Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #11: Process each document as you download it

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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. When I don’t do what I suggest in this tip, I always regret it!

Process each document as you download it

I am always battling a backlog of documents I’ve downloaded that need to be processed. By “processed” I mean creating a source citation, going through the document and gleaning facts and adding them to my Reunion database, with each fact sharing a source citation. (I describe how I process a document in this post.)

I love processing documents, actually. But when I’m in a flurry of searching, I sometimes keep downloading without processing. (Though I always rename the document, as described in Quick Tip #1.) When I let that backlog build up, I end up trying to stop myself from doing additional research until I get rid of it. I often accomplish that during a 30 x 30 challenge.

But when I’m on my game, I process as I go and it feels great. (It makes me feel like a researcher, not just a searcher.) I encourage you to give it a try if you’re not already doing it!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #10: Start with a research question

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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. My research always goes better when follow the advice in this tip!

Start your research session with a question

It can be fun to click around on Ancestry and Family Search and just see what you can find. But if instead you start your session with a research question in mind, your precious research time will be better spent. Knowing what you’re looking for helps you stay focused and resist temptation. If you come across tempting information that doesn’t pertain to your research question, you can make note of it in your research log (or somewhere else) so you can come back to it at a later session.

Having a research question for each session is bound to make your sessions more productive and move your research along more quickly.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Ancestry users: Don’t forget to check Family Search

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My go-to genealogy resource is Ancestry.com. I find the search interface easy to use and I frequently find it helpful when I’m trying to answer a research question. I pretty much ignore the hints and I almost never consult public trees. I’m there for the vast number of documents in their collections.

But I had a couple of experiences while researching this week that reminded me not to overlook Family Search, even when I’ve found a pertinent document at Ancestry. Family Search (the LDS church’s genealogy website) sometimes has better scans or more accurate indexes of the same collections. And they may have expanded collections.

I blogged back in August 2018 in a post called No need to settle for bad scans about how I found a document on Family Search that was poorly scanned at Ancestry. It happened again this week when I was researching the family of my third great grandfather, Henry S. Garlock (1817-1909). The issue was that the main information in the 1885 Iowa census was legible, but the column headers were fuzzy. So I did a Google search looking for an explanation of the column headers. And that led me to a much more clear scan at Family Search.

Here they are side by side (click the photo to see them larger):

The next day, working on this same family, I was examining a document I’d downloaded from Ancestry that was for the 1905 Iowa census. It provided so little information I clicked on  “About this collection” on Ancestry and all it said was, “This collection includes census records from Iowa in 1905. You can learn more about this collection at the FamilySearch website.” When I clicked on that link I discovered that the 1905 Iowa Census consisted of individual cards for each person and the page I’d downloaded from Ancestry was simply an index to those cards!

This is the census document I found on Ancestry:

And this is an example of one of the cards. So much more information!

It was nice to have this important reminder to check more than one repository for important information. I hope it helps you!

Major upgrade to Reunion released

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A bowtie chart for my paternal grandparents

I’ve been using Reunion, the genealogy software designed for the Mac, since I started getting serious about genealogy research, back in 2012. I love Reunion, though the truth is I’ve never used any other software so I don’t have anything to compare it with. It works well with the way I think and I’ve found it intuitive and easy to use. I’m definitely a glass-half-full kind of gal, but the only complaint I’ve ever had about Reunion is that media files do not export with a GEDCOM.

Over the years, I’ve upgraded Reunion when new versions became available every few years. (I started with Reunion 10.) Just last week when I opened the program, I saw that an upgrade to Reunion 13 was available. (It had been three years since I upgraded to Reunion 12.) I quickly checked out the new features and didn’t hesitate to spend $49.95 for the upgrade. The upgrade process was headache-free and I’m happily using and exploring the expanded capabilities.

Here’s a list of my favorite new features. I haven’t used them all but I’m glad to have them available:

  • Change Log. I can now look back and see what changes I made each research session. I used this the other day when I forgot to write in my research log. (I think the Change Log is a little hard to find, so I’ll mention that you find it by clicking on the File menu item at the top of the screen. If you don’t see Change Log, try clicking on a different screen in Reunion, if you have more than one open.)
  • Summary sidebar. Personal statistics for each member of a couple are now available in the sidebar. The summary sidebar contains information such as spouses, siblings, surnames of ancestors, surnames of descendants, number of descendants in how many generations and so forth. You can drill down on most statistics for more detail.
  • Connections allows me to add unrelated people (neighbor, godparent, witness, etc.) to my tree.
  • Find Relationship has been upgraded to instantly show a graphic relationship between to people in my tree. I can easily copy that graphic to share with someone.
  • Quickview windows pop up to provide further information about a person, couple, source record or surname without having to navigate to another record.
  • A Find feature that searches across all records and fields. You can search without having to leave the family view.
  • A new Bowtie chart that shows the ancestors of each member of a couple in one view (see photo above).

You can watch this video to see the top ten new features in action.

Eight years using Reunion and I haven’t been tempted to switch. This upgrade makes me feel more enthusiastic than ever!

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.