shy about searching out and writing your family history. You’ll find plenty of meaning in it, and so will those who read it.

Sunny McClellan Morton is a Latter-day Saint heritage writer and author of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories. Learn more about her at sunnymorton.com.