One of the most underutilized aspects of beginning family history is talking to your relatives!
Today I'm going to walk you through how you are going to get ready for your next
family history interview so it can be a whole lot more fun. And your relatives might want to
do a second. Experienced genealogists often lament they didn't talk to their relatives sooner in the
family history research process. So, please learn how to become a better family history interviewer
and talk to your relatives. I can't stress this enough. Don't wait until it's too late to ask
the questions you need answers to. Hey, fanatics! I'm so excited to have you here. My name is Devon
Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics. And we love helping you enjoy the journey of family history.
How are you going to get started? Well, the very first thing you have to realize
is that you have to get your mind right. Few people like to be interviewed about their past
and a their family history. You have to get your mind wrapped around that. Now,
they often will talk to children and teenagers. I've seen that a lot
with my own children and some other projects I've been involved with. It's pretty funny. But you
have to realize that if you approach it to gimme, gimme, gimme, instead of let's share together.
You're going to miss out. And you're not going to get the most amazing family history sessions
that you could have. The way you get there is to focus on the people and their memories.
Now, let's talk about how you're going to get ready for that interview. Well, the first thing
you're going to do is you're going to prepare. I mean, first, you have to extend an invitation and
get a yes. I will talk to you about these things. Now, recognizing that all interviews do not have
to be in a formal setting. A lot of the interviews that I conducted doing my family
history research was letters and and exchanging of cassette tapes. Does anybody remember those?
But these days, you can do an interview over the phone. You can do a video chat. Or you can have
a formal setup. Something like this. Although most of your relatives are going to freak out
if you said something like this. So, you're going to get prepared by asking a couple of
things. What kind of interview do I want to do? Do I want to do an interview that's going to be used
as a video production? Am I going to do an interview that just helps me build my family tree
and put some more meat on the bones of the facts that I have? Am I trying to do a slideshow, and I
need some voice over? What are you trying to do? And on our blog and here on our youtube channel,
we have lots of a helpful information that will tell you how to decide what kind of interview that
you want to use. And what that structure would look like. So, be sure to check the link in the
description below to access that information. The next way to prepare is to get memory triggers,
ready to go. It is so much easier to talk family history when you pull out a Bible. When you pull
out a photo. When you pull out documents and other things like that. I have some other really great
tips in the Show Notes of some other techniques you can use to have some pretty powerful
family history discussions. Chats. Maybe we need to get rid of the word 'interview'? And just talk,
talk, chat, converse, hang out, reminisce. What kind of word would you like to use? When you're
discussing what you're doing with your family to gather their information about the stories and
the facts and everything involved with learning your legacy. In addition to those memory triggers,
you do want to have a list of questions. So, that if you kind of get stuck, or there's a few things
you really want to tackle, that you have a list. And once again, over on our blog, we have some
tips and some lists that you can use to develop a list of questions.
Just one quick caveat. Utilize questions that are not so "Yes." "No." For instance,
you can ask the question, "Has anybody in our family ever been arrested?"
Who would have thought that's what I would have asked? but it could be
"Yes." or "No." or "I don't know." Oh, great! That wasn't very powerful. So, you can lead with the
yes-no question. But you always need to know what your follow-up is. If it's yes, who were they?
What were they arrested for? Were they convicted? Were they declared innocent? And what happened
to the family after this arrest? Do you see how we took one question and expanded it out?
So, while many people will tell you don't have yes-no questions, I say have yes-no questions
with a lot of follow-ups. So, that's everything you do before you start your interview. So now,
you are ready. You're with your ancestor either virtually or in person or through letters.
But you need to get their permission. Their permission once again and formally. That it's
okay that you're going to use their interview both written and in audio/visual form. It's okay
that you utilize the answers that they have and that they provide and the stories that you share.
Be clear about what you think you might be doing and what you a are going to leave open for the
future. And get permission. Your ancestors and your relatives have a right to say no,
both legally and also in your family. So, if there's ever a story, they said,
"You know. I will tell you the answer to that question, but you can't share until I'm deceased.
You can't share it until, you know, Uncle Earl is deceased." Respect their request!
Once you have their permission, make your relative comfortable. Some of that can be, you set a timer
how long you're going to be visiting. Sometimes you're making them comfortable because they're
in their favorite chair. Now, mind you, you do want to have enough light if you're going to
do a video recording so you can see them clearly. But it doesn't mean you have to get studio lights
like we have here at Family History Fanatics. But comfort is key if you want your relative to
open up and share the information that can help you understand the past and improve your future.
So now, they're ready. They're set up. You have the permission, and you're about to begin doing
your interview. Well, the next thing you need to recognize is you have to let your relatives speak.
