Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Generation By Generation: Book review and giveaway

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When I was offered a review copy of the new book, Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy, by Drew Smith, I was happy to accept. I’m a big fan of Drew’s work (and was thrilled when he did one of my How They Do It interviews back in 2017). I ended up receiving two copies of the book, so I’m offering a giveaway for one of them. (See the bottom of this post for details on the giveaway.)

Drew Smith has been doing genealogy since the 1990s and has been working as a genealogy educator for decades. This genealogy book, written for beginners, is the book that he wished he’d been able to read when he was first learning how to research his family. It’s divided into two parts. Part I For all Generations: Preparing to Research discusses preparing to do research. It provides a foundation of understanding about various facets of research, starting with Names, Places, Dates and Events and ending with a chapter on Using Online Repositories. You can bet I first turned to Chapter 4: Tools and Methods to Keep Us Organized. (Drew is the author of the 2016 book Organize Your Genealogy: Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher.) In that chapter, he succinctly and clearly lays out some ways to organize both digital and paper documents.

Part II Generation by Generation: Doing the Research is where things get innovative. Beginner genealogists are often advised to start with themselves and move up their family tree as their research progresses. Drew organizes Part II of this book in the same way, offering information about sources and record types for various time periods. Chapters include information about different types of records in each of these generations:

  • Generations after 1950 in the U.S.
  • Generations from 1880 to 1950 in the U.S.
  • Generations from 1850 to 1880 in the U.S.
  • Generations from 1776 to 1850 in the U.S.
  • Generations in British America before 1776
  • Generations outside the U.S. (in English)
  • Generations with Records in Other Languages

The bulk of Part II is obviously U.S. focused, so those genealogists (like me) whose families have been in the U.S. for generations will find this book especially helpful.

Like Drew, I wish a book like this had been around when I started doing genealogy research. It’s so clearly laid out and clearly written, with bits of humor tossed in. The depth of information is broad and Drew doesn’t go down rabbit holes, but he doesn’t just skim the surface. His explanation of the various types of DNA was one of the most easy to understand that I’ve read. The generational approach of Part II is very useful friendly and easy to apply to the moving-up-the-tree way that many people (including me) research. I’m not a beginner genealogist, but I benefited from the book!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS: If you’d like to win a free (physical) copy of the book, just leave a comment below and tell me how long you’ve been doing genealogy and how you think you’ll benefit from the book. To get an extra entry, share this blog post on Facebook. Be sure to tag Organize Your Family History so I see it. I will select a winner at random using the Random Number Generator and will let the winner know via email. Deadline is Friday, September 8, 2023 and I will reach out to the winner for a mailing address on Saturday, September 9.

PLEASE NOTE: THE GIVEAWAY IS OVER AND ENTRIES ARE CLOSED.

 

Got a brick wall?

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If you’re like every genealogist I know, you have at least one brick wall, a pesky ancestor for whom you haven’t been able to find more information. Actually, you probably have more than one. I know I do!

I’ve got good news for you! Genealogist extraordinaire Amy Johnson Crow is debuting a new eight-week individualized program called Beyond the Brick Wall. According to Amy’s website, “The Beyond the Brick Wall program is a combination of individualized coaching and genealogy education, based on Amy Johnson Crow’s proven WANDER research method. You will be putting into practice what you are learning, while having access to a professional genealogist to guide you through your research.” I think it sounds amazing. It’s limited to 20 participants, so you can get individual attention from Amy, who is so knowledgeable (and so nice)!

Registration opens today for the program, which starts September 20 and runs weekly through November 14. The program consists of a combination of pre-recorded presentations and interactive live sessions. The live sessions will begin at 7:00pm Eastern and last 60-90 minutes. The various components of the program are valued together at over $1500 and Amy is offering it all for $349.

Just go to her website to find loads of information and register for the program. If you sign up, please tell Amy I sent you!

