Picture stories

Photos can be a great trigger for memories. Go through the photo albums with the seniors in your family, even if you already know the names/dates/places of the pictures.

I found this one as a teenager among my mother's mother's photos. It was easy to see that the tallest girl in the photo was Grandma and easy to figure that the other two were her younger sisters Johanna and Alvina. Nothing really to talk about.

But on seeing it Grandma mentioned how much Alvina, the youngest, hated those dresses...because as her big sisters handed theirs down, she had to wear the same dress over and over again for years. Cute story, a little touch of color to go with the photo.

Don't forget the field on your field trip

When you do research in a place where your ancestors lived, try to get out of the courthouse and walk the same land they walked.

A land record will include the legal description of the property. It's not always easy, but you can figure out what's on the land today by using a plat map (new or old) to pinpoint the property and then comparing that to a road map.

The Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales Database was hugely helpful the first time I tried to do this. You can search for property by your ancestor's name and get a legal description and purchase date, as well as number of acres and price.

The Illinois database also has a useful explanation of what all those weird fractions in the legal description mean. (The explanation is at the bottom of the page so you'll need to scroll down.)

If you can find the land on a modern plat map, you'll have some help with locating roads. If you've only got an old plat map, look for landmarks that aren't likely to have changed over time -- rivers, hills, railroad lines, maybe churches -- and compare them to a modern street map.

James Kendall bought a piece of Illinois land in 1835, and Warren County didn't have a plat map going back that far. I compared the description to an 1870s plat map. There was a railroad line on its edge, which also showed up on a modern street map. A small lake was still there, too.

There was a farm on what I hoped was the property. The owner was cutting wood in a stand of trees. Feeling kind of stupid, I pulled the car over, walked up to him and said, "Hi, I think my great-great-great-grandfather used to live here. Would you mind if I took a picture of your field?"

As luck would have it, he knew the names of some shirttail relatives of the Kendalls . He kindly let me wander around and take pictures (including the one above), and even pointed out where the original stagecoach line had run through the property.

The land had a lot more trees and a lot fewer fences when James Kendall lived there, but seeing the place helped me think of James and his family as real people, not just names in a book.

Tips for interviewing Aunt Mabel

Interview older members of the family every chance you get. Lots -- most -- of the color of your family's story comes from how they felt about things they experienced.

Try to audio-record the interview somehow; you can take notes as Aunt Mabel talks, but it's slow. It also discourages Aunt Mabel if she's telling her favorite story about how Elvis autographed her poodle skirt and you're staring at your notebook the whole time.

To help Aunt Mabel relax, start with some easy-to-answer questions about facts: Where were you born? What's your birthday? What are your parents' names and where did they come from?

Then you can move into the story-inducing questions: How did your family celebrate birthdays when you were a kid? What games did you play during recess at school? When did you first vote and who did you vote for? Why?

Encourage Aunt Mabel by making eye contact, leaning forward, nodding and reacting appropriately to what she says. The more interested you are, the more willing she is to talk.