Family history interview questions that lead to real records

Most lists of family history interview questions are written to draw out a life story, and they do it well. This page has a different purpose. Its questions ask for the facts an archive needs: the spelling of a name, the town's name in the years the family lived there, the ship, the street, the employer, the burial society. Beside each one is the record the answer usually leads to, so that after the interview you know where to look.

The two kinds of question work together. Questions to ask your grandparents and questions to ask your parents keep the stories, grouped by period of life. Use the questions below as follow-ups, when a name or a place comes up, or in a sitting of their own. Families who gather at Thanksgiving or for a Yom Tov often find it the best time to ask, with the oldest relatives at the same table.

How to prepare for a family history interview

The Oral History Association advises interviewers to become familiar with the person and the times before they begin, and to prepare a guide of themes with room for the unexpected. For a family history interview, preparation means knowing what the family already has, so that the time with an older relative goes to what only they can answer.

1. Write down what you already know, generation by generation, with a question mark beside anything unsure.
2. Gather the papers in the house, such as certificates, letters and photographs, and bring copies to the interview.
3. Choose the questions for this relative, and the generations and branches they can speak for.
4. Bring a blank family tree, a map of the region the family came from, and a few photographs.
5. Ask permission to record, and write every name and town as the relative spells it.
6. Ask open questions first, and use the record questions as follow-ups when a name or place comes up.
7. After the interview, list each fact with who gave it and the record that could confirm it.

How to record a parent's or grandparent's stories covers the recording itself: the room, consent, file names and keeping copies safe.

A questionnaire for relatives who live far away

For cousins in other cities or countries, a short written questionnaire works well beside a call. Keep it to one page: the full names of their parents and grandparents with dates and places, where each is buried, which papers and photographs they hold, and who else in their branch might know more.

Questions about names and spellings

Names change more than anything else in a family's records. A grandfather may appear under a Yiddish name on a passenger list, an English one on the census and his Hebrew name on his gravestone. Ask for every form.

Naming customs reach back a generation. My Jewish Learning notes that Ashkenazim usually name a child after a relative who has died, and Sephardim usually after a grandparent, living or not, so the answer to who a person was named after often names a great-grandparent.

Questions about towns and where the family came from

Records before the arrival are kept by town, so the town is the answer every later search depends on. A country is not enough. A family remembered as coming from Russia may have lived in a town that is now in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus or Ukraine, and the town may have had a different name in Yiddish, Polish, German and Russian.

Write the town down exactly as the relative says it, even when it sounds wrong, and add how they spell it. Vilnius, for example, was Vilna to most Jewish families and appears as Wilno on Polish papers between the wars. The American records usually settle the question: passenger lists from 1907 on ask for each passenger's town of birth, and naturalization papers filed after September 27, 1906 usually give it too. How to find the town your family came from sets out the method.

Questions about the crossing and arrival

From the US National Archives and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, checked October 2026.

Lists from 1907 on run across two pages, and the second page holds the relatives' names and addresses, so always look for it. Names were seldom changed at Ellis Island: the lists were written at the port of departure, and most changes came later, by the family's own choice. How to search Ellis Island records and how to trace your ancestry take each answer further.

Questions about addresses and households

An address places a family in a census, a city directory and a neighborhood, and the people living at it are often relatives. Ask for every address the relative remembers, with the years.

City directories were published for most American cities, often every year. The Library of Congress notes that they record residents' names, addresses and occupations, and many also give the place of employment and the name of a spouse. A family that disappears from the census for a decade can often be followed through them year by year. In New York City, the Municipal Archives has put historical births, marriages and deaths online free, and a remembered address helps to pick the right entry from many of the same name. How to trace your ancestry explains which census asks what.

Questions about work and employers

Work leaves more records than people expect. Ask what each person did and for whom, and in which years.

The 1942 registration, sometimes called the old man's draft, was held on April 27, 1942 for men born between April 28, 1877 and February 16, 1897. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society notes that the cards give the man's address, date and place of birth, employer and place of employment, and the name of a person who would always know his address, usually his wife. For a grandfather born in Europe, the place of birth on the card may name the town.

Questions about the shul, societies and graves

In Jewish families, the shul, the landsmanshaft and the burial plot hold some of the most useful records, and they are the questions most lists leave out.

