Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

The value of the 30×30 challenge

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30x30 challengeTwo weeks ago, I started a 30 x 30 challenge in which I committed to working at least 30 minutes each day on my family history research for 30 days. My challenge goes from November 2 to December 1.

I’m happy to say that I’ve kept with my commitment, with the exception of Election Day, November 8. I was able to cut myself some slack over that (because: Election Day), especially since I spent the bulk of the day on November 6 working on my project.

During these past two weeks, I’ve been working on processing my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, which I received in the mail last year from the National Archives. What do I mean by processing? I detailed the procedure in a previous post, but in a nutshell, this is the drill:

  1. Put the documents in chronological order (they were in no particular order)
  2. Number the documents.
  3. Create a label for each with a source citation.
  4. Affix the labels.
  5. Scan the whole thing.
  6. Transcribe each document
  7. Abstract each document (that is, pluck out the salient data from each record).

I did this for the first of the three Union pension files I have, for my 3rd great grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries. The transcribing took place during an August 2015 30 x 30 challenge. It was a really beneficial effort.

For this current file, that of George Washington Adams, the task is more daunting. R.A. Jeffries had 27 documents in his file. G.W. Adams had 138. That’s right, five times as many.

I had already put the documents in order and started the labels some time in the last year. During this month’s 30 x 30 challenge I finished the labels, did the scanning and am now in transcribing mode. At least with the early documents, I find I can get about one document transcribed in 30 minutes. Sometimes I’ll also fit in abstracting a document in that time frame. So far, I have seven documents transcribed. Only 131 to go.

Obviously, if I do this 30 minutes at a time it will take several months of daily effort to complete. I’m going to try to put more than a half hour in most days. But I can tell you one great benefit of the challenge: If I hadn’t committed to 30 minutes a day, I think I’d have hesitated to get started because the task is so daunting. I have another couple of weeks in the challenge and by the end of it at least I’ll have a toe hold on the project.

The good news is that the information gets more interesting the further into the pension file I get. (There were some allegations of wrongdoing.) So a carrot is being dangled in front of my nose. And some of those later documents are really short so they shouldn’t take so long to transcribe.

I’m so grateful to have this focus and this time limit to get me through this somewhat tedious, if rewarding, project.

How about you? If you signed on to do the 30 x 30 challenge, how’s it going?

Figuring out what’s relevant

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Figuring out what's relevantWhen you’re doing genealogy research, it’s easy to stumble on facts you’re not looking for. Let’s say you’re researching your great grandfather. Ancestry gives you all sorts of information about his brother. Do you take the time to carefully document the information on the brother?

This isn’t exactly hypothetical. This happened to me this morning. Five years ago, I would have skipped that information and kept my focus on my great grandfather. Now I know better.

After about ten years of genealogy research, there’s one thing I’m pretty sure about.

Every documented fact is relevant. Or might be some day.

Why should I bother to document the marriage certificate and draft registrations for Garry Jeffries (brother of my great grandfather James E. Jeffries)? Here are a few reasons that pop to mind:

  • I get a clearer picture of my family.
  • I might be able to help one of his descendants, a cousin of mine, one day by including this information in my family tree.
  • Down the road I may learn something about the relationship between my great grandfather and his brothers and this information might help connect the dots.
  • As commenter Marcia Philbrick said, “Those brothers, sisters and their descendants may be the clue to break through brick walls.” (Thank you, Marcia!)

I’m sure that’s just the beginning. Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that since I can’t see what puzzle pieces I’m going to need in the future, it benefits me to take the time to record and download all the documents I come across, even if they’re not for my direct line ancestors. (Here’s how I process that information.) It can feel tedious and also feel like it’s taking me away from my “real” research. But I think it’s worth it.

After all, genealogy research is a marathon, not a sprint.

The value of transcribing

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The value of transcribing documentsWhen I took Julie Miller‘s class at the NGS conference, Anatomy of a Military Pension, I felt inspired and motivated. I went home that night and ordered the pension files from my three Union soldier ancestors. I took her advice on how to process the files. Starting with the first one that arrived (for my 3d great grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries, 1823-1914), I put the papers in the file in chronological order, created citations for each of the 26 documents, scanned the documents into one file and am now in the process of transcribing them.

When Julie told us to transcribe the documents, I remember thinking that sounded like way too much work. I had trouble picturing myself taking the time to do it. But Julie urged us not to skip that step. She said that when we transcribe, we learn things we would learn no other way. So I decided to take her advice. I’m now in the middle of transcribing this pension file. (I’m on document 19 of 26.) It’s what I’ve been doing daily in my 30 x 30 challenge–I find that it takes about 30 minutes to transcribe one document.

