Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

How I handle married women in my files

By 6 Comments

Today I had what I thought was a great idea to write about how I handle married women in my digital files in my own research. But I searched my blog and discovered I’d written about just over a year ago! I still think it’s an interesting topic, so I’m re-running the original post, slightly edited. One thing I discovered with the comments to the original post is that the way I do it may not be the standard way! Most, if not all, of the commenters last year said that they organize the women in their family trees by their birth surname. (I object to the term “maiden name” so will stick to my preferred term, “birth name.”)

I’m by no means saying my way is the right way, but it’s worked well for me for years. I encourage you to read the comments to the original post (linked above), to see how the dozen or so commenters are handling their female ancestors and relatives.

Handling the females in your family tree

Most of the women in our family trees changed their name at some point or another. That can present an organizational conundrum in the files we keep for them. I thought I’d let you know how I handle it in my digital filing system. As always, I’m not telling you the right way to do anything. I just want to share how I do it, because it’s worked well for me.

In a nutshell, I file women under their married surname. (By contrast, in my genealogy software, Reunion, all the women are listed by their birth names and if I don’t know their birth name, I leave the surname blank.) As I describe in the post How I Process a Downloaded Document, I have surname folders on my hard drive for each of the surnames I have researched and within each folder I have folders for individual people. The folders for individuals contain the source documents pertaining to that person. (I have a separate Collateral folder within which the surname folders for collateral relatives are filed using the same folder structure.)

Here’s how I name women’s folders:

Last Name (Birth Name), First Name (YOB-YOD). So the folder for one of my second great grandmother’s folder is called Garlock (Ten Eyck), Anna (1832-1910). It resides in the Garlock Surname folder, as shown in the screenshot above.

If I find a relative before she’s married, I’ll use her birth surname for filing purposes. But once I’ve found marriage documents, I’ll rename and move her folder to her married surname.

It seems pretty straight forward, but of course, things like multiple marriages can make it more complicated. For my direct-line ancestors, it’s easy. I use the surname associated with the spouse who is my direct line. (If it’s a second or later marriage, I don’t typically use the first married name in the folder name, I just use the birth name.)

But for collateral relatives, where there isn’t necessarily a married name that is more relevant to me than the other married names, I typically just use the first married surname that I find and leave it like that.  Sometimes I make exceptions, especially for women who were married multiple times and for whom I have trouble keeping track of their various married names. For example, Leonora Adams, the daughter of my much-researched second great grandfather George Washington Adams, was married four times. I file her within the Adams Collateral folder using the folder name “Adams, Leonora (Lochry Stevens Good Ward), 1877-1962.”

Again, I’m not suggesting this is the best way to do it, but it works for me. I pretty much developed my system as I went along. And, as in almost all things, I allow myself to be imperfect about it. That means that  there may be inconsistencies in my folder structure. But I have enough of a solid infrastructure that the inconsistencies don’t bother me.

Writing this makes me want to go through my folders–particularly for the collateral relatives–and perhaps correct any inconsistencies. But I’m comfortable leaving them as is until I get around to doing that.

I’d love to hear in the comments how you handle the name changes of women in your files. And are there any situations I didn’t cover here that you’re curious about? Feel free to ask in the comments.

For more in-depth information on how I organize my own genealogy, check out How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow, a 37-page downloadable available for $19.99.

My 2022 genealogy goals

By 15 Comments

Are you a goal setter? I sure am. Every year I set aside a day to work on my personal and business goals. This year, I did it on December 16. But I ran out of time to consider my personal genealogy goals, so I did that this morning.

I sat down with a pad of paper and I did a little brainstorming session with myself. I achieved some clarity really fast. The release of the 1950 census on April 1 creates a natural break in the year. I decided to focus the first quarter of the year on preparing for that day and cleaning up my existing research. The latter three quarters will be about new research and avoiding a backlog.

So here’s what I decided:

First quarter 2022:

Rest of 2022:

  • Glean as much information from the 1950 census as possible
  • Shift my family focus to the Jeffries line (that’s my maternal grandmother’s line)
  • Do a deep dive on my Civil War ancestor Richard Anderson Jeffries

One overarching intention for the year is to try harder to do daily research. For the last few years, I’ve found that in the absence of a 30 x 30 challenge, I ignore my research. Sometimes, I’m able to sustain daily research for months at a time, but that’s fallen by the wayside. In 2022, I’m going to try to do at least a little something every single day to keep my mind in the game. I know that, for me, that means researching in the early morning. Perhaps I’ll try to go to bed a little earlier so I can get up earlier to accomplish this. I plan a 30 x 30 challenge starting January 1, 2022, so I’ll have that support as I kick off the year.

I realize that I didn’t so much set goals this year as clarify my focus. And that’s good enough for me. It feels great. The plan for the year feels simple and attainable.

If you’ve set goals that you feel like sharing, please share in the comments. I’d love to hear them!

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The fun of mapping your ancestors

By 9 Comments

Today I decided to focus on my ancestor map, the wall-mounted map of the U.S. on which I’ve placed pins indicating the birth and death places of four generations of my ancestors (from my parents to great great grandparents). I started it back in 2013, but it had been awhile since I did anything with the map (beyond enjoying looking at it).

