Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

We’re creating history for our descendants

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thanksgiving-tableThis Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about how the ordinary lives of my ancestors are endlessly fascinating to me. As I slowly plow through my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, I get very excited when I come to a form he filled out 125 years ago that has a little extra information in it (like the names and birth dates of his children). Any peek into what his life was like is a special treat.

It got me thinking about how mundane aspects of our lives today might be really interesting 100 years from now to the people below us on the family tree.

Of course, we fill out fewer paper forms now. And genealogy will probably look very different in the twenty-second century. But I think photos and records will always be valuable.

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving (or really just go about our lives), we have the opportunity to create history for our descendants. We can be mindful of our legacy as we’re taking pictures. We can take care to label them (or add metadata to digital photos) so future generations know who the people in the photos are. We can do oral history interviews and carefully preserve them with labels for future generations.

If you have older relatives around your Thanksgiving table, I urge you to ask questions and preserve those conversations for generations to come (as well as for your own genealogy research). I sure wish I had. Wouldn’t it be great to put your hands on a recorded interview with one of your ancestors? You could be the person making that possible for your descendants.

Thanks to smartphone technology, it’s so easy for us to record conversations and take videos. Let’s do that while we can and mindfully tag and back up those recordings. (And hope that the medium will still be readable decades from now.)

As much as I urge my organizing clients to part with paper or other items that don’t serve any purpose any longer, I do sometimes encourage them to hang on to documents or photographs that might be of interest to their descendants. I encourage you to be mindful of that and store those items that so that they might be passed on to family-history-minded descendants when you pass.

Remember: Every day we have the opportunity to create history.

Photo by Robert and Pat Rogers via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Hats off to pre-internet genealogists

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marriageindexIn my week at the Allen County Public Library, I was struck by how great it is to be a genealogy enthusiast in the era of the Internet. We can search for our ancestors with a few keystrokes and uncover documents and clues to further our research. We have unprecedented access to digital copies of actual primary documents. We can see original handwritten marriage certificates, for example, and interpret the handwriting ourselves, rather than trusting the indexer.

I looked at many indexes in written, bound form at the library. The snippet above is from a 1937 marriage index of Hopkins County, Kentucky. My 3rd great grandparents, David Adams and Mary Ray, are listed there. I was delighted to find this documentation of the date and county of their marriage.

Many of the bound indexes I consulted were typewritten. Some dedicated person had gone to a courthouse and written down all the entries in a marriage book, for example. I picture then squinting at the handwriting, taking their best guess at the names. (We often have an advantage when we’re looking for the names of our ancestors, because we know what we’re looking for.) They probably wrote them down on a sheet of paper, took them home and typed them up. Then they published them in book form or, sometimes, in the newsletter of a genealogy society or family newsletter or elsewhere.

When the genealogist researching a family found their ancestor’s name (or a facsimile of it) in one of these indexes or newsletters, they would then write the county courthouse to ask for a copy of the record and wait for it to arrive in the mail. This is how I imagine was how genealogy was often done. It was labor intensive. It was painstaking. And it was tedious.

Now, thanks to the hard work of our predecessors and, of course, to modern technology and the great work of thousands of volunteer indexers and organizations that are digitizing these documents, most of us can sit at our computers and get a whole lot of information without leaving our homes. It’s up to us to properly document it. And, if we want, to share it.

But, as I discovered at my week in the library, it can be really important to step away from the computer and do some off-the-internet research. Go to the cemeteries and find elusive gravemarkers. Go to courthouses in the counties where your ancestors lived and see if you can find the documents you haven’t been able to find online. And, yes, go to libraries and get big clues on furthering your research.

To our older relatives who were dedicated to genealogical research in the days when it was very labor-intensive, I offer my admiration and sincere thanks.

The joys of a research trip

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acplsignI just returned from my four-and-a-half days of genealogy research at the Allen County Public Library. (I went there on a National Genealogical Society research trip.) I’d been eagerly anticipating the trip and it didn’t disappoint.

Without a doubt, I made progress on my genealogy research. Some of that progress I can quantify:

  • I added 56 people to my family tree.
  • I added 28 sources to my family tree software.
  • I broke into a new generation three separate times.
  • I nailed down at least four maiden names of ancestors.
  • I found the identities of a bunch of children who passed away between censuses.

I didn’t have any huge breakthroughs, but I did have lots of little ones.

