Your Living Family Tree: The Easy Step-By-Step Guide

By Mary-Jill Bellhouse

Wouldnt you love to know all about your family history? Who were your ancestors? Your family tree can tell you their names, where they lived and how they made their living, but wouldnt you like to know more? Did you inherit any of their looks or personality traits? What were the experiences and events that shaped their lives?

We cant ask those who have already gone, but what if future generations of your family could discover the answers to these questions, and more, by listening to their ancestors telling their own stories? You can record conversations with your living relatives about their own unique life experiences and about your family history. When the fascinating patchwork of stories is stitched together, a living branch, with living ancestors, appears on your family tree.

In Your Living Family Tree, author Mary-Jill Bellhouse offers an easy step-by-step guide to get you started recording your family history. This guide is full of practical techniques and tips on how to prepare for an interview, how to conduct the interview and what to do with the completed recordings. She includes questions designed to elicit candid and relaxed responses from your interviewee grouped into logical chronological sections:

Early family years and relatives
Childhood family home
Family life growing up
Primary and high school years
Further education
Adult life and career
Love and marriage
First home after marriage
Starting a family
Th e war years
Religion, travel, and other interests
Looking back and taking stock

Everyone has a unique story to tell and your relatives have valuable information to share. Preserve their precious memories now and create a living branch on your family tree for future generations to treasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452524795

Mary-Jill Bellhouse

Mary-Jill Bellhouse records family histories. Inspired by interviews with her ancestors recorded by the National Library of Australia, she wrote this easy step-by-step guide to encourage other people to preserve their own stories for future generations of their family to treasure. Mary-Jill plays the violin and lives in Canberra, Australia.

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Copyright © 2014 Mary-Jill Bellhouse.

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Illustrations Copyright © Jess Racklyeft, 2013

Cover Artwork Copyright © Jennifer Lommers, 2010

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-2479-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/11/2014

Dedication Page

For Rachel, Todd, Bella, and Chantel, with Joey and Kent.

For believing in me.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Equipment

Chapter 2 Before the Interview

Chapter 3 At the Interview

Chapter 4 After the Interview

Chapter 5 Tips for the Interviewee

Chapter 6 How to Ask Questions

Chapter 7 Questions to Ask

Chapter 8 Resources

List of Illustrations

1. Introduction

2. Equipment

3. Before the Interview

4. At the Interview

5. After the Interview

6. Tips for the Interviewee

7. How to Ask Questions

8. Early Family Years and Your Relatives

9. Your Childhood Family Home

10. Family Life When You Were Growing Up

11. Your Childhood Family Pastimes

12. Your Primary School Years

13. Your High School Years

14. Your Further Education

15. Your Adult Life and Carrrer

16. Love and Marriage

17. Your First Home After Marriage

18. Starting a Family

19. The War Years and the Depression

20. Religion

21. Travel and Other Interests

22. Looking Back and Taking Stock

Acknowledgements

Enormous thanks to my children, Rachel, Todd, Bella, and Chantel, together with Joey and Kent, and to Lynn, Di, and Fi for believing in me and encouraging me to keep going. I am so lucky to have you all on my side.

Thank you to Hay House for introducing me to Balboa Press at their 2012 Writers’ Workshop in Sydney. You gave me the confidence to believe I can actually live my dream and become an author.

Thanks to Oral History Australia for their dedication to teaching the practice of oral history through their website, workshops, and conferences.

Finally, thanks also to Dulcie Holland and Alan Bellhouse, my late aunt and uncle; your interviews with the National Library of Australia Oral History Program illuminated my path.

Introduction

Image1Introduction.jpg

Who were your ancestors? Your family tree might tell you their names, where they lived, and what they did for a living, but wouldn’t you like to know more? What were they were really like? Did you inherit any of their looks or personality traits? What kinds of experiences did they have, and who were the people who shaped their lives?

We can’t ask those who have already gone, but what if future generations of your family could discover the answers to these questions, and more, by listening to their ancestors telling their stories?

You can record conversations with your living relatives about their own unique life experiences and about your family history. When the fascinating patchwork of stories is stitched together, a living branch, with living ancestors, appears on your family tree.

A familiar conversational setting is an ideal environment in which to record relaxed interviews. Family members might also reveal details about their lives that they would not normally consider sharing and who knows, they may even reveal the answers to some family secrets or unleash a skeleton from the family closet!

Twenty years ago, I discovered that my aunt and uncle had been interviewed by the National Library of Australia Oral History Program. When I listened to the recordings I heard family stories being told that I’d never heard before, and I learnt lots of interesting information about my ancestors. I thought, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if other people could listen to their family’s history being told, and wouldn’t it be even better if they could hear it from their living relatives? So I learnt how to conduct personal interviews—what equipment to use, what questions to ask, and the best way to ask them—and for the past twenty years I have been professionally recording family and community oral histories.

However, along the way people said to me, I’d love to record my own family history, but I don’t know where to begin. So I created this easy, step-by-step guide to give you a basic understanding of what you need to know to get started on recording conversations with your relatives about your own family history. It’s an entry-level text, written with the assumption that you, the reader, are a novice interviewer, but if you’ve got experience in this field already, so much the better. There’s no complex jargon, and you don’t have to spend frustrating hours searching the Internet for instructions on how to interview or what questions to ask. I’ve drawn upon my years of experience as a family history interviewer to provide you with tips on just about everything you’ll need to know to get the most out of your interview. Some of these tips are repeated throughout the book because they are relevant to more than one section, but you don’t have to follow them to the letter. They are simply offered to give you confidence as you commence, and then progress, with your interviews. Don’t be too concerned about doing it right. It won’t take long for you to develop your own process. Just keep an open mind, stay calm, and do the best you can.

Before you start, it’s a good idea to think about what you’d like to know about your family and who would be the best person to ask first (we’ll call him or her your interviewee). Then you can decide which questions to ask using the list in chapter 7 as a guide. Questions designed to elicit candid, relaxed responses from your interviewee are grouped into logical, chronological sections: your early family years and relatives; your childhood family home; family life when you were growing up; primary and high school years; further education; your adult life and