voices

[david1940]

I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of how
they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)

How many of this group have done this?

[Keith Nuttle]

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of how
they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

I am fortunate in this for my paternal grandfather. He lived in an old
but small community in northern Indiana, and up until WWII he was the
community blacksmith.

In 1953, a person from the local radio station came out to his house and
interviewed him. He recorded the inter on a 8" (?) 78 rpm record and
gave the family several copies. I have one. I have had it digitized
and it is now part of my genealogical records.

When he did the interview, the family came out to his home. Us kids
were herded away from the back porch where the interview was done,
because we could not keep quite.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of
how they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

A good idea, but no, I haven't. Only my own generation left now.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of
how they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

A good idea, but no, I haven't. Only my own generation left now.

I was going to say same here, but I think I may have some reel-to-reel
tapes of amateur dramatics - but quite professional - featuring my Dad,
in various Gilbert and Sullivan productions. (I know he was the judge in
Trial By Jury, but I'm not sure if that was recorded.) Now, where on
earth are those tapes! (I remember also even an LP of something he was
involved in, from I think the 1960s; from what I remember, the quality
was terrible - it was obviously done by some company that made records
for people.)

If people do have things but on obscure formats (even cylinders - but
even more obscure formats: wire, band, ...), I'd definitely recommend
Poppy Records: if he hasn't got a machine to play it (which he almost
certainly has), he might make one ...
I don't _think_ I have mum. Telephone answering machine tapes might well
be a source. Anyone recently bereaved, I know it's not the sort of thing
you want to think about let alone do, but look quickly (because they
don't keep them long, 30 days is common) in your 1571 and other similar
voicemail storages.

Another source might be correspondence - "tapespondence"; I know my gran
(Bedlington, Northumberland, England) and her brother in America used to
correspond by tape. Not sure but I think I may have one cassette of him
...

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of
how they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

A good idea, but no, I haven't. Only my own generation left now.

[ … ]
I don't _think_ I have mum. Telephone answering machine tapes might
well be a source. Anyone recently bereaved, I know it's not the sort of
thing you want to think about let alone do, but look quickly (because
they don't keep them long, 30 days is common) in your 1571 and other
similar voicemail storages.
Another source might be correspondence - "tapespondence"; I know my
gran (Bedlington, Northumberland, England) and her brother in America
used to correspond by tape. Not sure but I think I may have one
cassette of him ...

Now THAT's an idea. One of my sisters once persuaded my parents to make
a cassette to send to her in Hong Kong. I don't know if it still
exists, or if a modern machine can read it. It sounded extremely
artificial, because neither of them had the idea of speaking off the
cuff, so they wrote everything down first and read it out loud.

My mother, who would be 108 if she were still around, refused to leave
anything on our answering machine, because she said she couldn't
understand the recorded message, which was in French (because that's
where we live). I wasn't able to convince that it was obviously my
voice and it said what such messages always say: we aren't available at
the moment, but please leave a message after the beep.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

[]

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
Another source might be correspondence - "tapespondence"; I know my
gran (Bedlington, Northumberland, England) and her brother in America
used to correspond by tape. Not sure but I think I may have one
cassette of him ...

Now THAT's an idea. One of my sisters once persuaded my parents to make
a cassette to send to her in Hong Kong. I don't know if it still
exists, or if a modern machine can read it. It sounded extremely
artificial, because neither of them had the idea of speaking off the
cuff, so they wrote everything down first and read it out loud.

[]
I hope your sister still has the cassette (or you do). I'm not sure what
you mean by a "modern machine", but you should have no problem finding a
cassette player in a charity shop or similar; if you are daunted by the
task of capturing, you can get cassette players that record direct to
USB these days - put "cassette to USB" into ebay and you'll find plenty.
For ebay uk, I found
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Portable-Cassette-Player-Walkman-USB-Cassette-Tape-to-MP3-CD-Player-Converter/183769984713?hash=item2ac98b6ec9:g:Z40A
AOSwcOtciizR
for 7.99 pounds; you should find something similar on ebay fr.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
[]

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
Another source might be correspondence - "tapespondence"; I know my
gran (Bedlington, Northumberland, England) and her brother in America
used to correspond by tape. Not sure but I think I may have one
cassette of him ...

