Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Sorting out all the learning opportunities

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Ancestry.com learning centerI absolutely love that there are so many different ways to learn about genealogy. I swear I could easily spend 40 hours a week learning about family history research (and researching my family). Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of time to devote to it.

Over the past year, since I’ve become more serious about genealogy, I’ve signed up for courses, purchased books (even read some), subscribed to online services like Ancestry.com, Fold 43 and Genealogy Bank, visited online forums, gone to a conference and I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed by all the ways there are to learn.

Family Tree University (FTU) has many, many interesting courses. They have ones you take online at your own pace in a given period of time. They have live webinars. They have recorded webinars. They have virtual conferences. They have video classes. It makes my head spin a little.

What I’m come to discover is that it’s much easier for me to make the time for a learning opportunity if it happens at a scheduled time. It may be the former writer in me, but I’m very deadline driven. I signed up for a FTU virtual conference last winter, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to participate live but being satisfied that I could download the videos of the classes. Have I watched all of them yet? No.

As I ponder this, I realize what I need to do is to create a list of the resources I’ve downloaded and schedule time to watch/read them. And I need to make a commitment to not purchase any more until I’ve watched what I have.

While I’m at it, I’d be smart to create a list of free online learning opportunities–or those I’ve already paid for by virtue of a subscription, like Ancestry.com’s Learning Center,and try to make a point of perusing those. I’ll also be sure and post that list here once I’ve compiled it.

Family history research can be really overwhelming, in my experience. This is one aspect that’s teetering on the edge of making me feel overwhelmed and I’m bound and determined to get a handle on it!

Have you liked my Facebook page?

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Excerpt of OYFH Facebook pageI just realized that I never mentioned here that back in December I started a Facebook page for Organize Your Family History. I initially did it to try to draw traffic to the blog, but now I’m seeing how useful it is to share links I read on other genealogy-related Facebook pages as well as a way to interact with blog readers and other genealogy enthusiasts.

The Facebook page has 119 followers as I write this. If you’re a Facebook user and haven’t like the page yet, I encourage you to do so!

Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t seen it, please check out May I Introduce To You…Janine Adams over at GeneaBloggers. I’m tickled pink to be featured there this week!

This weekend’s find: Application for headstone or marker

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Application for Headstone or MarkerThis weekend, I was searching for burial information for my great grandfather, James Earl Jeffries (1883-1944). His death certificate told me his body had been removed to Appleton City, Missouri for burial. I’m going to southwest Missouri next month and hope to visit his grave. So I’m trying to pinpoint where exactly to go.

Imagine my delight when the second item that came up on a search of his name at Ancestry.com was a link to a government Application for Headstone and Marker. James was a veteran: He had fought in the Philippine Insurrection. His widow, my great grandmother, applied to the War Department for a headstone for his unmarked grave two and a half years after he died.

The form not only tells me that he was buried in Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Appleton City, but it gives me his military rank, company and regiment (and serial number), as well as enlistment and discharge dates, and the fact that he was honorably discharged. Even more intriguingly, it supplies an address in Pueblo, Colorado, for my great grandmother. I had not been aware she lived in Colorado after her husband died. I had thought (from conversations with my mother) that she had moved directly to Spokane, Washington, from Missouri after his death. Her sister, I believe, lived in Pueblo. Time for a conversation with my mother!

Finds like these are always so exciting. To me, there’s something so real about a form filled out by hand. I feel as though I’m there, witnessing a little bit of history. And it’s so wonderful when the hand written form, like this one, is completely legible.

Embracing Evernote

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A couple of days ago I wrote that I was ready to give Evernote a try in organizing my genealogy notes. The truth of the matter is that it’s been a crazy busy week in my business and I haven’t had a chance to do any family history research and give Evernote a test drive.

On Wednesday, I did a web search to try to get my head around how Evernote could help me with my family history research. I quickly was overwhelmed when I didn’t find exactly what I needed. So I stopped looking.

But then, while I was at the gym, I listened to Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast comparing Evernote to Microsoft’s OneNote. That led me to her Premium Video all about Evernote. And that was all I needed to really feel comfortable with giving Evernote a trial run.

I am so excited by the notion that, using Evernote, I can quickly keep and organize my notes, documents, newspaper articles as I come to them during the course of my research. I have a feeling that my consumption of printer paper and toner is about to go down.

I’ve known about Evernote for years and had friends show me how they use it. But I never felt like I had the problem it was solving.  But now I can see how it really might simplify my genealogy life. And I look forward to telling you that I’m right. (I promise to tell you if I’m wrong, too!)