Asking the older people in your life questions isn’t just about recording a birth location, marriage date, or occupation to flesh out a family tree. It’s far more revealing—and rewarding—to probe the wisdom that lives in their hearts or in the deepest chambers of their memory, rather than on any certificate. “Facts are not what you're after,” says Suzanne Russo Adams, an associate professor of family history and the director of the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young