Some relatives are reluctant to talk to the family genealogist for fear that every detail of a family skeleton or scandal will be broadcast for the world to hear.
Ask yourself if you really need to know every detail of every family squabble. It may be sufficient to know that two uncles fought over money when their father died and never spoke again. It may be sufficient to know that a mother and daughter didn’t speak for the last twenty years of the mother’s life without going into excruciating detail of exactly what precipitated the falling out.
Sometimes, if the person to whom you are talking actually “lived through the family drama,” it may be difficult to get answers to questions because the entire situation is painful. Tread lightly. “Drama” and scandal look different when one was not in the throes of it.
Sometimes if you press too hard you end up with no information from a relative. And something is usually better than nothing.
3 Responses
My dad recently said that there were a lot of things he could tell me about his life. I told him to start a journal and if there was anything he didn’t want me to read, he could put a sticky note on it. If there was anything he didn’t want his grandkids to read, put a sticky note on it. And we wouldn’t read that part, either ever, never read it, or read it after he died. We will see if I get anything!
Even though we know details of a person’s life and/or specific information about an incident it doesn’t mean we have to tell the world about it. Often there are good reasons for family historians to have more detailed information and actually keep a record of it. (100 years from now it may be looked at in a different light, after the people involved are long gone.) Sometimes a relative has given me extra details about something and has trusted me to not pass it on– they just wanted the facts to be known. Keep your word! Don’t tell even a scrap of the private information to anyone! Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and look at both sides of the situation. We must always respect the privacy of our family members and be very aware of the difference between basic genealogical information and “too much information”.
I tend to agree. It’s one thing if something left behind actual “official” records. But in those cases where it did not, I try and use some discretion. In the case of family squabbles, knowing the essence of the problem is one thing. All the minute details are another matter entirely.