Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Research your ancestors on their special days

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April 19 has always been a special day for me. It’s the birthday of my grandmother (Beatrix Flournoy Rasco Adams, 19 Apr 1907 to 23 May 1987) and it’s also my brother’s birthday. He turned 60 yesterday!

Taking note of April 19 reminded me of the great method of deciding what to research shared by Laura Aanenson on the Genealogy Research Loggers Facebook group last year. I blogged about it on January 20, 2017, in a post called Using a calendar to introduce variety into your research. (Laura’s blog is where2look4ancestors.)

In a nutshell, in 2017 Laura was using the calendar function in Family Tree Maker to help her decide to research every day. Each day, the names of those ancestors who were born or married or who died on that day came up on the calendar.  She would choose her research subject from that list.

I use Reunion, which also has a calendar function, but a commenter, Kim, shared the idea of using the Reminders feature in Reunion for the same purpose. I hadn’t even noticed the the Reminders feature. Since I’m pretty focused on my Adams line, I haven’t adopted this procedure. But I love the idea.

If you find this idea intriguing, I encourage you to read that post and to take in the comments as well. Thank you, Laura. This is such a great idea!

How many trees?

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How many family trees should you have?I’m occasionally asked how genealogy researchers should split up their family trees. Should they have a separate tree for each parent’s line? Each grandparent’s line? Just one tree?

It’s a question that I didn’t even consider when I set up my family tree in Reunion (the genealogy software I use on my Mac) and in Ancestry. To me, it made sense to start with myself and just work my way up one tree.

(If I were doing my husband’s tree, which may happen some day, I would have a separate tree for him, since our ancestors come from completely different places and have no relevance to one another.)

One thing I like about having all my ancestors together in one tree is that I can easily access a different ancestor if I’m chasing a clue. I use the quickbar button at the top of the Family View for instant access to my most researched ancestors. Or if a name seems familiar, but I’m not sure it’s my person, a quick search will reveal where that person resides in my tree. It’s easy and it works for me.

All that said, I have only 570 people in my tree. (Only verified people with cited source documents I’ve seen are added to my tree, which is my excuse for that number being so small.) If I had a much larger tree, perhaps I’d be singing a different tune.

So I’m curious: How many trees do you have? How have you divided them up? Do you have any regrets?

Unmodified photo by Nichole Renee via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Free access to Fold3’s Civil War records through April 15

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Free access to Fold3's Civil War collectionTo commemorate the start of the Civil War in 1861, Fold3 is making its Civil War collection available at no cost until April 15. The Civil War collection has 50 titles and 91 million records. Click here to learn more about it and get started.

Included in the collection are both Union and Confederate records. Titles available at no cost until the 15th include:

  • Civil War “Widow’s Pension” Files
  • Civil War Pensions Index
  • Confederate Service Records
  • Confederate Amnesty Papers
  • Southern Claims Commissions

As Fold3 points out in in its blog post about the free access, even if you can’t find your own ancestor at Fold3 you can use the collection to learn more about what his service might have been like.

If you don’t already subscribe to Fold3 and you have Civil War ancestors, this is a great opportunity to check out their plentiful holdings!

Select NGS conference sessions available for livestream

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I was hoping to attend the 2018 National Genealogical Society conference, which is being held 2 to 5 May 2018 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but I’m not going to be able to. However, I have the option (as do you!) of watching a few of the classes via livestream.  Registration is now open for livestreaming of ten of the 175 lectures being offered.

The sessions being streamed are offered on Friday, May 3 and Saturday, May 4. Friday’s five sessions focus on DNA, African-American research, and Loyalists. Saturday’s five livestreams focus on BCG Skillbuilding. For a complete list of the sessions being livestreamed, go to the Livestream page for the conference.

You can buy a one-day pass for either day for $95 or a two-day pass for $149. If you want to watch the sessions live, you must register by May 2. From May 3 to 5, you can purchase on-demand viewing of the ten sessions for that price. (After that, you can purchase a video pass for all ten but the price goes up to $279.) The sessions remain available to you to view for a year.

Livestream registrants receive a copy of the electronic syllabus for the whole conference. For those registrants who miss the live broadcast, the session will be available on demand about 48 hours after the broadcast.

Click here to learn more and sign up.

P.S. If you’re planning attend the conference but haven’t registered yet, be aware that online registration ends on April 20!