Using Ancestry clues to find images at Family Search (screencast)

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Five years ago, I created a screencast of how I found my great aunt’s death certificate on family search after finding an FHL film number on Ancestry. While the user interfaces at Ancestry and Family Search may have changed a little in the last five years, I do think it’s useful information, so I decided to run that 2019 post again today.

Today I was doing some research on Ancestry. (I’ve finished my backlog project and have lifted my ban on searching–more on that in a future post.) I was looking for a death certificate for my grandmother’s sister whom I had just learned through Find A Grave had died at the age of six, in 1922.

A simple Birth/Marriage/Death records search produced a collection called Washington, Select Death Certificates, 1907-1960, but when I clicked on it, it said “No Image Text-only collection.” (A picture of that screen is at the top of this post.) I saw that there was a FHL film number, so I went to Family Search to try to track down the document.

I was successful in finding an image of the death certificate, though I had to jump through a few hoops. After I successfully downloaded and processed it, I decided to do a screencast of the process, in case it helps someone here.

Here’s the screencast:

A quick summary is that I searched on the film number in the catalog at Family Search, then when I got another No Image Available message there, I drilled down further to the actual microfilm number mentioned on Ancestry and did another search. That brought up the image. If it hadn’t, I would have gone to the image number (listed in the initial search result at Family Search) in that digitized microfilm. Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re told an image isn’t available!

You can find more information on using Family Search’s card catalog in this post from a year ago: Using the card catalog to find elusive documents on Family Search. And if you’re interested in how I processed that death certificate after I downloaded it, check out the blog post How I process a downloaded document. (For a deeper dive, check out my Orderly Roots guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow.)

Striving for “organized enough”

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Ten years ago this month, I wrote a post called Are you organized enough?. Today, I present an updated version of that post. In my  opinion, striving for organized enough is far superior to striving for perfectly organized. It’s easier and it’s more sustainable!

A lot of people (including me) strive to be organized, especially when it comes to their genealogy. There are over 43,000 members of the Facebook group, The Organized Genealogist! It’s obvious that many people are looking for ways to get their genealogy research organized.

That begs the question: What does being organized really mean?

I think the answer varies by the individual, but generally speaking, as a professional organizer, I believe that being organized means that you’re able to put your hands on what you want, when you want it (well, within a minute or two). I always discourage people from striving to be “perfectly organized” (because that’s not really possible) and instead go for “organized enough.”

So how do you become organized enough? When it comes to family history research, the path to being organized starts with picking out a system that will work for you. There’s no one right way to organize your genealogy records. Pick what you think will work for you and try to keep it simple.

The next step is to implement your system going forward.  Start immediately, with the next document you find. Don’t wait until you get through your backlog to start filing your incoming documents! The third step is to  deal with your backlog. That is, implement your system using the papers or files you already have.

The final, very important, step is to maintain your system regularly. You don’t want to wait for a backlog to build back up before filing again. Instead, file as you go along. When you acquire a new document  (be it paper or electronic) process and file it right away.

For me, the big difference in how I organize my genealogy files between now and when I first started getting interested in the hobby about two decades ago is that I no longer use paper files. All my documents are digital. I download, rather than print. And if something does come to me in printed form, I scan it. (This post, My process for downloaded documents, details my file-naming protocol and folder structure. They allow me to easily find any document on my hard drive.) I use Reunion software to keep track of my family tree and my sources. That gives me great peace of mind. (And, yes, I back everything up both on an external hard drive and in the cloud.)

The best part? My genealogy research doesn’t impinge on my physical space. The few paper files I’ve retained are in a rolling file cart that I tuck into a closet in my office. And my digital files reside tidily on my hard drive and in the cloud.

I’m not perfectly organized, not by a long shot. But I can find virtually everything I’m looking for quickly, so that makes me organized enough. And that also makes me happy.

If you’re interested in a deep dive on how I organize my own genealogy research, check out my Orderly Roots guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow.

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.