Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

October 2021 30 x 30 wrap up!

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It’s the end of another 30 x 30 challenge and it’s time to share how you did. I’m sorry to say that I did not have a good month. As I mentioned in the mid-month check in, I had trouble remembering in the first half of the month. Things got worse in the second half because I was in Walla Walla visiting my family from October 18 to 28. I had some nice reminiscing time with my father and my aunt, but mostly I was kept so busy with various tasks for them (and my brother) that I did virtually no research. I was able to process a few documents from my backlog on the airplane, but overall, the last half of the month feels like a wash.

But you know what? I’m cutting myself a lot of slack. I was not able to prioritize genealogy research and that’s okay. I know better months are in my future!

If you participated in the challenge, please let us know in the comments how it went. I’m hopeful it went well for you, but there’s no shame in admitting you didn’t have a great month.

I plan to do another challenge in December or in January, depending on how my December looks.

Quick Tip #27: Read the instructions to enumerators

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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 one can be very helpful for census research.

Read the instructions to enumerators

When you’re processing a U.S. census record, it’s tempting to record the big information, like birth year and place and occupation, and leave it at that. But there are lots of other pieces of information that you can capture, which can vary by census year. Sometimes it’s not easy to understand exactly what the word or code written in a column refers to, and that’s where the instructions to enumerators come in.

Whenever I take the time to read the instructions, I benefit. They’re easy to find on the historical instructions page on  U.S. Census website or a simple google search like “instructions to enumerators 1910 census” will take you right there. In my experience, the quality of the work of enumerators is variable, so we don’t know for a fact that the enumerator followed the instructions precisely. But at least we can find out what the answer is supposed to mean!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

The keyboard shortcuts I use most in my genealogy research

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There are certain keyboard shortcuts I use all the time when I’m doing genealogy research. They save time and effort. I bet you’re using some, if not all, of them too. The list below is Mac-specific, but the ⌘ key (the Command key on a Mac) is the same as the Control key in Windows in most of the browser and text functions described below. I thought I’d share them here in case they’re helpful. I figure everyone can use some time-saving tips!

In Finder:

⌘-D: Duplicates the selected file

⌘-delete: Deletes the selected file without having to confirm

⌘-I: Opens the Get Info window, giving me a backend look at the selected file. (This is where I paste the source citation I’ve created for this document, in the Comments section. See step 5 of this post for more information on that.)

Spacebar: Uses Quick Look to preview the selected file

⌘-N: Opens a new finder window (very handy when you want to drag a file into another folder)

In a browser:

⌘-T: Opens a new browser tab

⌘-N: Opens a new browser window

⌘-F: Find text

When dealing with text (in Pages or Reunion or elsewhere):

⌘-C: Copies the selected text

⌘-X: Cuts the selected text

⌘-V: Pastes the selected text

⌘-B: Bolds the selected text

⌘-I: Italicizes the selected text

⌘-Z: Undoes the last command (on a Windows computer, it’s Ctrl-Y)

Shift-⌘-Z: Redo the last undone command

⌘-K: Opens a pop-up window to add a link to the selected text

fn-delete: Deletes one character to the right

I think I used half of these while writing this post! If I’ve missed any favorites, please share in the comments.

 

30 x 30 mid-month check in

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We’re at the halfway point of the October 2021 30 x 30 challenge. How is it going?

I have to admit I’m not having a great challenge. I kept forgetting at the beginning of the month, so I missed a couple of days. Then I remembered, but didn’t have time to research much. So I’ve managed to do some research–but nowhere near 30 minutes–all but three days. I have hopes that I’ll have time for some long research sessions in the remainder of the month to make up some of the time. But even if I don’t, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to connect with my research almost daily.

How about you? If you’re participating in the challenge, please let everyone know in the comments how your month is going.