Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Keeping track of my backlog busting

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One of my primary goals in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge is to get rid of the formidable backlog of documents to be processed that I had let pile up. I had a backlog of 88 files that I had not processed. I disappoint myself when I do that. But I’m bound and determined to get caught up this month.

To help keep me motivated, I created a little spreadsheet as I’ve done in the past. Here’s what it looks like:

I started January with 77 backlogged files because I was able to reduce the number from 88 in late December. Here are a few things I like about this spreadsheet:

  • I can highlight the Amount of Time Worked column and see the total number of minutes for the month and average number of minutes worked per day. (Right now, I’m at 3 hours of work and an average of 32 minutes a day.)
  • Entering the numbers and watching the # remaining column go down is very motivating to me!
  • If I have to do a little research that results in my downloading documents in order to process a document, this spreadsheet takes that into account. I want to have a net reduction each session!

I do this in Numbers on my Mac, but it could easily be done in Excel or Google Sheets. I’ve also been keeping track of the types of documents I’m processing my informal Evernote research log.

I hope you find this a little bit helpful and that your 30 x 30 challenge is going as well as mine!

 

Quick Tip #31: Don’t forget to include counties

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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. This is one has come in handy over the years.

Don’t forget to include counties

When I add a place in my genealogy software, I always try to include the county, even if I have to look it up. I didn’t used to do that. But I’ve learned that including the county is beneficial for a couple of reasons: (1) Records are often held at the county level, so knowing the county your ancestor resided in is helpful and (2) It helps you differentiate whether a locality is a city/town or the county of the same name. One locality that is in my database is my hometown of Walla Walla, which is located in the county of Walla Walla, in the state of Washington. So I repeatedly type Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Washington. It’s a little tedious, but it actually makes me smile. That’s just one of several same-named cities and counties in my database. I find it’s worth the time to type it twice. And, of course, this applies to counties that don’t have the same name as the town or city.

If you don’t already routinely include the county when you’re identifying a locality as a matter of course, I encourage you to make it a habit!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick tip #30: Don’t forget to have fun!

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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. This is one I need to remind myself about when the going gets tough.

Don’t forget to have fun

Those of us who aren’t professional genealogists are more than likely pursuing this passion for the fun of it. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like fun does it? Butting up against a brick wall can make your head hurt!

When I start to get frustrated with my research, I remind myself that I’m doing this because I enjoy it. And then I step away from the frustrating problem and do some genealogy activity that I find particularly fun. Your idea of fun will certainly be different, but you might give this a try. You might even keep a list of fun tasks that you can turn to when you to reignite your love for genealogy.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Preparing for the 1950 Census

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I’ve had April 1, 2022–the year that the 1950 census is made public–on my calendar for ages. But that distant day started to feel real when I attended the terrific webinar “Get Ready for the 1950 US Census!” presented by Marian B. Wood for the Kentucky Genealogical Society last night.

To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about all the things I could do to prepare for the census release in advance. But now I’m very excited to get to work so that on April 1 I can find my people on the census easily.

Here are some of my takeaways from the seminar. You can bet I’ll be blogging more about it!

  • The National Archives announced a few days ago that it is going to use artificial intelligence and optical character recognition to create a (probably crude) surnames index available on April 1. They’re also spearheading a public transcription effort. Check out their news release about it.
  • I’m not going to count on that index and instead intend to look for the Enumeration Districts for my ancestors so that I can browse the 1950 Census with ease. Marian Wood suggested creating a spreadsheet of ancestors, their 1940 addresses, their 1950 addresses and the corresponding Enumeration Districts. I can’t wait to dig into that.
  • To find the Enumeration District for an address, go to Steve Morse’s website to search the Unified Census ED Finder. Marian Wood suggested using Google Maps to narrow down the intersection and thus the number of Enumerations Districts you have to browse. I remember doing this for the 1940 Census but I’m looking forward to preparing in advance this time.
  • There’s a public Facebook group called 1950 US Census for Genealogists that will share resources about the 1950 census. I’ve joined and look for keeping an eye on the news there. It already has some great resources listed.
  • FamilySearch has created a landing page for the 1950 Census where you can sign up for updates.

In the webinar, we learned about some of the questions asked on this census and the instructions enumerators were given in recording the answers. Hidden assumptions were revealed! I’ll blog more about it later.

The release of the 1950 census is a big deal for those of us in the United States. I can’t wait to see the snapshots of my ancestors’ lives it reveals.