Today I opened the little spreadsheet where I had checked off the ancestors (direct-line only) I had already pinned. Going through it, I identified six pins I could add because I’d found more information (yay!) and four specific birth or death places I need to identify. I created and pinned those six and made a check list of the blanks I need to fill in. Once I find that info and complete this generation (or decide I don’t want to wait), I’ll start adding the next generation.

I think the genealogy map is so fun and valuable, I wanted re-run the post I wrote about it in 2017. I hope it inspires you to perhaps give it a try!

Four years ago (time flies!) I posted about how I created an ancestor map so that I could place pins on the map where my ancestors were born and died. I was proud of my DIY efforts. But I’m sorry to report that it turns out my DIY skills are lacking. Over time, the edges of the map pulled out of the frame so that pretty much all that was keeping the map in the frame were the pins. It made me sad when I looked at it and I stopped adding pins. I didn’t take it down, though, because I kept hoping I’d figure out a way to fix it.

Fast forward several years and I noticed in an organizing client’s home the exact same map in a nice frame. The map was held firmly in place and looked great. I asked her where she got it and whether she had purchased the frame with the map already in it. She had, and she sent me an Amazon link to the map.

I decided to go ahead and replace my sad map with a new and improved version. It cost about $78 but to me it’s worth it because it makes me happy, not sad, when I look at it!

I removed all the pins from the old map and put up the new map in its place, using Command hooks. Then I set to work putting the pins back up. I counted the work toward my 30 minutes of genealogy research that day, and in my research log (yay, me!) I wrote:

“The process was really fun because it was like a quiz. I’d draw a pin with a flag on it with the name of an ancestor and since I wanted to find them in my tree, without searching, I needed to know what line they came from. I also made a game of trying to get to that with the fewest clicks within my tree. Then I tried to guess the locality. And, of course, I had to find the locality on the (not very detailed) map, using Google maps for guidance.”

The process pointed out some holes in my data in my tree—death vs burial places for example; and birth places for which I had only a state. It also pointed to the fact that I’d filled in quite a few holes since I first put together the pin labels, even though the map pins go back no further than my great great grandparents (and not even all of those). I decided to add pins for burial places when they differed from death places, so in addition to replacing the pins that were on the map I added 11 pins.

I love seeing the clusters of pins on my map (in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri and Washington primarily). I’ve color-coded the pins by family line and you can see that the lines converged in Pacific Northwest, where my father and his father (and I) were born and where my mother moved from Missouri at the age of three.

Here are a couple of more detailed photos of my clusters. (For those who notice such things,  I had to use a different font for the labels I added recently because I lost the old font when I upgraded my computer.)

It’s been a fun exercise and I’m looking forward to adding more pins to my map!

Going through my box of inherited items: step two

By Leave a Comment

In August, I blogged about taking the first step to process a box of inherited items. I’m using the process I learned from Stacy Julian in her terrific RootsTech talk last year (you can read all about it in her blog post How to BEGIN with the BOX). Her process allows you get started on something that can feel very overwhelming.

I promised that when I took step two, I would post about it.

According to Stacy’s methodology, step two (after sorting the contents of the box into categories in step one) is to go through the items in a category and assess the value of each item, then note the needed actions. Here’s the secret sauce of the whole thing: You put the items that you most want to take action on–the most interesting or thrilling or beneficial finds–and put them in an Action file. And you’re allowed to have no more than 10 items in the Action file. Once you have that many items, you stop the assessment process and take action.

I want to take a moment to say how brilliant I think that is. Since you put the best stuff in the Action file and limit the number you can put there, then the Action file pretty much only contains stuff you really want to do. And there’s a built-in trigger (10 items) to get started taking action. Stacy says in her blog post that you should follow your heart and intuition in terms of deciding what goes into the Action file.

So in my efforts, I immediately gravitated to the Written Stuff file, as opposed to the Picture Stuff. That’s just my nature. I found a 50th anniversary card (pictured at the top of this post) from my mother’s brother with a snarky inscription that was so typical of my Uncle Joe. You can click on the image to see it larger, but I’ll tell you that the inscription says, “So you made it to 50 years!! Gene, I admire your tenacity. Happy anniv. Love, Joe”. I scanned the card and sent it to his kids.

Among the Written Stuff were some old newspaper clippings that were fun, though of little genealogical value, including one that shows the new jackets of the Yakima (Washington) High School basketball team circa 1949, with basketball players, including my father, Gene Adams (who is 91!), modeling them. I decided to scan the clipping and email it to my brother (who is a big fan of sports uniforms) and then put it aside to take to my father when I see him later this month.

Here’s that clipping. My dad is second from left.

I just kept going through the stuff, noting the actions and putting some of them in the Action folder. I actually ended up taking action on all the Written Stuff (I don’t think there were even 10 items) because when I started looking at the Picture Stuff I got overwhelmed.

I’m feeling great about the Written Stuff and will systematically start going through the Picture Stuff. Since the photos overwhelm me, I know that I will benefit from using Stacy’s methodology and I know that a timer will be my best friend. I’ll work on it just 10 or 15 minutes at a time. When I get finished, I’ll post again!

 

Join the mailing list!

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.