It requires watching the face and listening to the tone to know where you can ask questions, in my experience. I've never felt wrong (if the cues indicate it's not a touchy part of the recitation) asking something like, "whereabouts is Minot?" or "where did you Dad settle?" or even "the Virginia so-and-sos, are they related to the Tennessee so-and-sos, by any chance?"
Part of the reason for that is because in clarifying the location, timing, or whatever, sometimes you discover that you're related. This is how I found out the relation with my ex, after all -- my grandmother quizzed him quite thoroughly (not unsurprising, seeing how we were talking marriage, and she was the matriarch and a genealogist, after all). She didn't just get family names, she got places, times, religions, and education. But it was when he allowed as to how his father's father's family was from Northern Mississippi, and she started getting into the gritty on names and places and whatnot... that she determined that his paternal great-great-grandfather was the younger brother of my great-great-grandmother, which makes us... *counts* fifth cousins, I think it was. Or sixth. Uhm. Need more fingers...
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Date: 5 Apr 2011 05:20 pm (UTC)Part of the reason for that is because in clarifying the location, timing, or whatever, sometimes you discover that you're related. This is how I found out the relation with my ex, after all -- my grandmother quizzed him quite thoroughly (not unsurprising, seeing how we were talking marriage, and she was the matriarch and a genealogist, after all). She didn't just get family names, she got places, times, religions, and education. But it was when he allowed as to how his father's father's family was from Northern Mississippi, and she started getting into the gritty on names and places and whatnot... that she determined that his paternal great-great-grandfather was the younger brother of my great-great-grandmother, which makes us... *counts* fifth cousins, I think it was. Or sixth. Uhm. Need more fingers...