Treasure Maps Genealogy

How Your Past Can Affect the Health of Your Future (and maybe help save family member’s life!)

Note: Most of this article is due to Judith L. Weinberger and Linda Clark’s willingness to share their experience with the Treasure Map’s on-line family.

Judith wrote: “This letter is to relate a recent experience that at first glance has NOTHING to do with genealogy, but at second glance has EVERYTHING to do with family history…“

Last year I had a heart attack (yes, thank you, I am doing very well now). No one expected I would ever have this type of medical problem. Every doctor I spoke with (and there were a lot) asked if heart problems ran in the family. I knew they did, but was unsure of the extent.

During my recovery at home, I pulled out all death certificates, obituaries, and family oral history in my files and created a chart.

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"The Natural Approach to Oral History Interviews and the Two Critical Questions You Must ALWAYS Ask" by Robert Ragan (Part 2) Continued from Part 1

"Writing Prompts" and "Memory Prompts"

One Mother's Day, I gave my Mom a blank journal. She surprised me by saying that she had been thinking about starting a journal. I also gave her a book (that has questions and plenty of room to write) called "The Book of Myself - A Do-it-Yourself Autobiography in 201 Questions" by Carl and David Marshall.

Here are a few of the writing prompts from the book:

-This is what we usually did at Thanksgiving.

-I want you to know this about my grandmother(s).

-I want you to know this about my grandfather(s).

-One book that had a very strong impact on me was.

-I am proud of my sibling(s) for this reason.

Here is one of my favorites:

-My predictions for each of my grandchildren are these…

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"The Natural Approach to Oral History Interviews and the Two Critical Questions You Must ALWAYS Ask" by Robert Ragan (Part 1)

Back in November 1997, I spent a very special day with my Dad on his pontoon boat. We've spent lots of hours with family riding up and down the St. Johns River in Northeast Florida on that boat (see "Papa’s Boat Day Get-a-Way" page).

That day with fresh batteries and a tape recorder, I sat down to record the story of his life–his oral history. It rained a little bit, we were bumping around the boat, and there were boats passing by making noise, but it didn't matter. It added to the charm of that tape.

Answering those questions and sharing all that information is taxing, so after an hour and a half we started to wind down. But before we stopped, I made SURE that I asked the two most important questions that you should ask when you sit down to do an oral history interview with anyone.

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