Best Family Questions to Ask About Your History

In this article we are going to talk about some of the best questions you can ask of family members in your search for an understanding of the family and of your individual ancestors. These answers may be of great importance to your overall understanding of your family history.

Why Is Interviewing Your Family Important?

Researching your family tree for the most part is reliant upon locating documents and written proofs of family connections and events in the history of our ancestors. Early in our research however we are in a period in which such records may be protected by laws as they may pertain to living people or people who died in the past few decades.

Essentially our most recent ancestors may only be known to us by the knowledge of our older living relatives. These may be families we did not get to meet or who died when we were very young. It is therefore important to discover what we can of these relatives who did know them and who can supply information vital to making connections in your research.

Knowing our great grandparents' names, where they were born and of course when can help us find records of these events. These records might be the information we need to find out about their parents.

Asking questions of our family then serves as a bridge between the known ancestors and the ones who may have been forgotten to time. General family knowledge may extend to information about great grandparents and sometimes further back but within a few generations we can have lost who our ancestors were and even where they may have come from.

Questions About Themselves and Their Immediate Family

Interviewing our older relatives is very important and it is not just details about the ancestors they remember that should be of interest to us. We should also find out about them as an individual and their experiences of growing up within the family.

1. Ask about their full name

In family history there can be a great deal of importance in a name; it may have been passed down through generations or may have a specific origin. Asking your family member's full name, if there is understanding of why they were given that name and whether there is a family tradition of this name can be illuminating.

2. How did the family come to live where they do now?

Our older relatives may have been born in a different part of the country or an entirely different one. They may even remember some of their life in that other location. At the very least their own elder family members may have told them the story of why they moved from their original home.

Understanding why our family may have left a former location can be important to our overall family history. However it is also important to know if our family was in a certain region at a particular time. This is because it allows us to focus our research on a geographical area giving us a greater chance at success.

3. Was there a central/ancestral family home?

Generations ago our families tended to live close together meaning that 3^rd 4^th even 5^th cousins might know each other and even celebrate together. Today this is much rarer but back then there may have been a central family home or even an ancestral property that the family gravitated to.

This can be vital information in your research and may even give you a place to visit in search of your family history.

4. Are there any family heirlooms?

This is always an interesting question to ask and may uncover important stories. Something that may have passed through generations of the family may originate from an important event in its history. The ideal heirloom might be a family bible as this was often a repository for basic family history events. Some people can trace generations of their ancestors through the family bible.

5. What were the ancestors they knew like?

When we think about it we ourselves probably have an opinion about all of our family members in terms of their personalities, beliefs and generally who they were as a person. Delving deeper in our interviews it is beneficial to learn about the personalities of the ancestors we did not get to meet.

What were the ancestors they knew like? They may have had distinct personalities that speak to the lives they led; perhaps a grandfather fought in a war and had personality quirks because of that. There may be criminals and heroes in the history of the family. This is all interesting information and some of it may be very important.

6. Do they remember the fashions and fads of their youth?

This is a more personal question but it speaks to a time in history we did not ourselves experience. Finding out about things that they used to wear or hairstyles they had may seem unimportant but at the very least it refreshes the memory about other things.

Questions About the Family

These should be questions used to elicit an idea of not only the shape of the family but their beliefs and morals.

1. Are there any historical events that impacted the family?

This question can bring to mind some interesting stories and the answers may indicate such things as participation in wars, struggles during the Great Depression, reasons for the families migration and many other things.

2. What did a traditional family dinner look like?

The family may identify as a particular ethnicity despite now living thousands of miles from their homeland. With ethnicity may come a certain type of cuisine and traditional family recipes. These traditions can wane so asking older family members about the family meals of their childhood may serve as a link to the past.

3. What holidays did the family celebrate?

The religion of the family may differ greatly today to what it once was. A few generations ago certain religion based celebrations may have taken place which may not have been practiced for decades. Asking about the celebrations of your older family members' youth can give you a deeper understanding of family tradition and origins.

4. How has the world changed since they were young?

Even if we live in the same place as our ancestors the world in which we live in is so much different to theirs. Ask elder relatives about what the world was like when they were a kid. The concerns they faced, the technology they used and the famous people they were aware of.

5. Who is the oldest relative they remember meeting?

Ask them about the oldest relative they can remember meeting. It might be a great grandparent to them and a 3 x great grandparent to you. Find out what they can remember about them and have them recount stories about the person.

6. Are there physical characteristics that have been passed down in the family?

This is more common than you might think, sometimes there may be a physical trait that has been passed down through the family. It could be a nose shape, eye color or even a common deformation or physical quirk.

General Biographical Questions

These are the bread and butter of genealogy. They are the questions which will fill in the biographical data about your ancestors but they are very important.

1. Full names of all known ancestors

This is pretty self explanatory: you simply ask them to recount the full names of their known relatives and the respective relationship to them. Full names may be important to differentiating people who share similar names in records.

2. Dates of birth, marriage and death

The events of our ancestors' lives help to form a timeline with the three main occurrences in anyone’s life: their birth, a marriage date if there was one and their death. These again help focus research and uniquely identify individuals.

3. Places of birth, marriage and death

Knowing the dates of such events is vital but if your relative can also supply potential locations for the events as well this is also beneficial. Part of a good timeline is knowing where things happened. This helps us keep track of our ancestors' movements over time.

Final Thoughts

We start our family history journey with interviews of our older relatives, those with knowledge of ancestors we will never have met. They are a link to people who may have died decades before our birth and they can bring into focus the history of our family. It is therefore vital to ask plenty of questions and find out more than just the biographical detail but also who these people were and how they celebrated the family traditions.

Neil Edwards

Genealogist and family-tree research specialist

Neil was born in Shropshire, England surrounded by centuries of living history. His interest in the past has been a lifelong passion leading to undergraduate degrees in both Economic History & Geography and History & Politics.

This interest in history quickly translated to family history when he moved to the U.S. in 2010. It was here that he began working on his own family tree as well as that of his American wife. That research allowed him to gain a wealth of experience working with both U.S. and European genealogical documents and studying their best uses in researching family history.

Following 9 years of honing his genealogical research skills, Neil was proud to have earned a certificate in Genealogical Research from Boston University in late 2019. Neil also took part in the research process for a Duke University study into the families of 19th Century UK Members of Parliament.

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