How to get your family interested in family history.
Put the chart away and tell one story. Pick one person and one moment that connects to something your relatives already care about, keep it under two minutes, and end with a question they can answer. A small, specific story about a person will do more than showing how far back you've gone.
Why their eyes glaze over.
You've spent years with these people, and to your family they're just names. Family history podcasts come back to this again and again: you share something you're thrilled about and get a polite nod. They aren't being rude. They just haven't got the years you have behind that name.
Ten things to try.
- Tell one story about one person. Skip the generations. "Patrick Kennedy left Ireland for Boston around 1847, made barrels for a living, and died of consumption 11 years later" is enough for one day.
- Start from what they already know. A name they carry, a recipe, the town they grew up in, the job they do.
- Keep it to two minutes. Stop while they still want to know more.
- Ask more than you tell. "What would you have done?" works better than another fact. Older relatives like being the expert, so ask them what they remember.
- Bring one thing to look at. A photo, a signature, the street on a map.
- Match the story to the person. Someone their age for a child. A mystery or a scandal for a teenager. A shared face for a sister, a trade for someone who does the same work.
- Give them one small job. "Do you know who this is?" or "Can you read this handwriting?" is easy to say yes to.
- Use the family's own moments. Reunions and holidays, or a birthday that falls on an ancestor's birthday.
- Send it where they already are. One photo and two sentences in the family group chat will get read. A PDF probably won't.
- Let some of them not care. One interested cousin is enough, and the person who cares most may not come along for 20 years. Make sure your work is still there when they do.
Why it's worth the trouble.
In a 2008 study, psychologists Marshall Duke, Amber Lazarus and Robyn Fivush asked children and teenagers 20 questions about their family: how their parents met, where their grandparents grew up. Those who knew more tended to have higher self-esteem, lower anxiety and fewer behavior problems. That's a link and doesn't prove the stories caused it, but it's a good reason to tell them.
Finding the story to tell.
Look for what stands out: a child lost young, a long move, a change of name, a record that doesn't match what the family says. If you're not sure, ask Ancestral Fire what's most interesting about one person. It answers from your own family, and shows where each fact came from.
Or just ask.
Tell Ancestral Fire one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
Who was the first in my family to leave Ireland, and what became of him?
Among those with immigration dates recorded, the earliest to leave was your great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy (born about 1823 in Dunganstown, County Wexford), who immigrated to Boston around 1847. He settled in Boston, married Bridget Murphy, worked as a cooper, and died there in 1858 at about age 35.
From the Kennedy family's published tree, asked as John F. Kennedy.
Do it now: send them one public family's story to start with.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: The Kennedy family tree, from Wexford to Dallas.
Keep reading.
- What to do with boxes of old family photos. Start with whoever can still name the people in them, and then sort, scan and store.
- What happens to your family tree when you die. It depends on where your tree lives.