Beyond tangible progress, there were some other less tangible benefits to my getting out of the house and committing a week to library research. I’m a big proponent of snatching little pockets of time to do genealogy research, but having four full days of research without the distractions of everyday life was really wonderful. It made me feel closer to my ancestors. And it allowed me to scratch some itches, if you will. When I wondered about something, I was able to explore it. I did try hard, however, to stay focused on my Adams line, along with the Indiana portions of my Jeffries line.

Since I was at a really great library with a huge number of printed resources (as well as electronic ones), I wanted to make good use of my time there. I tried to identify in advance the items to explore that I couldn’t find elsewhere. One thing I came to realize, though, was that it was okay for me to use Ancestry or Family Search while I was at the library, even though I have access to those at home. The point was to make progress and take advantage of my dedicated genealogy time. I didn’t want to ignore a robust resource just because I could use it at home. So I found myself finding indexes in books that I would then use to more easily find digital versions of primary sources online.

Having two terrific genealogists, Pam Eagleson and Pat Stamm, available to us for consultation was great. They provided terrific ideas for furthering research when I was stuck. They also gave me confidence that was on the right track, which is always appreciated. As a bonus, they offered an optional lecture each day.

I’m eager to go back to the Allen County Public Library and when I do, I’ll probably focus on a different line. Staying at the Courtyard by Marriott just a couple of blocks from the library and near plenty of good restaurants makes it really easy. Next time I go, I know how easy it will be to get right back in the swing of things. I’ll miss my NGS buddies, though!

 

How I’m using Evernote for genealogy

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Evernote logoI have to admit I have been a slow adopter of Evernote. In 2013 and 2014 I posted here about how I wanted to give Evernote a(nother) try to help me organize certain aspects of my genealogy research. Well, it’s two years later and I’m happy to report that I am actually using Evernote to help organize a bunch of things in my life, including certain aspects of my genealogy research. I’ve become a big fan, though no one would describe me as a power user.

I thought it might be helpful to some people for me to describe how I’m using it for genealogy. Before I do, though, I want to emphasize that this isn’t the best way or the only way to use Evernote. It’s just the way I’m using it. And it will no doubt evolve.

So here’s a source list of ways I use Evernote in my genealogy life:

  1. Research log. I have a very simple template in Evernote in which I jot down what I’ve researched that session. Full disclosure: I don’t do it each and every session; I just do it when it feels right. Evernote makes it very easy.
  2. Genealogy task list. I have a notebook (in my Genealogy stack) called Genealogy clues/puzzles to check out. That’s where I make note of the things that come up that I don’t want to explore at the moment. I helps me stay focused on the task at hand.
  3. Source documentation project. As I described last month, I’m systematically reexamining all my sources in Reunion, verifying them, checking citations, ensuring that I’ve gleaned all the information I can out of them and adding images of each source to the citation. I keep the list in Evernote and check it off as I go.
  4. Keeping track of resources. I have a notebook called Genealogy resources where I clip interesting websites. Do I go back and look at it a lot? Not so much. But when I do there are usually some treasures in there. And clipping it means I don’t have to try to remember it, which frees up my mind.
  5. Genealogy travel. When I’m planning a research or cemetery trip, I keep notes about hotels, logistics, things to remember to pack, etc.
  6. Blog post ideas. I jot down ideas for this blog and my organizing blog when they occur to me. I consult it when I don’t know what to write. Which is quite often.

I don’t store my genealogy research in Evernote. After the 2015 National Genealogical Society meeting where I heard a detailed talk on using Evernote for genealogy, I briefly tried storing images of the genealogy documents I’d downloaded (census records, vital records, etc) in Evernote. I abandoned that as too labor intensive (though I can see the sense in it because it makes those documents exquisitely accessible). Instead, I attach those documents to the source citation in Reunion on my Mac.

In short, Evernote has become indispensable to me. It’s my go-to place to store and retrieve all manner of things (and I use it a whole lot for non-genealogy purposes as well). I pay for the premium version, so that I can access it when I’m not online. The price for the premium version just went up from $50 to $70 a year. I like it enough that I didn’t even consider not renewing because of the price hike.

Evernote is such a robust platform that I know I could be taking better advantage of it. And in a year I might be using it entirely differently. But right now it’s meeting my needs quite nicely.

How do you use Evernote for your genealogy research?