Family History Night!

When conducting genealogy research, we often jump right to our ancestors who have passed and forget to talk our ancestors who are still living! Now that I am into genealogy, I regret every day not taking the time to talk to my grandparents about their life growing up.

It is important to me that my son and my nieces and nephews have the opportunity to hear their history firsthand so last Sunday, I planned a family history night. I asked the elders in our family (ages 60+) if we could gather in the living room and ask them questions. The Rules: No one was allowed to be on their cell phone (unless they were documenting the event) and they had to be respectful of those sharing their history. Here are a few of the questions we discussed:

1. When and where were you born?

2. Where did you grow up?

3. How does the world today compare with the way you grew up?

4. What was it like growing up during segregation and the Civil Rights era?

I had a list of about 20 questions but we were only able to get through a few because they had so much to share. We are going to have these family history nights more often now. I documented their responses by writing them down but going forward I plan to either record the audio or videotape it. What a wonderful thing to be able to pass down for years to come!

#familyhistorynight #genealogy