Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Who’s up for a 30 x 30 challenge?

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I thought it might be fun to do a 30 x 30 challenge next month. If you participate, you commit to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research/organizing/whatever for 30 days in a row (i.e. the month of November). The “rules” of this challenge are very fluid. For example, you could decide that, for you, 30 minutes daily translates into 15 hours of activity over the course of the month. And, if you’re in the U.S., you could use Thanksgiving weekend to get in the bulk of the time. Whatever motivates you is great.

I’m personally not doing a lot of genealogy research these days but I think I’ll use the challenge for blogging. I have three blogs: this one, my organizing blog at Peace of Mind Organizing, and my YNAB blog at Peace of Mind Spending. I’d like to spend 30 minutes a day working on at least one of the blogs. I’m going to adapt the rules (see what I mean about fluid?) to mean 30 minutes each weekday and I’ll take the weekend off.

If you’re up for the challenge, please let me know in the comments. I always hearing what you plan to work on during the challenge!

How I store my genealogy data

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I originally wrote this post in 2016 and nine years later I’m amazed how little has changed about how I handle my electronic genealogy data. The only differences are that I’m using a newer version of Reunion, I moved my research notes from Evernote to Apple’s Notes app, and I use Backblaze, rather than CrashPlan Pro. Otherwise this method has stood the test of time and I have no regrets!

reuniononmac90I love organizing my family history research electronically. As I’ve mentioned here many times, I try not to print digital documents and instead store everything electronically where I can have easy access to it.

I don’t think I have been clear when I talk about storing my genealogy data electronically that I’m not talking about storing it as a family tree on Ancestry or Family Search. I’m talking about storing it on my hard drive.

To me, it would be folly to rely on an outside service to store my precious genealogy data. If the only copy of my information was at Ancestry, I would be required to renew my subscription to access my own data. Even storing all my information at a free site like Family Search feels risky to me. It’s conceivable that they could change their terms of service to something unacceptable to me. Or start charging for access. Or simply vanish. Another place that some people store their genealogy documents is Evernote. I think that can be a great way to have easy, searchable access to information. But I wouldn’t store genealogy documents on Evernote that I don’t also have on my hard drive. They could go belly up. (It happened with Springpad.)

I enter all of my data into family-tree software that resides on my laptop’s hard drive. I use Reunion 11, a Mac program. It can sync with the iPhone and iPad using the ReunionTouch app. I haven’t yet installed ReunionTouch because I take my Mac with me on research trips. I like that storing my data on my computer, rather than an online service, is that the information is accessible even when I don’t have an internet connection (if I have my computer with me).

Of course, I back up my hard drive, both on an external hard drive and with an online backup service (CrashPlan Pro). Backing up is critical.

I’m not saying that my way is the right way or the best way. But I’ll share with you my process for storing info, in case you find it helpful or interesting. So far, it’s working well for me.

When I find a sourced piece of information pertinent to my research this is what I do:

  1. Add the information to the appropriate person(s) in Reunion (or add a person if need be).
  2. Cite the source in Reunion.
  3. Download the information (or scan it if I found it in paper form).
  4. Attach an image of the source document to the source citation in Reunion.
  5. File the digital document in that ancestor’s electronic folder on my hard drive, copying it if it applies to more than one ancestor.
  6. Scour the source for further information.
  7. Make a note in Evernote if it sparks potential further research.

So far this feels good to me and I haven’t second guessed it.

How do you store your family tree information?

My progress-tracking spreadsheet

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I wrote this post, which is one of the most-read posts on this blog (more than 31,000 views!), way back in 2013. It got a great response, so I thought I’d run it again for newer readers. For me, being able to see at glance which documents I’ve found (or need to find) for my ancestors has been really helpful. I hope you find the post useful!

My memory is not what it used to be. And I’m finding the more family history research I do, the more I’m duplicating effort. In the process of researching one person, another person will pop into my mind. I’ll look for a record for that person, rejoice in finding it, then realize I’d already found it!

So in an effort to avoid that, as well help me in my never-ending quest to not feel overwhelmed about my genealogy research, this past weekend I created a series of progress-tracking spreadsheets. I was inspired by Miriam’s Census Spreadsheet, which is a Google Doc. I’m a Mac user and I used the Numbers program (similar to Excel) to create three spreadsheets (so far) that track progress, by ancestor, on finding the following records:

Sheet 1: BMD

  1. birth records
  2. marriage records
  3. death records
  4. burial records
  5. grave photos

Sheet 2: Censuses

On the first table (pictured above) I have a row for each ancestor (this is a work in progress…I’ve been adding info a generation at a time and up to my great-great grandparents), and a column for each U.S. Census. I fill in the square in blue if that record was found. A grey square indicates the ancestor wasn’t alive for that census. A blank (white) square indicates I still need to find this record. I also have a table of state censuses, so I can note those.

Sheet 3: Military

Here I track what military records I’ve found for each ancestor, by war or conflict. This one’s definitely a work in progress.

Going through this process helped me realize how much census work I’d done and how much more work I had to do to find birth, marriage and death records. I think these charts will help me feel a sense of accomplishment and also help me hone in on work that needs to be done. I’ll keep adding ancestors from Reunion, until I’m caught up, and then plan to keep up with the spreadsheet as I find more records.

My podcast is coming back!

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Heads up: This is not genealogy related!  I wanted to let you know that my co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I have decided to restart the weekly podcast, Getting to Good Enough, that we hosted for five years from 2018 to 2023. At that time, we decided to shut it down because it had stopped being fun and our lives had become a little complicated. But two years later we realized we missed talking with one another every week and we decided to bring it back.

Getting to Good Enough is a podcast about letting go of perfectionism so you can live life with more ease, less stress and a lot more laughter. It’s a free-wheeling conversation between two close friends who discuss life’s challenges and successes, all through the lens of letting go of perfectionism. Many of our listeners have told us it’s like sitting at the kitchen table with us while we chat over a cup of coffee.

In our first run, we published 254 episodes. They’re all still available to listen to. We’re relaunching with four “Best of GTGE” episodes, the second of which will be published tomorrow, August 14. The first new episodes will start airing on Thursday, September 4 and we’ll publish one every Thursday. And this time around, the podcast will be available in video as well as audio formats. You can listen on the website or on your podcast platform of choice. Or you can watch on YouTube.

Shannon and I both enjoy family history research and we did do one episode, Episode 20, focused on genealogy. If you want, you can listen to now if you’d like. I suspect the topic might come up in future episodes as well.

We recorded the first new episode yesterday and it was so fun to get back into it. We’re a little rusty, but I know it will get easier. Podcast technology has changed a lot in the last seven years, so we’re experiencing a bit of a learning curve. We figure it’s good for our brains.

If you enjoy listening to podcasts, I hope you’ll give us a try once the new episodes start airing on September 4! You can sign up at the podcast website to receive an email whenever new episodes are published.

We shot a little a trailer, if you’re interested. Be sure and watch to the end!