Organize Your Family History

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A successful 30 x 30 challenge

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30x30 challengeMy November 30 x 30 challenge ended yesterday. (It went from November 2 to December 1.) During that time, I pledged to work at least 30 minutes per day for 30 days.

I ended up missing three days. My brother has been visiting from Australia since November 21 and his visit disrupted my routine enough that I forgot to do research a couple of times. (But I researched more than 30 minutes a number of those days, so I got my time in.) I learned earlier this year that the best time for me to work on genealogy is first thing in the morning. That strategy allowed me to do research while my brother slept in the morning.

With the exception of a couple of days, November’s work was all about the Civil War pension file of my great great grandfather, George W. Adams. I have now transcribed 26 of the 138 documents in the file, a drop in the bucket. But this exercise has confirmed for me that slow and steady wins the race. I plan to continue with my daily efforts in hopes that I can finish transcribing and abstracting the file before too much time has passed.

The file contains some details about my great great grandfather’s second wife and one day that sent me galloping off in search of more information about her. But I reminded myself of my moratorium on bringing in new information and the next day I was back to the task at hand.

I can imagine that some people might find this approach boring, but I’m finding it easy and reassuring to know what I’m going to be working on each day and to make progress each and every day.

Next week I travel to Washington state to visit my family so it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to keep up my daily effort. But I still have the advantage of being an early riser, so I remain hopeful.

If you participated in the challenge, how did you do?

The value of the 30×30 challenge

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30x30 challengeTwo weeks ago, I started a 30 x 30 challenge in which I committed to working at least 30 minutes each day on my family history research for 30 days. My challenge goes from November 2 to December 1.

I’m happy to say that I’ve kept with my commitment, with the exception of Election Day, November 8. I was able to cut myself some slack over that (because: Election Day), especially since I spent the bulk of the day on November 6 working on my project.

During these past two weeks, I’ve been working on processing my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, which I received in the mail last year from the National Archives. What do I mean by processing? I detailed the procedure in a previous post, but in a nutshell, this is the drill:

  1. Put the documents in chronological order (they were in no particular order)
  2. Number the documents.
  3. Create a label for each with a source citation.
  4. Affix the labels.
  5. Scan the whole thing.
  6. Transcribe each document
  7. Abstract each document (that is, pluck out the salient data from each record).

I did this for the first of the three Union pension files I have, for my 3rd great grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries. The transcribing took place during an August 2015 30 x 30 challenge. It was a really beneficial effort.

For this current file, that of George Washington Adams, the task is more daunting. R.A. Jeffries had 27 documents in his file. G.W. Adams had 138. That’s right, five times as many.

I had already put the documents in order and started the labels some time in the last year. During this month’s 30 x 30 challenge I finished the labels, did the scanning and am now in transcribing mode. At least with the early documents, I find I can get about one document transcribed in 30 minutes. Sometimes I’ll also fit in abstracting a document in that time frame. So far, I have seven documents transcribed. Only 131 to go.

Obviously, if I do this 30 minutes at a time it will take several months of daily effort to complete. I’m going to try to put more than a half hour in most days. But I can tell you one great benefit of the challenge: If I hadn’t committed to 30 minutes a day, I think I’d have hesitated to get started because the task is so daunting. I have another couple of weeks in the challenge and by the end of it at least I’ll have a toe hold on the project.

The good news is that the information gets more interesting the further into the pension file I get. (There were some allegations of wrongdoing.) So a carrot is being dangled in front of my nose. And some of those later documents are really short so they shouldn’t take so long to transcribe.

I’m so grateful to have this focus and this time limit to get me through this somewhat tedious, if rewarding, project.

How about you? If you signed on to do the 30 x 30 challenge, how’s it going?

Time for a new 30 x 30 challenge!

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30x30 challengeIt’s been ten months since I implemented a 30 x 30 challenge, in which I challenged myself to do genealogy research for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. I started this new challenge on Wednesday, so my 30 days will go from November 2 to December 1.

