Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

My dream genealogy staycation

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I’ve been very busy helping clients get organized recently and just have not taken the time to do genealogy research. I’ve been out all day most days and when I come home it’s all I can do to wrangle my email and get ready for the next day before collapsing with a glass of wine. (Well, it’s not quite that dramatic, but you get the idea.)

I find myself fantasizing about taking an entire week off to spend on doing genealogy research. In this dream stay-cation, I’d probably do the following:

That sounds like more than a week’s worth of activities, actually. But the truth is that the chances I would actually take a week away from clients and running my organizing business is pretty remote.

But you know what? I don’t need a week off to dig into this stuff. Heck, I don’t need an afternoon off. If I can capture an hour here or there, I’ll make progress.  And if I managed to put in 30 minutes most days, I’d make huge progress. It’s just like I tell my clients about decluttering: 15 or 30 minutes a day can make all the difference in the world. In fact, I got out my calculator and figured it out. If you declutter (or do family history research) for 3o minutes a day, five days a week, for a year , it comes to 130 hours. That’s more than three work weeks!

I still love the idea of focusing my efforts for an entire week. But for now, I’ll try to wedge about a half hour a day in and see what progress I can make!

Where was I?

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I can use this form to plan my next family history research session

For me, the biggest impediment to starting a research session is not knowing exactly what to work on. Today, I was reading an article on what to do with the last few minutes of the workday and was struck by a suggestion from Julie Morgenstern, a hugely successful professional organizer. She suggests spending a couple of minutes to identify the most important thing you’ll do in the first hour of work the next day.

I do something like this for my work life (I plan the top four priorities for tomorrow), but it occurred to me this could be really useful for my family history research. If, at the end of each research session, I identified a few things to work on in the next session, the question of what to work on would disappear. I’ve flirted with this before, but what struck me today was that I could create a form (I love forms!) that I would fill out at the end of each session and keep it handy for the beginning of the next session.

I have a similar form for my work day (here’s a link to it on Pinterest), so I adapted it for my family history research. It’s pictured on this post. At the top I have the top four research items to work on. At the bottom, I have a checklist of things to make sure I do as I close up the session.

I think this form will go a long way toward getting me past that barrier to getting started. And making it easier to get started will help me carve out little bits of time to do my research.

 

 

The emotional roller coaster of family history research

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Last week I was so excited because I had (finally) followed up on a request I’d made for an ancestor’s death certificate. I anxiously awaited the arrival of the document, thinking about all the info I would glean from it.

It arrived yesterday and, indeed, there was plenty of information on it. Unfortunately, the information pointed to the fact that this George Washington Adams wasn’t my George Washington Adams, my grandfather’s grandfather. His parents’ names aren’t familiar to me so I  doubt that I’m even related to this guy.

What a disappointment. But I’ll keep looking to try to locate more information on my great great grandfather. I think the large amount of time that elapsed since I first found the index that made me think I could get my hands on his death certificate makes the disappointment event greater.

I’ll redouble my efforts (try re-searching databases I’ve searched before, perhaps) and report here if I find what I’m looking for.

Reminder to myself: Follow up!

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geowadamssoldiershomecroppedOn January 3, I wrote to the Vermilion, Illinois, County Clerk’s office, requesting a death certificate for George Washington Adams (my paternal grandfather’s grandfather), who I believe died at the National Home for Disabled Volunteers Soldier in Danville, Illinois. I had located a George Washington Adams of the right age at the home on the 1930 census and found a listing for a George Washington Adams in the Illinois Death Certificates Database . (“George Washington Adams” is an amazingly common name, by the way.)

Anyway, I wrote away for the death certificate, noted that the $12 check had been cashed, and never received acknowledgment. I figured it meant that no death certificate was available. Today,  four months later, I finally got around to calling the County Clerk’s office and inquiring. It turns out those efficient people had mailed the death certificate to me on January 8. I just never received it.

So I’m sending another check and they’re sending me another death certificate. I’m considerably cheered by the prospect that I’ll be able (I hope) to verify that this is indeed my George Washington Adams and that I’ll be able to glean some more information about him from it. Then I can go to Fold3 and start gathering information on his Civil War service.

The moral of the story: Next time I write for some information that I don’t receive, I’ll pick up the phone and inquire, rather than assuming the information wasn’t available!