Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

NGS to live stream certain conference sessions

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NGS conference sessions to be live streamedOnce again, parts of the National Genealogical Society’s annual Family History Conference will be made available to those unable to attend the conference in-person. The conference will be held in Ft. Lauderdale May 4 to 7. NGS is offering two tracks, Land Records (May 5) and Methods for Success (May 6). Each track consists of five lectures and can be purchased for $65 (members) or $80 (non-members). Or you can buy both tracks for $115 (members) or $145 (non-members).

Registration is open now through April 22. To see a description of the lectures in each track go the Live Streaming page of the NGS website.

I’d been planning to attend the conference in person (I even have my hotel reservation), but am now thinking it’s not going to be feasible, due to conflicts in my schedule. So I’m really happy to know of the live streaming and to know that the recordings will be available to watch through August 7.

 

Have you created a longevity pedigree?

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There’s a fun idea making the rounds of twitter and genealogy blogs in the last week or so. It started with a tweet by David Allen Lambert (@DLGenealogist) who sketched a pedigree with his ancestors’ ages at death on the back of a napkin.

the longevity pedigree

I first read about it on the Genealogical Gems blog. Jeanne, the Genealogical Gems author, added cause of death to her longevity chart. I was captivated by such a simple, but revealing idea.

It took just a few minutes for me to grab a scrap of paper out of the recycling bin and sketch my own. It’s not the most beautiful document, but I didn’t get all perfectionistic about it. Here it is (click the image to get a better view):

Creating a longevity pedigree

It was a fun and useful exercise. Here are some of the things it revealed to me:

  • My people tended to live a long time. (But I knew that already.)
  • My ancestors tended to die from disease or old age, not accidents.
  • I have Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and stroke on both sides of the family (though I bet that’s not too unusual).
  • I haven’t noted the cause of death for a good number of my ancestors.
  • I have yet to discover an ancestor who died in war.
  • I have more death certificates to find!

I’m glad that David Lambert’s simple idea has become so popular, because I really enjoyed making mine!

Have you made a longevity pedigree? If so, what did it reveal?

Black History Collection free at Fold3 this month

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Fold3 Black History Collection free in FebruaryI’m a little late to the game on this, but there are ten days left in February. I just became aware that the Black History Collection at Fold3.com is available to all (subscribers or non-subscribers) this month. It includes over a million photos and documents from five eras (more information here):

  • Slave records
  • The Civil War
  • Reconstruction & Jim Crow Laws
  • World War I & II
  • The Civil Rights Movement

If you have African American ancestors this might be a great opportunity to learn new things about them! If you’re interested in black history this looks like a rich collection.

Randomizing my research

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Randomizing my researchI promised myself I would get some research done yesterday. (Not organizing, research.) I knew there was some barrier to getting started and on Sunday I created a little mind map to try to figure it out. That made me realize that my problem was that I didn’t know just what to work on and perhaps there was some lingering fear that I’d choose the wrong thing. (Of course that’s ridiculous, but emotions aren’t always reasonable, are they?)

In my mind mapping/journaling I reassured myself that it didn’t matter what research I did, I just needed to do something. I committed to starting some research by 10 a.m. yesterday (Presidents’ Day). Dutifully at 10 a.m. I sat at my computer and tried to figure out what to work on.

I was still a little paralyzed, so I came up with a little method that worked for me. Here’s what I did. I’m sharing it with you now in case you ever find yourself in a similar spot.

I looked at my genealogy to-do list and I created a numbered list of 10 possible research tasks. I made sure each one was something I’d be happy to work on. Then I  went to the Random Number Generator website and came up with a random number between 1 and 10 (inclusive). I took that number and did the corresponding task on my list. When I finished with that task, I did it again.

I basically needed to take the choice away from myself, for some reason. Once it was out of my hands, I had no trouble getting started on the tasks that had been randomly selected for me.

I feel so much better for having gotten started! I have some more time for family history research today, so I’m going to go back to my list and the RNG and see where it takes me.

I feel a little pathetic having to resort to this but, hey, whatever works, right?

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