Preserving Spoken Lineages: Inside FamilySearch’s African Oral Histories Project

  

Preserving Spoken Lineages: Inside FamilySearch’s African Oral Histories Project


​Across much of Africa, history has long been passed down through the power of memory, spoken word, and storytelling. For generations, clan elders and village historians have held the keys to family lineages—recounting ancestors, migrations, and origins spanning hundreds of years. However, rapid urban growth and generational shifts mean many of these unwritten family histories are at risk of fading away.

​To address this, FamilySearch—the non-profit genealogical organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—has undertaken a massive, ongoing effort to document, record, and preserve these spoken lineages across the continent.

​How the Oral Genealogies Project Works

​The project relies on a respectful, community-centered approach to ensure that traditional protocols are honored while capturing rich genealogical detail.

  • ​Village Entry Protocol: Field interviewers—who are almost exclusively local community members familiar with regional customs—begin by seeking formal permission from local leadership, such as village chiefs, kings, or clan elders.
  • ​Recording Living Libraries: Interviewers seek out recognized historians and village elders capable of reciting five to ten or more generations of ancestral history.
  • ​Multimodal Documentation: Beyond writing down names, field teams record high-quality audio of the spoken accounts, photograph informants, and capture geographic coordinates of the communities.
  • ​Free Global Access: The gathered information is processed into structured family trees and uploaded to a public online collection, making it accessible to families and researchers worldwide for free.

​Where and How to Access the Records

​The initiative spans multiple nations, including Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, with tens of thousands of individual interviews already recorded.

​You can explore these records directly on FamilySearch.org using the following steps:

  1. ​Log in to FamilySearch and select Genealogies from the main Search menu at the top of the page.
  2. ​Scroll down to the Explore one of our collections section and choose Oral Genealogies.
  3. ​Search by typing in personal names, clan names, or specific locations, such as a village, town, or region.
  4. ​Open an entry to explore the mapped lineage tree, view photos of the informant, and listen to the original audio recording of the interview.

​Tips for Searching Spoken Records

​Because these records originate from oral accounts translated into text, written spellings can vary widely.

​If searching for a specific relative's name yields no results, try searching by the Village Name or Clan Name instead. This will display all individuals interviewed in that specific settlement. Testing alternate phonetic spellings of names can also help locate records that may have been transcribed differently during field entry.

​Through this intersection of traditional storytelling and digital preservation, millions of family connections that once existed solely in memory are now secured for generations to come.

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