Living Family Interview Questions
Sometimes the exigencies of life preempt the most well-laid plans, and genealogical plans are no exception. I had planned out what I wanted to accomplish in 2019 for my own (non-client) family history. But then my Uncle Bob was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer, and all those plans were thrown out the window.
As the eldest son and executor of my grandparents’ estates, Uncle Bob has the lion’s share of the surviving family papers. So his sister (my Aunt Gwen) and I are jointly descending on Virginia this weekend to help Bob go through those papers and make plans for preservation and distribution. Once we made these plans, though, it occurred to me that this would also be my last opportunity to interview two of my mother’s three siblings together.
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About Author
Aaron Goodwin
Aaron is a genealogist and house historian specializing in New York City research across all time periods, from the Dutch colonial era to the 20th century. His book, New York City Municipal Archives: An Authorized Guide for Family Historians, won the National Genealogical Society’s 2017 Award for Excellence: Genealogical Methods and Sources. He is also editor of NGS Monthly, former contributing editor of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and former editor of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. In 2011, he received the American Society of Genealogists’ Scholar Award.
My mother grew up in the 1930s and her family always struggled to find work so they moved a lot within Georgia and down into Florida. I asked her to write about where she had lived, when and what she remembered from that place. She had maintained a diary for years and often wrote in it late at night when she couldn’t sleep, so this was a request she easily and gladly filled. I dictated what she wrote verbatim into a Word document using Dragon software, then used Calibre to convert it to a version that she and the family members we shared it with could read on an e-reader. I will be forever grateful for this since she died within a few years of writing down these memories.