Oral History Interview Questions for Grandparents (A Complete Question Bank)

Before You Start: Three Things to Do

Before you sit down with your questions, do three things that will make the whole conversation go better.

Pick one session, one topic. Don't try to cover everything in one afternoon. Choose a theme — childhood, or where the family came from, or work — and stay there. A focused conversation goes deeper than a scattered one. You can always do another session.

Tell them what you'll ask about in advance. A few days before, let them know: “I want to ask you about what it was like growing up, the neighborhood, your parents.” This gives them time to remember. Memories resurface when they know what to look for. You will get richer answers from someone who has had three days to think than from someone who is surprised in the moment.

Let them know they can skip anything. Say it explicitly at the start: “If I ask something you don't want to talk about, just say so — we'll move on.” Consent isn't a bureaucratic formality. It changes the feeling of the conversation. People share more freely when they know they are not trapped.

For recording, your phone's voice memo app is completely fine. You do not need special equipment. Sit somewhere quiet, put the phone between you on the table, and press record. That's the setup.

Question Bank: Childhood & Growing Up

These questions are designed to put your grandparent back in a specific place. Sensory details unlock memory — smell, sound, and texture bring back context that abstract questions can't reach.

• What do you remember about the house you grew up in? What did it look like, smell like? What was the first thing you saw when you walked through the front door?
• What was a typical Saturday when you were ten years old?
• What did your mother cook that you've never been able to replicate — the thing that tasted the most like home?
• What was the name of the street or town you grew up in? Is it still there? What happened to it?
• Who was your closest friend when you were a child? What do you remember about them?
• What was the one thing you were not allowed to do as a kid that you really wanted to do?
• What did you do in the summer? Did you go anywhere, or did you stay close to home?
• Was there a place you went — a field, a relative's house, a porch, a corner — where you felt completely at ease? What was it?
• What were you afraid of as a child?
• What's one thing from your childhood that doesn't exist anymore — a store, a tradition, a sound, a smell — that you wish still did?

If your grandparent has memory challenges, sensory prompts — a food, a song, a photo — can open conversations that abstract questions can't. See our guide on interviewing elders with memory challenges for more on adapting these questions.

Question Bank: Family History & Where You Come From

These questions move deeper — into what your grandparent knows about the generation before them, migration, and family origins. Many families hold fragments of this knowledge without knowing it. The right question surfaces the fragment.

• What do you know about where your parents came from? Where were they born? Where did they grow up?
• Did your family ever move — from one city, state, or region to another? Do you know why they moved?
• What do you know about your grandparents? Can you tell me their names — even nicknames or partial names?
• Were there family stories about where the family originally came from — before the place you grew up? Any mention of a county, a region, a country, a territory?
• Is there anything your parents or grandparents told you about where the family came from before [name the place or time period]? Even fragments — something half-remembered, something that was mentioned once and never again?
• Were there names in the family that got lost — people who weren't talked about, relatives who were cut off or who died before you knew them?
• Did you grow up knowing any extended family? Aunts, uncles, cousins? Where did they live?
• Are there places the family considered home that the family no longer has any connection to?
• What language or languages did your parents or grandparents speak at home?
• Is there anything you always meant to ask your own parents or grandparents and never did?

That fifth question is especially important for families with African American or Indigenous ancestry, where paper records often end abruptly and oral transmission holds what documents cannot. Even a fragment — a place name, a surname, a phrase that was repeated — can become the foundation for deeper research. Ask it gently. Don't push if the answer is silence; sometimes the answer is “we weren't told,” and that, too, is information worth documenting.

Question Bank: Work, Money, and Hard Times

Questions about work and economic life often unlock stories about resilience, ingenuity, and family strategy that don't come up any other way. The answers here often surprise people — including your grandparent.

• What was your very first job? How old were you? How much did you earn?
• What kind of work did your parents do? Did they ever talk about what they wished they could have done instead?
• Was there a skill or trade that ran in the family — something that got passed down through generations?
• Were there hard times — financially, or just in terms of how hard people had to work? How did the family manage?
• What did "enough" mean in your household growing up? What was considered a good life?
• Was there anything the family did to get through a hard period that you have always remembered?
• What did you want to do when you were young? What did you end up doing instead? How did that happen?

Question Bank: Relationships, Values, and What They Want to Pass On

These questions often produce the most emotional material. Save them for later in the conversation, when you've built some momentum. The answers to these questions are the ones people return to for the rest of their lives.

• What are you most proud of — not what you accomplished, but how you lived?
• Is there anything you would have done differently? Not regrets exactly — just something you understand now that you didn't then?
• Who in your life shaped you the most? What did they give you that you still carry?
• What do you want me — or your grandchildren — to know about who you were? Not the facts of your life, but who you actually were.
• Is there something the family believes, or values, or does — something that just is the way things are done — that you know where it came from?
• What is the one thing you most want to make sure doesn't get lost when you're gone?
• What piece of advice would you give to someone starting the life you've already lived?

What to Do After the Interview

The biggest mistake people make after a good interview is leaving the recording sitting on their phone for months. Life gets busy. The file gets buried. Eventually you can't remember which conversation was which.

Within twenty-four hours of finishing — ideally that same evening — do two things. First, write down the key stories in your grandparent's own words. Not a transcript, not a summary — just the three or four things that stuck with you, written in the way they said it. “She always called it the creek road.” “He said his grandmother never talked about it but you could tell she knew more than she said.” These fragments, written down while they're fresh, are the ones that become family knowledge.

Second, write down what you want to follow up on. Every good interview generates more questions than it answers — that's a sign it went well. Write those questions down now so you have them for the next conversation.

The recording itself should be backed up in at least two places before the week is out — a cloud folder and a hard drive, or two different family members' devices. A recording that exists on one phone is not preserved. It is waiting to be lost.

If you want to turn the interview into a real document — something with structure, with sourcing, with the kind of organization that lets future family members actually use it — the Family Oral History Project guide walks through the full process from first recording to organized archive.