Before you think you need it
Somewhere in your family there is probably one person who still remembers the people your parents only heard about. An aunt, a grandmother, a great-uncle who tells the same three stories at every holiday. Nobody thinks of that person as an archive. But when they die, the parish books in Europe stay exactly where they are, and the one thing that let your family find itself in them goes into the ground.
The part nobody writes down
People tend to think of family history as something stored far away, in old books in old buildings, and that it will wait. Mostly it does. A baptism written in 1871 will still be on its page in 2071.
What does not wait is the knowledge of which page. An archive is organised by parish, by year, by the name of a village in the language of whoever governed it at the time. To use it you need to know where to put your finger. And that knowledge almost never lives on paper. It lives in someone's mouth: the name of the village the way grandma said it, the river it was near, the fact that "we were from the other side of the mountain", the nickname the whole family used instead of the surname.
That is the index. Without it the archive is still there, it is just unreadable to you.
What actually goes
The place as it was said out loud. On American paperwork the village is usually misspelled, half-remembered, or replaced with the nearest big town. The way an older relative pronounces it is often the only bridge to the real name, and sometimes the only proof that two different spellings are the same place.
The reasons. Documents say that someone left in 1907. They never say why: the land that was split between too many brothers, the conscription notice, the quarrel, the letter from a cousin in Pennsylvania. The reasons are the part your children will actually care about, and there is no register of reasons anywhere.
The people who are not in the papers. The sister who stayed behind. The first wife. The baby who did not live long enough to be mentioned again. These are often remembered by exactly one person, and once that person is gone they are not lost, exactly, but nobody knows to look for them.
The faces. Almost every family has a box of photographs with nothing written on the back. While someone alive can point and say "that's Uncle Jan, the one who went back", those are your ancestors. Afterwards they are just old photographs of strangers in good coats.
The person who remembers your great-grandparents was a child when they knew them. That means they are old now, usually very old. There is no version of this where the conversation gets easier to have later.
Why almost everyone puts it off
Asking an elderly parent about the past can feel like admitting they are going to die. So people wait for a better moment, a big birthday, a quiet holiday. Then the moment comes at a hospital, or it does not come at all.
The other reason is that people do not know what to ask, and "tell me about the old days" gets a polite shrug. That one is easy to fix. Specific questions get specific answers, and older people are very often glad that someone finally asked.
And a good number of families have the opposite experience from the one they feared. The conversation is not sad. It is the first time in years anyone has asked that person something only they know.
Free, and this month
You do not need us for this, and you should not wait for us. Put a phone on the table, press record, and ask a few questions that have concrete answers:
What was the name of the village, and how do you say it? Let them say it two or three times. The recording of the pronunciation is worth more than any spelling.
Who came first, and who came later? Families rarely emigrated all at once. The order often tells you which relatives stayed behind and where to look for them.
What church did they go to? Catholic, Greek Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Jewish. In this part of Europe the religion decides which set of books the family is in, often more than the village does.
Who is in this photograph? Bring the box. Write the names on the back in pencil while they talk.
What did you hear about the people before you? Even a rumour is useful. Especially a rumour.
Half an hour is enough. Save the file somewhere that is not only your phone.
If you come away with a village name, a surname and a church, you already have what most families never manage to put together. Send us those three things and we will tell you, free, what survives for that parish and where it sits today.
Write to us← What your great-grandchildren will find · A gift that was theirs before they were born