Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

January 30 x 30 mid-month check in

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It’s (past) the middle of the month and it’s time for those of us doing the 30 x 30 challenge to check in and report on how it’s going! I haven’t missed a day, but I have had some days where I was not able to do a full 30 minutes of research. But my average is above 30 minutes a day (so far this month) because I was able to put in a couple of long sessions.

Last night I remembered at bedtime that I hadn’t researched, so I snuck in 15 minutes and processed a newspaper article from my backlog of unprocessed documents. My backlog, which numbered 88 on December 25, now stands at 28. I’m getting there!

One of the reasons I’ve been successful with this challenge is that on January 13 I tested positive for COVID. I’m vaccinated and boosted and I caught Omicron. My symptoms were mild (I felt crappy only one day) but I was required to isolate in the house for five days. It meant I had to cancel client appointments and a trip to Walla Walla so I’ve had lots of time at my computer. It’s been refreshing to be able to focus on my research! (That was definitely a silver lining about my catching COVID.)

How about you? If you’re one of the three dozen or so people who signed up for the challenge, how’s it going? Please let us know in the comments.

Learning to use Ancestry effectively

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Ancestry.com is my go-to website for my research. It’s typically my first stop when I’m looking for the answer to a research question. I’ve been using it with a lot of success for many years. As you may have noticed, they’ve recently changed the interface somewhat and I have to admit that’s thrown me for a bit of a loop.

So when I saw that Amy Johnson Crow was offering a workshop called All About Ancestry, I jumped at the chance to sign up. I took her similar workshop on Family Search last year and it was excellent. (Amy’s teaching style really clicks with the way I think. It’s not too slow or too fast…it’s just right.) One of the things I love about taking her workshops live is that she allows time for students to actually try out what she’s talking about on the website we’re learning about, using our own research questions.  And she leaves open plenty of time for questions.

Rather than signing up for the $99 four-part workshop, I decided to spring for her $270 Annual Pass. I’ll get the Ancestry workshop plus at least one other workshop and access to all the previous workshops, access to community forums, and a monthly members-only Q&A Zoom with Amy.

The All About Ancestry workshop starts next week. It will be held live at 6 pm central time on January 18, 20, 25 and 27, 2022.  Each session is recorded, so you can watch later it you’re not able to catch the live presentation. And you can listen to it repeatedly if you want to. The fee is $99. Learn more and register at Amy’s website.

If you sign up, let me know in the comments so I can look for you during the Zoom classes!

Keeping track of my backlog busting

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One of my primary goals in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge is to get rid of the formidable backlog of documents to be processed that I had let pile up. I had a backlog of 88 files that I had not processed. I disappoint myself when I do that. But I’m bound and determined to get caught up this month.

To help keep me motivated, I created a little spreadsheet as I’ve done in the past. Here’s what it looks like:

I started January with 77 backlogged files because I was able to reduce the number from 88 in late December. Here are a few things I like about this spreadsheet:

  • I can highlight the Amount of Time Worked column and see the total number of minutes for the month and average number of minutes worked per day. (Right now, I’m at 3 hours of work and an average of 32 minutes a day.)
  • Entering the numbers and watching the # remaining column go down is very motivating to me!
  • If I have to do a little research that results in my downloading documents in order to process a document, this spreadsheet takes that into account. I want to have a net reduction each session!

I do this in Numbers on my Mac, but it could easily be done in Excel or Google Sheets. I’ve also been keeping track of the types of documents I’m processing my informal Evernote research log.

I hope you find this a little bit helpful and that your 30 x 30 challenge is going as well as mine!

 

Quick Tip #31: Don’t forget to include counties

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This is one has come in handy over the years.

Don’t forget to include counties

When I add a place in my genealogy software, I always try to include the county, even if I have to look it up. I didn’t used to do that. But I’ve learned that including the county is beneficial for a couple of reasons: (1) Records are often held at the county level, so knowing the county your ancestor resided in is helpful and (2) It helps you differentiate whether a locality is a city/town or the county of the same name. One locality that is in my database is my hometown of Walla Walla, which is located in the county of Walla Walla, in the state of Washington. So I repeatedly type Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Washington. It’s a little tedious, but it actually makes me smile. That’s just one of several same-named cities and counties in my database. I find it’s worth the time to type it twice. And, of course, this applies to counties that don’t have the same name as the town or city.

If you don’t already routinely include the county when you’re identifying a locality as a matter of course, I encourage you to make it a habit!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash