Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #6: Tidy up your research space

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks. This one is about your genealogy research, but it can certainly apply to other areas of your home!

Tidy up your research space before ending the session

If you use paper in your genealogy research, you probably opene file folders or binders during a session and you undoubtedly create some new paper by printing. If you take a few minutes at the end of the session to file those papers in their folders or binders and put them away in their homes, your future self will thank you. When you start your next session with a clear research space, it’s easier to jump right in.

I don’t use paper in my research, but I use the same principle with my digital research. I try hard to process any documents I download during the session. And I file in my folder structure as I go along. Keeping the genealogy folder on my hard drive tidy and organized makes everything easier.

I also try to clear my work desk at the end of every work day to make the next day easier, whether I’m doing genealogy research or working on my business. An uncluttered space contributes to an uncluttered mind!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Reminder: You can let go of “should”

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It’s natural to ask about questions about organizing (your genealogy or anything else) that start with the word “should.” Should I organize my documents this way or that way? Should I store things here or there? Should I focus on this or that?

When I try to answer a question that starts with should, the answer is almost always, “It depends.” Because it’s all about what will work for you.

I encourage my clients (and anyone else who will listen to me) to let go of the word should. And to also let go of asking questions that start with, “What’s the right way to…” or What’s the best way to….”

Because here’s the thing: I can’t tell you what you should do. Only you know what’s right for you. It can be much more beneficial to think in terms of what you’d like to do, or what you think will work best for you, rather than what you should do. Especially when it comes to organizing your genealogy research, the thing you should do (in my opinion) is the thing that works well for you and that you can keep up.

For example:

  • Maybe you’ve always heard that you should store your paper documents in binders, but you have trouble keeping up with that. Let go of that should and consider using file folders or scanning your documents.
  • Maybe you think you should print every document for the sake of posterity but you’re overrun with unfiled paper. You can let go of that should, particularly if your electronic documents are already organized.
  • Conversely, maybe you’ve heard you should scan every bit of paper and store files electronically, but you’re overwhelmed by the prospect. Bye bye, should. You can let your paper files be sufficient. Or just start storing new files electronically and leaving your papers unscanned.
  • Maybe you’re told you should keep a research log, but you just can’t get yourself to do it. A research log can be hugely beneficial. But don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have one just because you think you should.

In other words, set yourself up for success and do what works for you. Decide what your priorities are (accessibility for you, accessibility for others, ease of use, etc.) and focus your organizing systems on those priorities. Don’t do something just because someone told you you should if it doesn’t seem like it will work for you.

All that said, there are some genealogy shoulds that I think you should pay attention to:

  • You should cite your sources so you can find them again and know where your facts came from (but you don’t have to cite them perfectly if that’s getting in the way of citing them at all).
  • You should back up your electronic data in case of a crash. (I use an external hard drive and automated cloud storage.)

Genealogy is supposed to be fun. Don’t let the shoulds drag you down. Make your own choices and own them. And keep yourself open to new ways of doing things. (See what I did there? I told you all sorts of things I think you should do, without using that word. Take what works for you and let go of the rest.)

[If this is feels familiar, it’s because I initially published this post on May 17, 2016. Then I published it again on November 6, 2018 with a different title. It’s a message that really resonates with me right now, so I wanted to repeat it.]

Quick Tip #5: Start your digital file name with a year

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Here’s the next in my series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) high-impact post every couple of weeks. This one has worked well for me and is worth consideration.

Start your file name for your digital documents with the year of the document

As I mentioned in my first Quick Tip, I start my file names with the year of the document (click on the link to see the rest of the file-naming protocol). I’ve been doing this from the beginning–I’m sure at someone else’s advice. It has proven to be so beneficial. Here’s why:

  • It puts my files in chronological order when I sort alphabetically. I have folders for each person I’m researching and having the files arranged chronologically makes it very easy to find a particular document.
  • It makes it easy to see what’s missing. For example, missing censuses jump out.
  • It creates a little bit of a timeline for a particular ancestor

I’ve never been tempted to stray from this practice and I frequently think about how much I appreciate it. Like everything else, this is something that works for me and may not necessarily work for the way you think. But when I feel passionate about something–particularly if it has to do with organizing–I like to share!

Handwriting: One of the challenges of census research

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Censuses are such a great friend to genealogists. They’ve been digitized and indexed. From 1850 forward they supply household members’ names. And every ten years you get a new batch to work with.

There are lots of reasons to take what’s mentioned in a census with a grain of salt, like the competence of the enumerator or the knowledge of the informant.

But one of the big challenges with census research is handwriting. It’s not just that handwriting has changed through time, so older writing looks unfamiliar.  Often the enumerator seems to have lousy handwriting. (Isn’t it wonderful when you come across a census whose enumerator had perfect penmanship?)  He/she was probably tired after a hard day of knocking on doors. So it’s important to remember when dealing with censuses that a name may not be what it looks like.

This week I’ve been doing tiny projects for my organizing blog and today when I was cleaning out my under-the-desk file cart, I came across a piece a paper I’d created some years ago with census entries for one of my collateral relatives, Henrietta Adams Timmons, daughter of George Washington Adams (1845-1938), whom I write about a lot here. She was living with her father, George, stepmother Della and son, Louis Quincy, in the 1910 census. In the 1920 census was living with her husband, Magellan Timmons, and children Louis, Clayetta and George.

Check out these images from the 1910 and 1920 censuses, respectively. I wrote the names of the people next to the census image.

You can see that Louis’ name is practically indecipherable (and he appears to be called Quincy in 1920, though that’s hardly legible); Magellan has become Michael and Clayetta looks like Sylelta (maybe)? It’s no surprise that Della was indexed Lellar.

The worst part about the bad handwriting of the 1910 census is that the enumerator was George Washington Adams himself!

Of course poor handwriting makes indexing really difficult. Sometimes that means you have to browse, rather than search for your people. I guess my takeaway is that I come across conflicting or confusing names for someone in my family tree, I need to consider whether handwriting might be the culprit.