Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Preparing for my repository trip

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Preparing for a genealogy research tripOn August 14, less than two weeks from now, I leave for my week-long research excursion to the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, a six-hour drive from my home in St. Louis. This is a National Genealogical Society research trip. I paid $750 (including hotel) and I am really excited to get my money’s worth!

I know I need to spend some time preparing so that my time there is well spent. With all the possibilities of things to research, narrowing it down is one of my biggest challenges. I went to a talk at the Midwestern Roots Family History and Genealogy Conference earlier this month on preparing for a repository trip (see my last post), so I have a game plan. After hearing that talk, as well as a talk on the library’s holdings, I’m planning to focus my research on one locality. I have a cluster of ancestors who lived in Kentucky in the 1800s to early 1900s. I’m going to focus on McLean and Muhlenberg Counties.

I have a multi-pronged approach to this research preparation:

  • Searching the library’s holdings for information on this locality and adding to a spreadsheet of specific books and microfilm rolls I want to look at.
  • Making sure the items I’ve found aren’t readily available on the internet, so I know my time at the library is spent looking at resources I can’t readily find elsewhere.
  • Looking through my existing research for holes, mysteries, and clues I could explore at the library. I’m adding those to a separate sheet on the spreadsheet. I won’t necessarily ignore non-Kentucky mysteries, but I’ll put them lower on my priority list.
  • I also plan to go through my paper files for those ancestors to make sure there aren’t any resources there that I didn’t manage to get on my hard drive. I’m thinking that I’ll take along my computer, but not my paper files, so I’ll try to scan and file anything I’d missed.

That’s a pretty labor-intensive list for two weeks but I’m trying to do a little each day and also spend more time with it on the weekends. I know that any effort at all will be beneficial, even if I don’t get to all of it.

I love the idea of homing in on one locality. That’s helping me stay focused and not feel overwhelmed.

Do any of you experienced researchers have any advice for me that you’d like to share?

Digging deeper

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diggingdeeperI really enjoyed the Midwestern Roots family history and genealogy conference I attended last weekend in Indianapolis. The speakers were excellent and the content was really rich. And I met three of my blog readers, Candace, Jean and Judi. It was great  sitting down with them and getting to know one them. And it was wonderful running into ready-made friends throughout the  conference.

My big take away from the conference is that I want to dig deeper about my ancestors. Looking back at my blog, I saw that I wrote about this 18 months ago when I returned from RootsTech, in a post called It’s not about climbing the tree. This has been a recurring theme in my research and my thought process. But this year it feels a little different, because I left with some real tools I can use for that excavation. And I have a week at the Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center next month where I can really get into it.

Here are some highlights of the conference for me:

  • I went to not one but three talks by Curt Witcher, the senior manager for special collections at the Allen County Public Library, in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He did the opening keynote on the importance of telling stories in genealogy. That prompted me to attend his talk on how find those stories. And then, of course, I went to his talk on the holdings of his library. He’s an amazing speaker–I’m pretty sure I’d sign up to hear him talk on just about anything. He has a wonderful sense of humor–there was  a great deal of laughter in all his talk. But he is also so expressive that he actually brought people (and himself) to tears in the opening session. His message of filling in the stories between the birth and death dates had a big impact on me.
  • A priority talk for me was the one by Deena Coutant about how to prepare for a repository trip. Luckily for me it was in the second session and it provided a great groundwork for my thoughts throughout the conference on how best to use the month I have before my trip the Allen County Public Library (the second largest genealogy library in the nation). And I know the preparation for that trip is going to be a critical component of making that trip a successful use of my time and money. And now I have some tools for that preparation!
  • I heard talks on using both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com. I have to admit that I use Ancestry more than Family Search, mostly because I find the latter’s user interface non-intuitive. But thanks to the talk by Deena Coutant (I heard her twice!) I feel I know my way around that site a bit better and I’m going to try to use it more. The talk by Ancestry’s Juliana Szucs on getting the most from Ancestry was eye-opening to me. I learned that searching within individual types of records and collection can reveal results not available with a top-level search. In other words, it’s worthwhile to dig deeper on Ancestry.
  • Cece Moore gave the opening keynote on the second day, about telling stories with DNA with anecdotes from the PBS program, “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates,” on which she serves as the genetic genealogy consultant and researcher. The talk was really fun and inspired me to try again to understand my DNA results and reach out to potential relatives who might be helpful with my genealogy research. It’s pretty easy for my mind to click off when it comes to DNA and I had put my quest for understanding on the back burner. Listening to CeCe helped me understand how helpful the clues you get from DNA test results can be. That is an area in which I will try to dig deeper.
  • And, lastly, I really enjoyed and benefited from Lisa Louise Cooke’s talk on new features of Google and how they can help genealogists. I have to admit that I consider myself an excellent Googler. But I don’t typically use the search operators Lisa explained (and, truth be told, I rarely use Google as a search tool for my genealogy research). I was thrilled to learn how to find results in Google Books and clip them with the built-in clipper, which creates a unique, sharable URL for the clipping. Wow! I also was inspired to give Google Earth another try. I’m going to try to incorporate Google more into my research toolkit.