Sometimes you're going to be in a group setting. Sometimes it's going to be one-on-one. But you
have to let them speak. Now, Andy talks about this in one of our archived videos, about the
biggest mistakes that happen in interviews. So, make sure that you're not making those mistakes.
Let your ancestors speak. And here's the other thing. As much as possible, give nonverbal cues.
So, when I've interviewed people here on Family History Fanatics, a lot of people complained that
I nodded a lot during an interview. Did you know that a number of people that I interviewed were
super, super nervous? and if I didn't nod with my non-verbal communication? or
They wouldn't know that I'm giving them feedback. Because traditionally, when we talk
in an interview setting, we give verbal cues. Like, "Oh, that's funny!" "Tell me more!" "Ah"
All of these verbal cues are what people rely on in in order to keep going in their stories. But
we don't want to hear you. We want to hear your your relative telling that stories, particularly
if it's audio or video. You're not important. I know that sounds awful. So, be sure that you give
a lot of non-verbal cues. Go ahead and be annoying and blame me for it. While you are in a interview
with a family member, sensitive topics may come up. You need to be sensitive a number of ways.
To be sensitive with difficult stories that your relatives have to share, probably need to share,
is one don't rush your relative! Number two, if they're not comfortable talking about it,
perhaps say, "Do you want me to take this off the record?" "The number three you can do
is say, "Let's table that for another time. I think the story is valuable,
but I only want to talk about it when you're ready." The more you are compassionate and
understanding about your relatives and build relationships of trust with them,
the more likely they will talk about those difficult stories that your family needs to hear.
So, healing and understanding can happen, and you can transform your family tree and make it
stronger. Once you've finished your interview, there are a number of things you need to do.
If you are in person with your relatives and they talked about documents, photos, family artifacts,
anything. Then you need to either have a scanner or use your phone and digitize
those items. Take a picture of them. Don't make the mistakes that, "Oh, we'll do that later."
I've had a relative's house burned down when we were supposed to get together later.
So digitize those items! Now, if you are doing a virtual, a video chat, or if you're doing a phone
chat, or if you're doing letters, then also talk to them. If you mention any of these items, "Could
you take a picture or have someone close by take a picture of these things? Because I really want
to merge the visual of the image with the story that you shared." Fo that right then and there.
Make those arrangements and get those things taken care of. The next thing you need to do is to back
up your interview. I have moved way too many times for my own personal taste. Not as many as
much as army brats, I will give you that. But in my moves, I lost the recording of my Aunt Margie's
voice telling me family stories. And there was a particular story about her husband that I
wanted to give to her daughter- my father's first cousin. I don't have the cassette anymore. Make
tons of backups of your recording. Now, one thing I did do. And you also should do is to transcribe
that our that recording. A couple of things you could do. You can type it out by hand. But if
you check out the Show Notes, I will have links to some sources that I've used that can rapidly
transcribe, with pretty good accuracy your recording. And then you just have to tweak it
to make it right. Another thing that you should do after you back up that file is to edit that file.
In the Show Notes, I'm going to give you some programs you can edit just the audio file or the
video file. But you want to edit those files. And do you ever start telling a story, and then you
go off on a tangent, and then you come back and continue the story? Well, I do that all the time.
My husband gets mad at me when I do that all the time. Well, your relatives are going to
do that too. When you are recording their audio or their video. And so, you want to
go get the segments of the story and put them together. So, that they look coherent and lucid.
Okay, that might be too strong of a word. But you do want to put the segments of the same
story together so that they flow and they make sense. And take the chat, the tangents, and put
them where they go. Or make them their own little story snippet. But you do want to edit these files
so that the stories do flow. And they're easy to share as one entity. The next step is to update
your family tree. There are going to be details and maybe some facts and names, dates, and places,
and relationships that come out of your interview. And you need to go update your family tree. While
you're updating your family tree, you can leverage the power of mobile apps from FamilySearch,
MyHeritage, and Ancestry to upload those photos with the stories that you were sharing. And you
can upload them to your family tree using that app. So, maybe that should have gone earlier? But
you get the idea. Use your maps- use your apps to upload the family tree memories that you gathered.
And one really cool thing is over on FamilySearch. You can upload audio files. They need to be about
five minutes or less. So, if the story takes 10 minutes, then slice it somewhere around
the five-minute mark with a natural break. And label it, you know, Horse Buggy Riding Incident
Part 1. Horse Buggy Riding Incident Part 2. And upload that. And now, you have your two
files together. If you want more tips on how to capture and preserve your family history make,
sure you check out this playlist right here. If you're ready for something new,
check out this playlist right here. But most of all, get on down to the description box to
find all the links to the Show Notes. Because I couldn't cover everything here in this video
"Okay, hurry up because I'm filming. You can't be in here when I'm filming. But.. Okay.."