Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives tips for making high school memories part of the family history you’re compiling. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”

Recently I had the honor of watching my nephew graduate from high school. As the youngest member of our family, my nephew’s graduation marked a milestone for him as well as us. And of course, this graduation brought back memories of previous family high school graduations.

Our family discussed what we wore in high school, how our graduation accomplishment was celebrated, and what family members attended or didn’t attend our graduations. We even broke out yearbooks to laugh at how high school has changed from the time my brother (my nephew’s father) attended high school to 2025. Yearbook technologies, our schoolmates’ photos, and inscriptions from friends were all pored over and discussed.

Photo credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html

Researching and writing about family high school experiences can lead to genealogically rich information including identifying FAN clubs (Friends, Acquaintances, and Neighbors).

What do you know about your parents’ and grandparents’ high school careers? Learning more can help you uncover information about them and better understand their lives.

Start with You

Just like with any genealogy project, start with yourself and then work backward. Starting with yourself can also help you decide what you want to learn about your parents’ and grandparents’ school days.

As my family reminisced about our high school days, I realized that I’ve not documented my own. Yes, I have a scrapbook and a yearbook, but I was thinking that annotating my yearbook and indicating who my friends and teachers were might be meaningful. (I could also scan relevant pages, annotate those, and then donate my yearbooks to a library or archive, something I’m considering.)

Writing a few pages about my experiences and adding relevant photos would be a good addition to my family history records. Some things I could write about include:

• Activities (clubs, organizations I was involved in)
• Classes I took
• Friends’ names
• Favorite teachers
• Historical events that happened when I was in high school
• What an average school day looked like
• My after-school job (which probably won’t surprise you: I was working at the city library)

Historical newspapers that mention my high school (maybe even a printed list of graduates from the year I graduated), as well as my own photo collection, would provide good historical context for this personal history.

Remember: you are best situated to tell your high school story, and your family history includes you. So, start there. You might think no one cares – but if someone offered you the same information about a grandparent, how would you feel?

Photo credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html

What About Your Parents?

Do you know anything about your parents’ high school years? Maybe a yearbook is in your collection or online. Any stories get passed down?

If your parents are alive, the best place to go is to the source. Interview them about their school days. Use photos, yearbooks, school records and historical newspapers to prompt questions.

Don’t forget to include some of the topics mentioned above.

4 Grandparents, 4 School Stories

If your grandparents are alive, the above ideas can help get you started in documenting their school days. If they aren’t, consider using historical newspapers, local histories, school histories, photos, and even postcards to illustrate and write about their school days. Consider adding information on what the school was like during their time there. What did it look like? How has the school changed since then?

I realized that I knew nothing about the high school years of my maternal grandparents, but using the census and maps I can determine what school they attended. In addition, the school census for the Arizona county my maternal grandmother lived in is available on FamilySearch and will be a nice addition.

This Is Not a Test!

Genealogists often focus on names and dates. No doubt that’s important, but it’s the stories about individual lives that interest our families. Stories that they can relate to will interest them in your overall research.

One of my son’s complaints is that family historians don’t pay enough attention to telling the story of ancestral childhood. High school memories, records, documentation, and photos are a great place to start telling those stories. Take some time today to flesh out your family’s high school days!

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Note on the header image: an illustration of a high school. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html