Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Baby stepping my way back into research

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I don’t think I’ve ever felt this disconnected from my genealogy research in the ten years since I started this blog. The death of my father on August 20, coupled with the overwhelming amount of work I’m responsible for as his executor and the need to run my organizing business (I’m so grateful for my amazing employees!), means that family history research fell to the bottom of my priority list.

But I really miss doing research. I miss feeling connected to my ancestors. And I miss feeling connected to my readers. So today I’m figuring out a gentle plan to get back into the swing of it.

Here’s my guiding principle: Baby steps. I’m creating a tiny task list of things I can do to dip my toe back into my genealogy pool without feeling overwhelmed or like it’s too time-consuming to start. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I’ve purposely kept the list short so it won’t feel overwhelming, but I give myself permission to add to it whenever I want:

  • Process one document in my backlog
  • Process one document related to my father’s passing (so far all I’ve put into my database was his death certificate, which was a little painful)
  • Pick one ancestor in my database and see what documents I’m missing
  • Search for one document from that missing documents list
  • Send 15 minutes inventorying the family archive of objects from my father and aunt (who moved into a nursing home)

In the last month, I’ve just been stymied by the thought, “I need to do some genealogy research.” Now, with this list, I feel like I can actually take action when I have that thought.

This feels like huge progress and I’ll post an update about whether it’s working. Wish me luck.

If you’ve been in this position, I would certainly be interested learning how you got back on the saddle with your research!

Quick Tip #37: Take the time to read about a collection

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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 now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can save you time and effort.

Take the time to read about a collection

It can take some discipline to take the time to read about a collection when you’re researching. But these notes can be so valuable. They keep you from making false assumptions about the information you’re looking at. They might even solve a mystery.

Case in point: I found a collection on Ancestry of Appointments of U.S. Postmasters, 1832-1971. I found ancestors’ names in the collection but the columns on the pages lacked headers. Instead of trying to guess what each column meant, I read the information about the collection beneath the search box and source information. It helped me make sense of a fairly confusing set of pages.

It doesn’t take long to read about a collection and it can be time well spent!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #36: Do it now!

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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 now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one helps keep my backlog lean.

Do it now!

It is so easy to let a backlog of documents to be processed pile up. If you’re researching online and you download a document, it’s very tempting to move on to the next document to download, rather than processing the one you just found. (I process documents by extracting the facts from a document, entering them into my database on Reunion and creating a source citation that is used for each fact.) Way too often, I just download willy nilly without processing and the result is a backlog of documents to be processed that sometimes weigh me down. If we don’t extract the data from the documents we find, they’re not benefiting us.

So here’s my advice, when you’re doing online research, I encourage you to build time into your research session to process the documents that you find in that session. Either do it right after downloading or process all documents found in that session at the end of the session. This way, you’ll keep your backlog to a minimum and potentially valuable documents won’t languish in your backlog.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Inherited items: From overwhelm to order

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As I mentioned recently, last month I shipped seven boxes of photos and documents that had belonged to my father and aunt, both of whom have moved into care facilities. Actually, one of the boxes contained just a few large items, so it’s really six small-size moving boxes full of small items. They arrived last week and I vowed to not let them linger.

But looking at the unopened boxes, I felt overwhelmed about dealing with all the stuff. I told myself that I would go through a box a day for a week and I’m happy to say that I have been able to do that. I have one box left, which I plan to go through today.

My plan was to take everything out of the large boxes and sort the items so that they feel approachable.

So far I’ve been able to follow the plan! I used Stacy Julian’s How to BEGIN with the BOX approach, which I had used when I was dealing with a box of stuff I brought home from Walla Walla in 2020. That gave me a great framework for storing the sorted items until I can start going through them. Using Step One of Stacy’s methodology (adapted a little for my current needs), I divided the contents of the boxes into these categories:

  • Documents
  • Narratives and correspondence
  • Photos
  • Framed photos
  • Albums

I put the albums and framed photos in a bin to go through later. (But I did enjoy looking at them while I was emptying the boxes.) Once I get through the last box, I’ll turn my attention to the documents, as well as narratives and correspondence. I’ll employ Stacy’s Step Two, in which I’ll select 10 items at a time–the ones that interest me most–and scan them, then process them as I would anything I found online. After the first ten are finished, I’ll go back to the documents and select ten more and so on.

The photos will be a little trickier for me, but my plan is to scan them, share them with relatives and keep the originals stored in an archival box or boxes. I’ll do the same, in turn, with the framed photos and albums.

Incidentally, the unruly bunch in the photo at the top of this post is my father and aunt, with their parents, grandparents aunts and uncles. I’m not sure who all the kids are (yet). I had never seen that photo before this week and now, thanks to this project, I’m able to recognize my great grandparents, William Reese Rasco (1878-1957) and Luella Watts Rasco (187-1953), in photos. That makes me really happy.

Having a methodology to deal with the contents of these boxes is giving me huge peace of mind. (Thank you, Stacy Julian!) Having places to put the sorted items after I go through each big box has been hugely helpful in keeping me from feeling overwhelmed. I’m excited to go through the final box so I can started processing documents. I found a number of death certificates, birth certificates, diplomas, passports and newspaper articles that I know I’ll enjoy going through.

This has been a great focus for this month’s 30 x 30 challenge!

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