Now THAT's an idea. One of my sisters once persuaded my parents to make
a cassette to send to her in Hong Kong. I don't know if it still
exists, or if a modern machine can read it. It sounded extremely
artificial, because neither of them had the idea of speaking off the
cuff, so they wrote everything down first and read it out loud.

[]
I hope your sister still has the cassette (or you do). I'm not sure
what you mean by a "modern machine", but you should have no problem
finding a cassette player in a charity shop or similar; if you are
daunted by the task of capturing, you can get cassette players that
record direct to USB these days

Come to that I have indeed a machine for doing that, but I bought it to
convert LPs to MP3, and I forgot that it can do other things.

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
- put "cassette to USB" into ebay and you'll find plenty. For ebay uk, I found
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Portable-Cassette-Player-Walkman-USB-Cassette-Tape-to-MP3-CD-Player-Converter/183769984713?hash=item2ac98b6ec9:g:Z40A
AOSwcOtciizR
for 7.99 pounds; you should find something similar on ebay fr.

[Bill]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
[]
I hope your sister still has the cassette (or you do). I'm not sure
what you mean by a "modern machine", but you should have no problem
finding a cassette player in a charity shop or similar; if you are
daunted by the task of capturing, you can get cassette players that
record direct to USB these days - put "cassette to USB" into ebay and
you'll find plenty. For ebay uk, I found
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Portable-Cassette-Player-Walkman-USB-Cassette
-Tape-to-MP3-CD-Player-Converter/183769984713?hash=item2ac98b6ec9:g:Z40A
AOSwcOtciizR
for 7.99 pounds; you should find something similar on ebay fr.

I have one that looks similar to that 7.99 cassette in the picture. The
flutter on the tape transport is dire, and distorts speech badly. I
would search for something better to preserve voices for posterity.

[Ian Goddard]

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of how
they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

Going off at a slight tangent - what about leaving something about
yourself for your descendants?

When I started on family history I attended a University evening course
(rip-off, names omitted to protect the guilty). I'd rather expected
that we might be set an initial assignment of writing a short biography
of ourselves. We weren't so I never did - and without such compulsion
it remains way down the todo list although there are a few CVs written
at different times.

The first time I encountered an old diary (Arthur Jessop (C.E. Whiting,
(ed), 1952. Two Yorkshire diaries)) I wished I'd kept something similar.
Far too late now and I had the opportunity to make a contemporaneous
eye-witness account a few bits of history at close quarters for extended
periods.

Ian

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by Ian Goddard

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of
how they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

Going off at a slight tangent - what about leaving something about
yourself for your descendants?
When I started on family history I attended a University evening course
(rip-off, names omitted to protect the guilty). I'd rather expected
that we might be set an initial assignment of writing a short biography
of ourselves. We weren't so I never did - and without such compulsion
it remains way down the todo list although there are a few CVs written
at different times.
The first time I encountered an old diary (Arthur Jessop (C.E. Whiting,
(ed), 1952. Two Yorkshire diaries)) I wished I'd kept something
similar. Far too late now and I had the opportunity to make a
contemporaneous eye-witness account a few bits of history at close
quarters for extended periods.

I kept a reasonably detailed diary for the first six weeks of 1959, but
that was it, and I regret that I never took it up again. As a result,
with the diary to remind me I can remember things that happened just
about every day in that period, for example that I first knew the name
of Fred Hoyle on 22nd January 1959. Otherwise it's just a haze. In the
unlikely event that anyone wants to know what I sound like you can find
out at

http://www.beilstein.tv/video/metabolic-control-analysis-meets-systems-biology/

I'm pretty sure that my way of speaking comes from my father (certainly
not from my mother, who spoke like the Irishwoman that she was) but I
don't have any recording of him to compare.

