Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Happy blogiversary to me!

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happyblogiversarylgA year ago today, I posted my first blog post on Organize Your Family History. This feels like a great milestone.

I’m so grateful for the blog, because it’s helped motivate me to give family history research a higher priority in my life. I love thinking of and writing the posts. I love sharing my discoveries. But let me tell you the greatest thing that’s happened as a result of this blog: I’ve been in touch with family members I never (or barely) new before. My mother’s cousin, Jerry Brown, who’s been researching the family for years and years, found the blog and reached out. Then he sent my contact info to email list of cousins and many lovely conversations have ensued.

I even met some of my Missouri cousins earlier this year, thanks to Jerry’s reaching out to me. He’s also shared some great genealogical information.

I’ve added one organizing package  related to family history, my Heirloom Explorer package, to my organizing business and I hope this summer (if life calms down enough for me to do it) to add some pages to Organize Your Family History that will outline some services offerings related to organizing your genealogy life.

As far as the blog goes, here are a few stats (via WordPress) about what’s transpired here in the last year:

  • I’ve written 79 posts
  • There have been a total of 6,424 views
  • I’ve received 106 comments (which doubtless counts my replies to comments)
  • 82 people subscribe to the blog

My goal is to blog at least once a week, preferably twice a week. I appreciate your pageviews and your comments. If there are any topics you’d like to see me cover, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Here’s to a great Year Two!

Questioning my assumptions

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I wrote last year about the importance of keeping a research log and my intention to keep one. I still think it’s important. Despite that, I’m still not really keeping one.

Oh, but I wish I were. My grandfather’s grandfather was George Washington Adams. I had accumulated a certain amount of information about him–and I’d recorded sources for everything. But now as I revisit him, I’m starting to doubt whether the military sources I found are necessarily for the right guy. And I think if I’d been keeping a good research log, I’d have perhaps written down why I was so certain that the George W. Adams from Company A, 35th Kentucky Infantry (Union), who ended up in the National Soldier’s Home for awhile in the 1920s and 1930s was my great great great grandfather. But looking at it now, I’m not so sure.

So I’m going to go back to all the data I’ve gathered for him and cast a critical eye on what I’ve found and make sure that I’ve got the right guy. And I’m going to carefully record my efforts and my reasoning for every fact. I’m not pledging to start keeping a research log for every bit of research I do (though I hope to at some point). I’m just pledging to do it for this one ancestor.

Once I figure out if I have the right guy, I’ll write here and let you know!

Improving my ancestor map

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A map, cork board, foam core and frame make a great way for me to map my ancestors!I love the map I’ve put together to mark the birth and death places of my ancestors. Back in October, I blogged about the strategy I put into place on what to pin and how I make the pin flags. I pinned as far back as great grandparents before I hung the map, and that’s where I ran into a snag. I had been using a fabric-covered Homasote bulletin board that I had just pinned the map to. But when I rearranged my office and went to hang the map on the wall, I realized that the old bulletin board was so bowed it wasn’t going to hang well.

So I put a lot of energy (probably too much) into figuring out how to have an attractive, pinnable map hanging on my wall, and here’s what I came up with:

My husband, Barry, who in a prior life worked in a frame shop, helped me assemble the frame (well, he did it for me). I took all the pins out of the map and took it off the old board. Barry layered the map on top of the cork board on top of the foam core and slid them into the frame. Naturally, there’s no glass covering the frame. I then had the pleasure of repinning all the pins!

The result (pictured above) is attractive, I think. And very functional. I haven’t taken the time to add more pins (though I want to!), but even just with my parents, grandparents and great grandparents pinned, it’s such a treat to glance up and see where my roots lie. (That would be in Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington…and one outlier in California.)

I’m not a big DIYer, but this was one project that was not difficult for me. And I’m very pleased with the result!

Tracking progress

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My memory is not what it used to be. And I’m finding the more family history research I do, the more I’m duplicating effort. In the process of researching one person, another person will pop into my mind. I’ll look for a record for that person, rejoice in finding it, then realize I’d already found it!

So in an effort to avoid that, as well help me in my never-ending quest to not feel overwhelmed about my genealogy research, this past weekend I created a series of progress-tracking spreadsheets. I was inspired by Miriam’s Census Spreadsheet, which is a Google Doc. I’m a Mac user and I used the Numbers program (similar to Excel) to create three spreadsheets (so far) that track progress, by ancestor, on finding the following records:

Sheet 1: BMD

  1. birth records
  2. marriage records
  3. death records
  4. burial records
  5. grave photos

Sheet 2: Censuses

On the first table (pictured above) I have a row for each ancestor (this is a work in progress…I’ve been adding info a generation at a time and up to my great-great grandparents), and a column for each U.S. Census. I fill in the square in blue if that record was found. A grey square indicates the ancestor wasn’t alive for that census. A blank (white) square indicates I still need to find this record. I also have a table of state censuses, so I can note those.

Sheet 3: Military

Here I track what military records I’ve found for each ancestor, by war or conflict. This one’s definitely a work in progress.

Going through this process helped me realize how much census work I’d done and how much more work I had to do to find birth, marriage and death records. I think these charts will help me feel a sense of accomplishment and also help me hone in on work that needs to be done. I’ll keep adding ancestors from Reunion, until I’m caught up, and then plan to keep up with the spreadsheet as I find more records.