Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

30 x 30 challenge wrap up

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It’s January 30, the last day of this month’s 30 x 30 challenge. I’m curious: How did it go? Did you find that the challenge being in January helped a little? I think it helped me because I wanted to start the year off right.

Were you able to meet your goal? Even if you weren’t, did the challenge help you do more than you would have done without the challenge?

I had a great first 3/4 of the month. As I mentioned in the mid-month check in, I manged to research every day the first half of the month, even if I wasn’t able to put in a full 30 minutes. But I hit a snag with a trip I took on January 22. I was gone for five days and I was able to research only two of them. And then once I got home, I had to deal with a family health crisis (my brother in Walla Walla is very ill) which necessitated a last-minute trip there, so genealogy is completely off my radar.

But I feel very good about the work I was able to do and once life returns to normal I hope to hop back in. I’ll be going to Salt Lake City at the end of February for RootsTech and I hope to spend some time at the Family History Library, so that will be a big boost!

Please let me know in the comments how your challenge went!

What genealogy podcasts do you listen to?

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Podcasts are all the rage right now. I listen to them daily and enjoy a mixture of self-help, true crime and entertainment. I binge listen to some and listen to others as soon as they are published.

For some reason, I haven’t added a lot of genealogy podcasts to the line up. There are only two genealogy podcasts I listen to regularly. They are:

I’ve been fortunate enough to be a guest on both these shows.

I know I’m missing out on some great genealogy podcasts, so I turn to you. What genealogy podcasts do you listen to? I’d love to add your favorites to my play list.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Can’t come to RootsTech? Watch from home via a virtual pass

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Attending RootsTech isn’t possible for everyone, of course. (Though it’s so large sometimes it feels like everyone and his brother is there.) If you can’t attend in person you can purchase a virtual pass that allows you to watch a pre-selected group of 30 classes from the comfort of your home. The cost is $129 for the virtual pass alone or $79 if purchased as an add-on to an in-person registration. You have a year to view the recordings.

To see the line up of classes being offered in the virtual pass (it looks to me like a great lineup), check out the Virtual Pass page on the RootsTech website. You can also purchase your virtual pass on that page.

In the past some classes have been live streamed and that might well be the case this year. You can view past live streamed sessions now on the RootsTech Video Archive page.

I’m excited for RootsTech this year and am looking forward to presenting “The Imperfect Genealogist” there. If you haven’t already, please let me know in the comments if you’ll be attending. And if you’re going and haven’t downloaded the app yet, it is available!

Time for January 30 x 30 check in!

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It’s almost the middle of our January 30 x 30 challenge. For those of you who signed up, how is it going? Are you managing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or scanning or whatever it is you set out to do)?

My challenge was made a little extra challenging by travel. I was in Walla Walla, Washington, visiting my dad from January 3 to 12.  I’m happy to say that I did manage to research every day, but one of those days barely counts. The day I traveled home (a 12-hour journey by car and plane) I thought I’d get research done on the plane, but when I started working I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So the ten minutes I put in was barely productive. I give myself credit for at least trying, but execution was not impressive.

One thing that’s helped me get back on track is that yesterday, back at my desk, I decided to pull out my 2nd great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, which I’d received way back in 2015. At the NGS conference that year, I heard Julie Miller talk about these files: what they contain and how to process them. I immediately requested the complete pension files for my three Union veteran ancestors from the National Archives. I’ve already processed the other two but had not focused on the file of Benjamin Franklin Igleheart. Since I’ve turned my attention to the Igleheart line, this is a natural thing for me to work on.

Once I pulled it out of the file (I haven’t yet scanned it), I saw that I’d started by putting the pages in chronological order and created a source citation for the whole pension file. The next step is to create a source citation for each individual document, print the citation on a label and affix the label to the paper document before scanning the whole document. After it’s scanned, I’ll start transcribing it. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes creating the citations and their labels and got through about eleven documents before having to move on to something else. For the near future, this will be the project I’ll be working every day.

I’d forgotten how great it was to have a project like this that I can break down into tiny bites. I love knowing exactly what I’m going to be working on and I love that there are lots of little milestones in this giant project so I can celebrate my progress.

Enough about me. I hope your challenge is going well and I look forward to hearing about it in the comments!