Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

My top five reasons to organize digitally

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Regular readers of this blog know that I prefer organizing my genealogy files digitally. I almost never print anything I find online and things that come to me on paper get scanned and organized on my hard drive.

Today, I wanted to simply share the top reasons for my preference for digital organizing of genealogy records:

  1. It’s more portable. I love that my research is with me wherever I go. I use Reunion genealogy software on my Mac and attach my source documents to each source record. The data is stored in Dropbox and easily accessible on my phone through the ReunionTouch app.
  2. It’s easier on my eyes. Early on, I would print census records on 8.5″ x 11″ paper and have to use a magnifying glass to read them. My eyes aren’t getting any younger and I really appreciate that I can just zoom in on documents in Preview, the app I use to read pdfs and jpgs.
  3. It takes less effort to file digitally. It is so much easier to rename a file, then drag it file to a folder on my computer than it it so open a file cabinet drawer and locate and open a folder and file (or open a binder to the right place and insert a piece of paper).
  4. It creates less clutter. I don’t have a pile of genealogy papers waiting to be filed. I don’t have unruly paper files or binders. I just have a nice neat hard drive. (True confession: I do, sometimes, I have a tidy digital backlog of files waiting to be processed into my software.)
  5. It’s less expensive. Since I’m not printing documents I find online, I save money on paper and toner. And I may save a tree or two while I’m at it.

I could go on; there are more than five reasons I love digital organization for my genealogy research! An important note: since I know that hard drives can fail, I backup my genealogy files in three places (Dropbox, an external hard drive and in the cloud via Backblaze.) A good back-up routine is critical.

If you’re interested in making the switch, check out my blog post Getting started going digital. And if you’d like a deep dive into exactly how I organize my research digitally, you can my purchase my Orderly Roots guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow.

Free webinar on 1950 census prep

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It’s less than two months until the April 1 release of the 1950 census! I have not done as much preparing as I had hoped, so I was really excited to read that the Legacy FamilyTree webinar CensusGenie: Down to the Wire 1950 Census Prep is available for viewing free of charge through February 9. It’s presented by Cousin Russ and Myrt (Russ Worthington and Pat Richley-Erickson) of Dear Myrtle fame.

To access the webinar, just click on the link above. If you need a coupon code, use 1950census (valid through February 8).

The webinar helps us discover strategies for finding our ancestors on the 1950 census. I sure hope I can make the time to watch in the next few days!

Quick Tip #32: Found a bad scan? Look again

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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 on a small topic that pops into my head. I’ve benefited more than once from this one!

Found a bad scan? Look again.

If you’re like me, you’ve encountered some documents that were scanned poorly. It can be so disappointing to locate a document, then realize you can’t read everything on it. Here’s what I suggest when that happens.

If the poorly scanned document you found is on Ancestry, see if you can find it on FamilySearch (and vice versa). Documents found on both sites were probably scanned (and indexed) by different people and there may be a better scan on the other site. If you can’t find it on a search, try browsing.

Early on in my researching I found a terrible scan on Ancestry for the 1910 census my grandmother was on. I didn’t think to look for it on FamilySearch and when finally did, nine years later, I found a beautiful scan.

Looking elsewhere for a better scan can be worth a few extra minutes of effort!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Learning to use Ancestry effectively

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Ancestry.com is my go-to website for my research. It’s typically my first stop when I’m looking for the answer to a research question. I’ve been using it with a lot of success for many years. As you may have noticed, they’ve recently changed the interface somewhat and I have to admit that’s thrown me for a bit of a loop.

So when I saw that Amy Johnson Crow was offering a workshop called All About Ancestry, I jumped at the chance to sign up. I took her similar workshop on Family Search last year and it was excellent. (Amy’s teaching style really clicks with the way I think. It’s not too slow or too fast…it’s just right.) One of the things I love about taking her workshops live is that she allows time for students to actually try out what she’s talking about on the website we’re learning about, using our own research questions.  And she leaves open plenty of time for questions.

Rather than signing up for the $99 four-part workshop, I decided to spring for her $270 Annual Pass. I’ll get the Ancestry workshop plus at least one other workshop and access to all the previous workshops, access to community forums, and a monthly members-only Q&A Zoom with Amy.

The All About Ancestry workshop starts next week. It will be held live at 6 pm central time on January 18, 20, 25 and 27, 2022.  Each session is recorded, so you can watch later it you’re not able to catch the live presentation. And you can listen to it repeatedly if you want to. The fee is $99. Learn more and register at Amy’s website.

If you sign up, let me know in the comments so I can look for you during the Zoom classes!