A landsmanshaft's records can be rich. The YIVO Institute's finding aids describe society collections holding burial receipts, deeds to cemetery plots, dues ledgers, minutes and correspondence, and some go back to the first years of the twentieth century. If a relative remembers the society's name, or the name on the plot's gate, those files may hold a grandparent's membership and burial. How to find the town your family came from goes further.

Questions about military service

The National Archives holds about 24 million World War I draft cards, from three registrations in 1917 and 1918 that together covered men from 18 to 45, and many men who registered never served. For later service, start with the discharge papers in the house: a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973 destroyed about 80 percent of the Army files for soldiers discharged between November 1912 and January 1960.

Questions for Ashkenazi and Sephardi families

A few questions matter most in Jewish families, because Jewish records name people in ways other records do not:

• Hebrew names and patronymics. Ask for each person's Hebrew name with the father's, as in Yaakov ben Avraham. It is the form on the gravestone and in the ketubah, and it reaches a generation back.
• Kohen or Levi. Ask whether the family are kohanim or leviim. My Jewish Learning notes that a kohen's gravestone often shows hands raised in the priestly blessing, and a Levi's a pitcher, so the answer helps to recognize a relative's stone in a cemetery.
• The name before arrival. Ask what each person was called in Yiddish or in the old country, which is the name on the passenger list.
• Rabbinic ancestors. If the family says it descends from a known rav, write down the tradition exactly as told, and who told it. Such traditions are worth keeping and need the same checking as any other fact.
• Sephardi families. Ask which grandparents each child was named after. Because Sephardim usually name children after grandparents, living or not, the same names often repeat in every second generation, which helps to sort out the branches.

How to trace your ancestry explains why Jewish surnames in Eastern Europe usually go back only to around 1800, and why the Hebrew names have to carry the search further.

Questions oral historians use

Record questions pin a story down; open questions bring it out in the first place. The Oral History Association advises open-ended questions, active listening and follow-up questions that ask for clarification, elaboration and reflection. In practice that means starting wide and narrowing: "What was the house like?" and then "Which street was it on?"

The best-known list of open questions comes from StoryCorps, a nonprofit founded in 2003 that records conversations between two people and keeps them, with the participants' permission, at the Library of Congress. Its Great Questions page groups questions under seventeen headings, among them grandparents, parents, growing up, working, religion, military service and family heritage, and it encourages people to choose the questions they like and write their own. Questions of that kind keep the story, and the record questions above are the follow-ups that let a researcher find the documents behind it.

From answers to records: what to do after the interview

Every answer is a lead until a record confirms it. Family stories are usually right in outline and wrong in some details, such as a year a little off or a town remembered by the nearest city's name. After the interview, make a list with four columns: the fact, who said it, the record that could confirm it, and what the record showed. Mark how sure the relative was, since "about 1921" is a range to search and "1921" may not be.

Then check each record against the original, never only the index. An index entry is someone's reading of a record, and it can be wrong: in the example on this site, an index gave an 1896 birth under the name Tarko where the original register reads Marko, and how to check that a record really belongs to your family tells how it was found. Keep the relative's version beside what the records show, even when they differ.

What a researched book does with the answers

Some of these records can be searched from home. Others are held by archives that answer only written requests, in Polish, German, Russian or Yiddish, and some files have never been indexed at all. A Zichronos commission includes that work and its archive, copy and translation fees, and ends in a finished book. It begins with exactly the answers on this page: the names a relative remembers, the town, the ship and the society. Interviews with relatives are part of the commission, and their words stand in the book beside the records.

How a family history is researched follows one family from its papers to the archives, family history book examples shows what a finished book holds, what a family history book costs compares the kinds of service, and How we work sets out the steps. Inside a book shows the pages, and more question lists are in family stories and keepsakes.

Sources: the US National Archives on World War I draft registration, passenger arrivals, naturalization and the 1973 fire; US Citizenship and Immigration Services on its genealogy records; the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society on the 1942 draft registration; the Library of Congress on city directories; the YIVO Institute's archival finding aids for landsmanshaft collections; My Jewish Learning on images on Jewish gravestones and naming children; the Oral History Association's best practices; StoryCorps, about and great questions; the Social Security Administration on copies of a deceased person's application. Checked October 2026.