Notice that a very simple question can trigger a detailed response. The quality of the interview is determined by the questions being asked. The key to a successful oral history is knowing how to bring forth the stories. With her experience as a reporter, Julie uncovers and records deeper, richer histories.

Sample of a slightly edited transcript

Alfred Wright, Washougal, WA – May 2, 2000

Q: Did Stephen Wright have any siblings?

I remember Dad talking about Uncle Dave Wright. Later on in the years, he was postmaster of Washougal, in the early 1900s. Then there was Jim Wright and George Wright and Lon Wright. And there were two girls. One of them was the grandmother of the lady, Edith Babb, who died two or three years ago, and she was 107 when she died. And she liked to dance and could dance right up until shortly before she died. A distant cousin.

Stephen Wright Jr., the one that homesteaded this in ’77, he died in 1906, something like that. His wife, his first wife, Sarah, she came from California and just when they were married I don’t know.

My dad, Clarence Wright, was born in 1879 on this place. They had several children along there. In 1881 there were six of them died in a six-week period. It was June and July of 1881. Six of them died. Diphtheria. Or scarlet fever. I’m not sure about that. Dad used to tell about that. He said diphtheria all the time.

Dad was 2 years old at the time and a next-door neighbor said, “Let’s try kerosene.” So they gave him a dose of kerosene, which was poison, which was what they used for the lamps, kerosene or coal oil. And that’s supposed to have been what saved him. He was the only one that lived then. Later they had another child and it died at birth. Then she had another one in 1883, I think it was, Uncle Ed, and he lived and he was the only uncle I had then, on that side.

Then Sarah Wright, the mother, died in 1888 at the age of 32 years old and she had nine children and seven of them died before she did. I never did know [what she died of].

Then Stephen Wright remarried, and, in the records I have with the old abstract, it said [they divorced because] “Due to her cantankerous nature, I can no longer live with her.”