Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

September 2024 30 x 30 challenge!

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Who is up for a last-minute 30 x 30 challenge! There’s something about the beginning of September that feels like such a fresh start. It seems like a great time for a 30 x 30 challenge. Who would like to join me for some daily research (or organizing or doing whatever you want to commit to)? We typically commit to 30 minutes for 30 days, though your goal can be whatever you want.

Because of all that’s going on in my life, I haven’t been doing much genealogy research. I can now share that we experienced a life changing event: my husband had a heart transplant on July 29. He came home from the hospital on August 27 and my role now is primarily that of caregiver. Actually, that just means I’m fetching stuff for him, reminding him to take his meds, accompanying him on walks and generally being encouraging. He’s doing quite well.

Now that Barry is out of the hospital, I have more time at home and I would like to focus my 30 x 30 challenge on my genealogy paper files. I don’t have a lot of them, but I did move all of them in June without going through them. So this month my goal is go through all the files (they fit in one file box) and scan those for which I don’t already have digital copies. I intend to keep very few, if any. I’ll do it 30 days in a row, unless I finish the project before then.

If you’d like to participate, just comment below. I’ll post a mid-month check in to see how it’s going for everyone and then we’ll wrap up at the end of the month.

30 x 30 June 2024 challenge: mid-month check-in

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For those of you participating in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge, how’s it going? Were you able to put in 30 minutes a day toward your goal? If not, did you end up doing more than you would have done had you not been doing the challenge?

You’ll recall that my commitment wasn’t for daily genealogy research this month, rather it was to work on getting ready for my move every day. The move is now five days away (gulp), on June 21, and you can bet that I’ve been working on it every day for way more than 30 minutes. I have professional organizers (my team members) coming in to help me pack this week and unpack starting Saturday. So the days in the coming week will be full but they’ll also be very productive.

I’m hopeful that you’ve had a productive month as well! Please let us know in the comments how your challenge is going.

How about a June 30 x 30 challenge?

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Sorry I’ve been writing so infrequently; I’m moving in (gulp) three weeks and have so much to do. But I realized today that I haven’t done a 30 x 30 challenge since January so I’d like to invite you to join me for one. Please comment below if you would like to commit to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or whatever projects suits you) for 30 days in a row in June.

Sadly, I won’t be joining you in the genealogy research. But I commit to putting in at least 30 minutes a day every day editing my belongings, finding homes for those I no longer want and packing those I do! It will probably be a lot more than 30 minutes a day, in fact.

Since I’m not researching as much these days, I used my move as an opportunity to get together with my genealogy buddy, Vickie Sheridan, and gave her my collection of National Genealogical Society Quarterlies and NGS Magazines. That felt great! I gave her a few genealogy books as well. It felt so good to find a good home for them.

Please let me know in the comments if you’re up for the challenge!

Contact that courthouse: It might pay off!

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Not all genealogy documents are available on the internetIt can be challenging for me to pick up the phone or even send an email when I can’t find what I’m looking for online. But in 2017, when I originally wrote this post, I had a beneficial experience by doing just that. I thought you might appreciate this little nudge to step away from your online searching, so I’m running this post again.

Like many people, I rely primarily on documents I find by searching the internet. When do I library or cemetery research trip, I find information not available online, but when I’m in my office, I search online and if I don’t find what I’m looking for I typically move on.

I know it’s possible to contact courthouses or state archives for documents but over the years I’ve done little of that. In the last couple of weeks, however, I hit the jackpot when I took that extra step.

I’ve been working on transcribing the Civil War pension file of George Washington Adams, my 2nd great grandfather. In it was a divorce decree for his 1920 divorce from his second wife, Della. (I’m descended from his first wife, Henrietta.) That piqued my curiosity because it gave George custody of their “infant son” and the only son I knew about was 12 at the time of the divorce. I wondered if there was another son and also why the 75-year-old father was given custody over the 50-year-old mother. The decree referred to pleadings and depositions in the case and I wanted to get my hands on those. It was Christmas, so I couldn’t pick up the phone (and I don’t like picking up the phone), so I wrote a letter to the Circuit Court Clerk of McLean county, Kentucky.

To my delight, just a few days letter, she got back to me telling me that the documents I sought were in the State Archives and giving me a little extra information to make easier for the archivist to find them. She also gave me a phone number for the Archives. So I called and talked to a lovely young man and gave him a credit card number. That very same day he emailed me photos of the entire file. I think it cost me $8. If I’d wanted, he would have mailed a certified copy but I didn’t want to wait that long. (And get this: He added another divorce petition that I didn’t even know about! Six years into their 14-year marriage, Della filed for divorce from George, but she must have dropped it.)

The 30-page divorce file he sent had numerous depositions and probably sparked as many questions as it answered, but it’s another treasure trove. Turns out there was only one son from this marriage, Horace, who was indeed 12 at the time of the divorce. Apparently the word infant was used differently 100 years ago! But George went into the Old Soldier’s Home just two years later, so now I need to find out what happened to teenage Horace! [Note from 2024 Janine: I did find Horace on the 2020 census living with his older half brother.]

Neither the pension file nor this divorce file are available online, though I did order the pension file online. Both are outstanding sources of information about this ancestor. I’m processing the divorce file like I’m processing the pension file, by transcribing the documents and properly sourcing every fact I glean from them.

I encourage you to look beyond those documents available online, even if you’re not in a position to travel. There’s a whole world of documents that haven’t yet been digitized!