Do you have a family member who you suspect holds many memories that can be turned into a layout that will become a family treasure?
For the next Heritage Challenge, you are being encouraged to interview a family member and tell his/her story (or a portion of it) in narrative form (telling the story using “I”.)
To help with this task, I have found a website that gives tons of ideas for doing just this.
Here is the link to Ancestor Search’s Family Interview Questions to help you collect wonderful stories from your family members.
Here is just a portion of the suggested questions from this site:
What is your full name, date and place of birth?
Were you born at home or at a hospital?
How was your name chosen?
What are your parents full names, dates and places of birth, dates of death and cemetery?
What are your grandparents (all 4) full names, places of birth, dates of death and cemetery?
What are your great-grandparents (all 8) full names, places of birth, dates of death and cemetery? And continue as far back as you know. If any were born in a different county, did they describe their travel here? What was their reason for immigrating? Was it difficult to get used to a new way of life?
How did your parents, grandparents, and other relatives meet and marry? Are there family stories of lost love, jilted brides, unusual courtships, arranged marriages, or elopements?
What stories have come down to you about your parents? Grandparents? More distant ancestors? How have these relatives described their lives to you? What have you learned from them about their childhood, adolescence, schooling, marriage, work, religion, political activity, recreation?
Who is the oldest family person you personally knew? Tell me about this person.
Does your family have any heirlooms, objects of sentimental or monetary value, that have been handed down? What are they? Are there stories connected with them? (Take photos.)
Who is the family historian? Do they have photographs, movies, slides?
After you interview your family member, choose one of the stories that your questions have sparked and tell it using your family member’s voice and the words “I” and “my.” Here are two samples from Anna and me.
Anna and I both used stories from our mothers for this challenge. Anna’s two page layout uses her mother’s actual scanned handwriting that tells her memories of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. Even though Anna says, “there is nothing fancy to this page other than the story and photos,” I think it is a wonderful preservation of special memories!
Anna used
Gradient Masking BrushSet, Mandarin Paper Pack, Crumpled Neutrals Paperie, Little Princess Brushes and Stamps, OMG PageSet, Stitched by Anna No. 1, Photo Clusters No. 1 (Extracted and re-coloured).
I’ve always loved this photo of my mother in her drum and bugle corps uniform. A few years ago, I set up a folder on her computer for her to enter her “memoirs” as she remembered them. I was thrilled to find this story recently on her computer!
I used
Vintage Photo Frames No. 04
My Family Genealogy Definitions Brushes and Stamps
My Family Genealogy Records Paper Pack
Music Transparency Overlay
I will be anxious to see and read your wonderful narrative stories in the Heritage Gallery!
Posted by grandma lynnie on 09:03 PM in
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Heritage
