Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

End-of-the-year sale on Orderly Roots guides!

By 4 Comments

Need a little extra help and motivation getting organized in the new year? Then I have a special sale for you.  I currently offer three Orderly Roots guides, downloadable pdfs that I’ve written on topics surrounding organizing your genealogy research. I’m in the process of writing more and hope to publish a new one very soon.

In the meantime, in the spirit of getting organized for the new year, I’m offering a very special sale on the existing guides. Today through Sunday, you can buy all three Orderly Roots guides for the price of one! Put all three in your cart and use the promo code NEWYEAR at checkout and you’ll be charged only $9.00. (The sale doesn’t include the Paperless Genealogy Guide.)

Don’t wait! The coupon code expires at 12:01 am central time on January 4.

 

Quick Tip #12: Don’t enter a fact without creating a source citation

By 2 Comments

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. I think this tip is an especially important one.

Don’t enter a fact without creating a source citation

When I first caught the genealogy bug at the turn of this century, I wrote down facts willy nilly without bothering to note where the fact came from. My “research” progressed quickly, but I ended up with an unreliable mess. I abandoned researching for a number of years and when I came back to in 2011 I vowed never to enter a fact into my database without creating a source citation and assigning that source to the fact.

That policy has served me well and is part of my digital workflow. Having a source for every single fact in my Reunion database means that when conflicting information come up, I can easily evaluate the sources and make a determination on what is more likely to be true. It gives me confidence in my research. And it makes my research more credible (and valuable) to others.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

30 x 30 challenge: How’s it going?

By 11 Comments

Here it is, December 15 already. We’re halfway through this 30 x 30 challenge. How’s it going?

I can tell you with certainty that if it weren’t for the challenge I’d be getting a lot less research done. I have researched every day except two (when I forgot or just plum ran out of time). It’s been a busier-than-expected month and I haven’t squeezed in 30 minutes every session. But I’m pleased with my consistency. And I’m hopeful I’ll have some time for a long session where I can make up the difference so that I’ll at least have averaged 30 minutes a day. I’m pleased to say that my backlog has grown only a tiny bit this month! I’ve been better about processing documents in the session I download them.

How about you? If you signed on to the challenge, has it been helpful? Are you getting in your 30 minutes in (and being kind to yourself if you’re not)?

I look forward to reading your comments!

A small enhancement to my genealogy map

By 14 Comments

A small enhancement to my ancestor mapAs I’ve blogged here before, I have an ancestor map hanging on the wall with pins in it for the birth and death/burial places for my direct-line ancestors, up to my third great grandparents. I enjoy looking at it and I love how it makes migration more visible.

I initially started with a map that I pinned over a bulletin board I already had. But that board was bowed. So I put the map onto a thin sheet of cork on top of a piece of foam core, and placed the whole little parfait into a DIY frame. But over time the edges of the map kept pulling out of the frame, so I ended up buying an identical framed map and repinning everything. (So my advice to you if you’re interested in starting a similar project is to cut straight to the pre-framed map.)

The other day I made one tiny enhancement that I wanted to share. The map came with short pushpins with colored heads. On the map, I use longer pins, also with colored heads, so that I can add flags to them indicating the person the pin represents. I took the short pushpins and put them in the areas that I have personally visited for my genealogy research. Primarily that’s cemeteries, though I have spent some time at repositories in Kentucky. Click on the link above to see a larger version of the photos where those shorter pins are more visible.

I was pleased to see that I was able to add four pushpins representing visits to Kentucky, Nebraska, Alabama and western Missouri. I’ve visited graves of ancestors in all four of my lines (Adams, Brown, Rasco and Jeffries). I hadn’t really realized that before this exercise and that makes me feel happy.

The next time I travel to a new place for research, I’ll be delighted to add a pin to the map!

Join the mailing list!

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.