HSP105

Interview test run

Miss W. Family History Course , ,

Because I haven’t been able to organize a time to meet Glenn yet, I thought I had better do a test run of an interview with my father. I went through Paul Thompson’s questions, typed out a big long list of them chunked into areas like early family life, schooling, early adult life etc.

Before starting the interview I showed my dad the questions and said I would be asking about some of these things. I think that helped him know the sorts of things I wanted to get from the interview. It allowed him to chat for a while on a topic rather than giving just short, stilted answers.

To record the interview I took my iPad to mum and dad’s house and we sat in the dining/kitchen area while mum was in the lounge room watching the cricket and Sydney/Hobart yacht race. I had downloaded the app Soundcloud, which allows 180 minutes with their free version.

I recorded in two sections: first dad talked about his own life mentioning he had already written about a lot of these and they were on his computer if ever i needed them. The second and shorter section was dad talking about his parents and grandparents.

Here are the two recordings:

 

Who is William Smith?

Miss W. Family History Course, Smith , ,

William SMITH is my great great grandfather but from his application for a Master Mariners certificate he was born in the Navigator Islands in 1840. Therefore he should have a Samoan sounding name.

 

Master Mariner certificate

 

Here is a scan of Master Mariner PDF to see it enlarged.

I have also seen it mentioned in a book which is a secondary source 1

Captain William Smith arrived in Tasmania in an open boat (from who knows where) and sailed up the Derwent into the waiting arms of officialdom. He was accepted and given the name “Smith”.

I am going through the Marine Board shipping log records at the moment trying to find when he first had his name changed to William SMITH. But I am stuck on the boat name between Offley and Calypso in the certificate above.  They are all whaling boats so far always in and out of Hobart.

Shipping logs are a great primary source as it is filled in when a sailor agrees to serve on board a ship. Information included is:

  • Signatures of each crew member – both Christian and Surname in full
  • Age when signing agreement
  • Place of birth – can be any of these city/town/country/state
  • Ship in which he last served and port the ship belonged to
  • Place and date of discharge from that ship
  • Place and date of entry onto this ship
  • In what capacity they will serve
  • Time when he should be on board – usually at once or a date given
  • Wages per month or voyage
  • Lay – black oil, sperm oil, whalebone
  • Amount of wages advanced
  • Amount of monthly allotment

Readers:  Can anyone using the PDF work out a possible boat name for me?

  1. Poulson, Bruce. Recherche Bay: A Short History. Southport Tas.  Southport Community Centre, 2004. Print. ↩

Interview questions

Miss W. Family History Course, Smith , ,

Pushfit cube question mark
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds via Compfight

As part of the discussions on the family history course, we have to work out six questions we will be asking at our interview. We also have to mention why we think these will be helpful to our research and what did we think of  Thompson‘s suggestions.

Last night I read through the summary of the chapter by Thompson about interviewing and the types of questions that will get lots of information from your interviewee. It is similar to what we did in teaching; the how and why questions are better than just who, what, where and when. The last four will give facts but the why and how will give reasons.

So this is what I wrote in my discussion area:

I am going to hopefully interview a SMITH cousin who lives at Oyster Cove, Tasmania. His father is my grandmother’s youngest brother (I think).

So other than the basic when and where born etc, I want to add more information to the tree about social life and family life.

So here are my questions:

1. Where did you live as a child and who were your most common visitors?

2. Where did you go on holidays and was it with/to family?

Now questions about his father:

3. What do you know about your dad’s life as a child? Who did he live with and where?

4. Who were the people your dad often talked about? Were they relatives, friends or working buddies?

Now questions about his paternal grandparents:

5. Did your dad ever talk about his parents? What did he tell you about them?

6. What have you found out about your grandparents during your research? Where did you find out that information?

I know that Glenn and his wife are also researching the SMITH side of the tree so will be great to join our knowledge and add it to my blog here.

Now that I look at the questions, none are why or how at the beginning. But I think asking these questions will still gather more information to add to my tree and perhaps lead to more research areas in future.

The Thompson summary was great in that it asked questions in chunks – firstly the interviewee him/herself then progressing to parents and grandparents. Also dividing again into smaller chunks like early childhood, schooling, life at home, marriage, children.

To my readers: Are there any other questions you think I should be asking Glenn that could add to my family tree? Here is a link to what I know so far.

STOP PRESS  UPDATE

I just did a google search about “Voice of the past: Oral History” and came up with an Oral History society in Australia with lots of resources.