[Steve Hayes]

On Fri, 12 Apr 2019 19:03:03 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Ian Goddard
Going off at a slight tangent - what about leaving something about
yourself for your descendants?

<snip>

Post by Athel Cornish-Bowden

Post by Ian Goddard
The first time I encountered an old diary (Arthur Jessop (C.E. Whiting,
(ed), 1952. Two Yorkshire diaries)) I wished I'd kept something
similar. Far too late now and I had the opportunity to make a
contemporaneous eye-witness account a few bits of history at close
quarters for extended periods.

I kept a reasonably detailed diary for the first six weeks of 1959, but
that was it, and I regret that I never took it up again. As a result,
with the diary to remind me I can remember things that happened just
about every day in that period, for example that I first knew the name
of Fred Hoyle on 22nd January 1959. Otherwise it's just a haze. In the
unlikely event that anyone wants to know what I sound like you can find
out at

I started keeping a diary erratically when I was 11 (in 1952) and
regularly since I was about 17.

I recently transcribed it into a database, and every day I red
previous entries going back at 10-year intervals, to remind me of what
i was like. I can calso look up when I first met someone (if I
recorded it, which I sometimes didn't), read books, saw films and
things like that.

[Keith Nuttle]

Post by Ian Goddard

Post by david1940
I have often regretted that I have no recording of my parents' voices.
We are busy collecting facts about our ancestors but have no idea of
how they spoke.
In this day and age it would be easy to get them to say a few words,
read a poem or passage from a newspaper or get them to give their
opinion on current events (Brexit anyone?)
How many of this group have done this?

Going off at a slight tangent - what about leaving something about
yourself for your descendants?
When I started on family history I attended a University evening course
(rip-off, names omitted to protect the guilty).  I'd rather expected
that we might be set an initial assignment of writing a short biography
of ourselves.  We weren't so I never did - and without such compulsion
it remains way down the todo list although there are a few CVs written
at different times.
The first time I encountered an old diary (Arthur Jessop (C.E. Whiting,
(ed), 1952. Two Yorkshire diaries)) I wished I'd kept something similar.
 Far too late now and I had the opportunity to make a contemporaneous
eye-witness account a few bits of history at close quarters for extended
periods.
Ian

I second Ian's recommendation.

Early on in my Research I came across the situation where in some
records the person went by his first name and others his middle name. I
contacted a person, and his reply was that the family knew that both
names were the same person, but he had no proof. I immediately got
every old family bible in my possession and copied the genealogy pages.

In an other situation I was doing research and found a gedcom of stories
about my great grandfather. As I was enjoying the letters, I realized I
owed the same thing to my great grandchildren and started to document
the stories from my immediate family. I also wrote down all of the
stories I had heard about my grandparents. That was about 12 years ago.
I now have about 100 pages in single space lines in those documents.
This does not count the research summaries for convoluted connections I
have made in my family.

As we grow old we should do the following to continue our genealogical
history.

1. Record the facts and stories from about your parents, grandparents
and your own life. Try to get your spouse to do the same thing.

2. Identify the people in all of your pictures.

3. Have your documents organized so it is obvious what it is and so
that they can be accessed by someone else. NOTE: I know of two
incidences where this did not happen. In one, all of the person
genealogical records went to the dump, and after they were gone the
children realized what they had thrown out. In the other there was a
pocket book that was nearly 200 years old. When the children were
cleaning out an aunts apartment someone found it and thought it was just
old bag and rags, and it went to the dump.


4. Handle your genealogical estate the same as your physical and
financial estate. Make sure your children and grandchildren know where
and what that estate consisted of. They should also know what you want
done with it when you die.