As you can tell, the Midwestern Roots conference was really inspiring and energizing for me. I loved that a single theme emerged for me so strongly.  I am so excited to go back to Indiana for my trip to the Allen County Public Library in a month and so grateful to have learned some tools to prepare for it. I’ll blog more about that plan soon!

Photo by Eselsmann via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Just a little bit counts

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10minutetimerI’ve been trying hard to adhere to my new routine of doing genealogy research first thing in the morning. The trouble is that some mornings are busier than others. When I have an 8:30 client appointment it can be challenging for me to find the time to do research. My genealogy research is important to me, but it’s not urgent.

For the last month, I’ve done at least a little research almost every morning. I’ll set my timer for as little as ten minutes and research for that short amount of time. Since my current project is systematically going through my source documentation–which is actually proving to be really interesting and enjoyable–I know exactly where to start and I know that a little bit of focused time will move me along.

What I’ve discovered in doing this is that the benefit goes beyond furthering my research. Keeping myself engaged in my research on a daily basis makes me more excited to work on it. It also makes me feel more connected to my ancestors and helps me remember names and dates.

For the first half of the year I thought a lot about my genealogy research but I didn’t do a lot of it. Mostly I just felt anxious or guilty about not taking the time to work on it. These days, I’m still thinking a lot about it, but my thoughts are happy and productive. That’s a wonderful shift.

Doing just a tiny bit of daily action reaps big results. This is true in family history research. It’s also true in organizing your family history research. And let’s face it–it’s true in many other aspects of life, like exercise and healthy eating.

Daily habits are the foundation of an easy life. I’ve said that for years as a professional organizer. Now I’m seeing it come true in my genealogy research. I love it!

Looking forward to next weekend’s Midwestern Roots conference

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On Thursday, I head to Indianapolis for the Midwestern Roots Family History and Genealogy conference. I’m very excited. I see that it’s sold out! I’m sure it will be a stimulating, educational experience. I love conferences in general and especially love  genealogy conferences. I haven’t been to one in almost a year, so I feel past due!

The syllabus was posted yesterday and I just checked it out. I’m all the more excited! It looks like a terrific program. I see that there are a couple of sessions that will help me make the most of my week-long research trip to the Allen County Public Library next week. I’m so happy about that.

I saved the PDF of the syllabus to Evernote for easy access during the conference on my computer and phone, so I feel like I’m all set. (Hint for people who have registered: The password to open the syllabus is in the reservation acknowledgement email, with the subject line “IHS Confirmation.” It took me a minute to find it so I thought I’d save you the trouble.)

When I registered, I posted here and heard from a few readers who are also attending. I’ll be getting in touch this week to arrange to get together. If you’re attending and you’d like to meet (and we haven’t already communicated about it), please leave a comment or send me an email.

I’m very excited about this learning opportunity. And I look forward to multiplying the benefit by meeting readers of this blog!