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Grandma Interview Finally Worked

I was at my aunt and uncles house and my grandma was there for a birthday celebration. I have asked her to help me fill out the family tree in the past but she has refused. She does not like computers. She has even acted like she is hiding horrible past. I think she thinks the computer will suck out her soul.

This time with grandma was different. I stopped thinking she can help with dates and specifics anymore. Now I just want stories to juice up the family history. My plan was to ask for the funniest acts she could remember family. To spice up the information I wanted to know the naughtiest things she can remember family doing.

Grandma did reveal information about brothers and sisters and their marriages and kids. Looking at the list I should have known the names from when I was younger but many have died and I knew them only when I was very small.

Instead of taking notes I used Sara's Cisco Flip UltraHD to record the information. The Flip looks like a voice recorder or little box. I don't think grandma knew she was on video.

I took the information given and correlated it with the Social Security Death Index. Obituaries have been a good way to build family lists in the past. Unfortunately the The Milwaukee Journal has taken their online obituaries archives offline and passed the torch to a crappy site that has no data from before 2003. What kind of archives stop at 2003?

Having a computer at the interview to enter data would have been nice to fill things in as we went along but grandma would have freaked out. I will have to print the data out to see if grandma would be willing to confirm or deny the order of people and the dates I have guessed.

I added 21 people to the family tree which is good considering I have not added a person in three years.