I am so glad I’m making effort! Reading and typing the documents word for word means that I’m not just skimming; I’m digesting what the documents say. I’m memorizing important dates and items that appear on every form. (He fought in Co. D, 18th Regiment, Missouri Infantry Volunteers–those words came out of my memory.)

I’ve learned things that I never would have noticed in a simple reading of the file. For example, his first (unfortunately unsuccessful) pension lawyer was a woman. In 1886! It’s also allowed me to really get to know this ancestor. He was a smallish man, 5 feet 8 inches, with dark hair and complexion and blue eyes. I’ve read and internalized in exquisite detail his physical ailments as he’s aged. Each application for an increase in pension is accompanied by a doctor’s report, some of which are quite personal in nature.

The next step, once I’ve finished transcribing, will be abstracting the data and entering it into my Reunion software. The pension file has been really helpful, revealing heretofore unknown-to-me between-census information, like the fact that he lived in the state of Washington for part of the first decade of the 20th century before moving back to Missouri. (Maybe some day I’ll find out how he traveled to and from Washington.)

I have two more ancestors’ files to process–one of them, for G.W. Adams, 1845-1938,  has over 100 individual documents (as opposed to the 26 of R.A. Jeffries). It’s going to take me awhile. But, as I know already, there is gold to mine from these amazing pieces of history. And I know that going to the trouble to transcribe will help me mine it even better.

Time-management wisdom from Joshua Taylor

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djoshuataylorcropI’m a professional organizer and I routinely give time-management advice to my clients who want it. But, as regular readers of this blog know, managing my genealogy research time is a work in progress for me. I struggle with staying focused, knowing what to work on and combating overwhelm.

That changed a little on Saturday. I was fortunate to be in the audience at the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois’s annual conference. The speaker was D. Joshua Taylor, professional genealogist and truly organized person. Joshua has been doing genealogy research since he was 10 years old and had his first professional clients while he was in high school. He is the president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the director of family history for FindMyPast.com. He is paid to do genealogy research for others, but he still works on his own genealogy research on a regular basis.

Joshua gave four talks at the GSSI conference, all of them terrific. He’s clearly a very thorough researcher; I was very impressed with the tenacity that came through in his talks. He leaves no stone unturned in his research.

While all four talks were really valuable, one talk that really blew me away. It was The Modern Genealogist: Timesaving Tips for Every Researcher, in which he outlined how he stays happy and focused while exploring his roots. Here were my big takeaways:

  • He works on only 1 to 3 projects/problems at a time, along 3 to 5 extended projects (brick walls).
  • If he comes across something else he wants to check out, he just adds it to his project list to work on in the future. (The discipline of that amazes me.)
  • For each research project, he sets a manageable goal and commits to a finished product, putting the research into some sort of meaningful form. I love that he knows what success looks like, in advance.
  • He plans each research session before he starts.
  • He writes a mini-research report for each research session, even when he’s doing it for his own research.
  • He reviews his research log every month or two to see what he’s missed and what he can apply to other families.

One benefit to working on just a few projects at a time, he said, is that you have a fighting chance of completing them. “I would rather leave behind 3 to 5 completed projects than 50 started, but not completed, projects,” he said. I was impressed that such a young man (I think he’s about 30, if that) thinks about his legacy–that’s probably a byproduct of being a genealogist, isn’t it?

When I got home from the conference, I immediately identified the three projects I’m allowing myself to focus on at this time. It’s been absolutely liberating–I don’t have to try to figure out what to work, which makes it much easier to get started. I will keep you posted how this all plays out, but I’m feeling very good about following Joshua’s excellent advice.

One other mind-blowing revelation at the conference was that Joshua and I are cousins. I’m going to repeat that, because it’s so amazing. Joshua and I are cousins. Our common ancestors are my third great grandparents, Joseph Price (1820-1904) and Mary Puffenbarger (1823-1896). (It’s Mary’s grave that I used aluminum foil to read in my blog post Reading hard-to-read gravestones.) How did I discover that? Like many good genealogy lecturers, Joshua used his own research in examples. In his very first talk of the day, he mentioned Joseph and Mary, much to my excitement. Joseph Price is one of Joshua’s brick walls, so it’s conceivable that I might, at some point, be able to give him a hand. That would be a dream come true!