Interviewing Family

As I have been asking my Dad questions about his mum I have discovered one of my grandma's younger sisters is still alive. Her name is Ruth Salmon (Formerly Ruth Griffiths) and she lives in Stoke on Trent, where her family has lived for many years. But what a discovery, for this now means I can ask Ruth many questions about Iris childhood that I otherwise would not have been able to ask and may have never known!

Suffice to say I have been doing just that. Now with Ruth living in England and I living in the U.S.A. I have been asking these questions via email and Facebook. Initially I jumped straight in and asked a couple of questions about Iris first husband William. No one knew much about him in my family and although Ruth was not able to say too much I did discover a couple of little things. From here I dove into my grandma's personality and early years. A friend and genealogy blogger Bill West suggested interviewing via photographs. I have not been able to conduct this method yet because I have no pictures of Iris from situations Ruth will have known. All my photographs of Iris were from when she lived in Rhodesia (Now Zimbabwe.) I am using this method with my Uncle Glyn however!

I used this website as an outline for questions I can ask.

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/a/interview.htm

I found it quite useful and I am sure it will be beneficial for those who have no idea where to start with such interviews! I am now looking forward to a blog post entitled, "The Grandma I never knew." It may still be many days away but I am beginning to create a write up of all the interesting facts about Iris that will help give me a glimpse at who she really is!

Digging Deeper

I feel like I've learned so much in the last two weeks it's incredible. I have discovered little things about my family and alot about how to research genealogy, the websites familysearch.org and ancestry.com with its affiliates. I have discovered gen.com and PAF - files types I didn't even know existed until two weeks ago. What a learning curve I'm on. I am so glad I took the leap to finally pursue this.

I've been blessed with other family members who have already done alot of the hard work for me. My wifes mum has traced her family tree back several generations and has many many folders full of family trees, profiles, stories and documents. This tells me so much about the Dell's and Bhatt's. Both sides of that family are so interesting, with involvement in Ghandi's movement in India and creating mills here in the U.S.A. My wife's half Indian so that whole culture is fascinating to learn about.

On my side of the family, my uncle traced my mothers parents family tree back 200 years with dates and marriages etc. My Second cousin has traced my Dad's family back just as long. They are full of fascinating questions and stories, many of which I hope to relate to the general public on this blog over the coming years. For now let me leave you with this tidbit of information:




This document is so important for a variety of reasons. While right now every person mentioned in this newspaper article is alive (Except for Mr. and Mrs. Idris Davies), one day they won't be. Being from Zimbabwe it is really difficult to discover many of the records kept there. This article provides a fascinating insight into my Uncle Glyn (Formerly spelled Glyndwr), my Auntie Wendy and even a little bit of information about my Dad, Merthyn Owen Davies. It's already inspired me to interview my Dad when he comes over at Christmas. The interview will be all about life in Umtali and the schools he was a part of. I'm sure my Dad will love sharing those stories and I hope they're interesting enough that you will enjoy reading them too!