I did this in August 2015 with great results. My attempt to do another one in January 2016 was ill-fated, thanks to the potent combination of a new puppy and a typically busy January for my organizing business.

For many people November is a busy time, what with Thanksgiving and the December holidays coming up. That’s not really the case for me; I don’t have to do any work for Thanksgiving and my Christmas responsibilities are limited to holiday cards. I will be enjoying a visit from my brother (who lives in Australia) during this time, but he won’t prevent me from doing genealogy research.

Thanks to my moratorium on bringing in new information, I’m newly focused on processing the rather complicated pension file of my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1845-1938), who fought with the 35th Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. While living in the U.S. National Home for Volunteer Disabled Soldiers in Danville, Illinois, in the 1920s, he was turned in for not being as disabled as he said he was on his pension application. Investigations  and appeals ensued (he even got his senator involved). That made for a lot of documents to process–more than 150 pages worth! But it’s a true treasure trove of information and paints quite a picture of my ancestor.

I don’t think I’ll have a problem putting in 30 minutes (or more) a day, if life stays on an even keel.

Would anyone like to join me on a 30 x 30 challenge?

ETA: Commenter Maria asked for a photo of my puppy Bix, who just turned one. Here’s a favorite: celebrating victory after removing a squeaker from a toy. He loves destroying toys!

bixsqueaker

Find help at National Archives’ new History Hub

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historyhubimageI listened to a portion of the National Archives and Records Administration’s Virtual Genealogy Fair this week. It was terrific. For me, there were two big discoveries and a revelation.

First the discoveries:

  1. The talks, slides and handouts from this year’s Virtual Fair — as well as those from the last three Fairs–are freely available online. So if you missed a talk, or just want to revisit one, it’s there for you. (That took the pressure off to sit at my desk all day!) Click to access the 2015 Fair. Here’s 2014. And 2013.
  2. The National Archives has a new website, History Hub, in beta mode. I think it’s really promising. (More on that in a moment.)

I’ll share the revelation with you next week.

I don’t know about you, but I have always found the NARA website to be challenging to navigate. I know there’s info there (and am I’m so glad I figured out how to find my ancestors’ Civil War pension files), but tracking it down can take some effort.

The talk called Innovative Online Resources and Tools to Help with Your Genealogical Research provided some insight into how to navigate the NARA website. It’s worth checking out the talk if you find the NARA website challenging. In the first part of the talk, presenter Sarah Swanson, pointed out ways to navigate the site, and she revealed the many aspects of the site I had overlooked (including a link to the NARA YouTube channel and 16 NARA special-interest blogs!). I’m going to go through the session slides again and familiarize myself with how I can access the vast online holdings. It will also help me plan a research trip to NARA in Washington, DC, perhaps next year.

The second of the talk was about History Hub, which is described as “A support community managed by the National Archives for researchers, citizen historians, archival professionals, and open government advocates.”  The speaker, Kelly Osborn from NARA’s Innovation Office, likened History Hub to the Apple Support Community. If you’ve ever had a problem on an Apple product and googled it, you’ve probably ended up in the Apple Support Community where your question might be answered by an Apple employee or by a fellow Apple user. You might have asked the question yourself or got you needed by reading the answers to someone else’s question. That’s what the National Archives wants to do with History Hub–it’ll be a place where people can get their genealogy questions answered and learn from others’ questions. I think it’s an amazing idea.

Of course, History Hub is the kind of site that will only get better with age as more people use it and offer their expertise. The idea that I can tap into the knowledge of a subject matter expert from the National Archives–as well as other knowledgeable people–is really exciting. The site is searchable and has discussion boards, blogs and community pages. I think it has huge potential and I think it’s really great that the National Archives is embracing innovation this way.

By the way, if you’re getting an error message when you click on the History Hub link, try it in another browser. I found that the link works in Safari and Chrome, but not in Firefox, at least on my computer.