As I mentioned in my Searcher vs researcher post at the end of August, I was overwhelmed by the documents I had downloaded over the past few months and not processed. I knew there was information in those documents that I needed to analyze and add to my Reunion software. Letting them languish without analysis was not smart. And it was stressing me out.
So I vowed not to search for new information until I’d processed all those documents. There were 103 of them, including 30 loose documents; 49 documents in a Montana folder (most of them newspaper articles) about my father’s uncle, Harry Adams (1895-1977), who was a legendary coach at the University of Montana; and 24 19th-century deeds for my Adams ancestors.
I worked diligently on this backlog. Every research session was devoted to it. I loved the focus that this project gave me. I wasn’t able to completely stop searching, but I did process any documents I downloaded in the same session in which I downloaded them, so I didn’t add to my backlog. To keep me going, I kept a spreadsheet of my progress.
I was out of town visiting my father the last week of September and didn’t do any document processing (except on my plane rides) but I started up when I returned. On October 2, I declared the project finished! But here’s a big caveat: I didn’t process the deeds. I couldn’t face them, because they need transcription and I just wasn’t up to tedium of that task. I’ve shifted my research focus from the Adams family to the Rasco family and so I gave myself permission to let those deeds lie dormant in my Adams surname folder until I start researching Adams line again.
So I ended up processing 79 documents in this burst. I feel good about this decision and about this whole project. It’s great to have that backlog virtually eliminated. I’m newly dedicated to not letting it build up again–I’m cognizant of the fact that I need stop searching and start processing well before the end of a research session so that I stay on top of these documents.
For the most part, when I came up with new research possibilities while processing my backlog, I made a note in one of my follow-up notebooks (I have follow-up notebooks, organized by surname in Evernote) and now I’m exploring those possibilities, focusing on the Rascos, which has been fun.
Staying focused in my research is a something I deal with constantly. Finishing this project makes me feel more focused and on top of my research. That’s a great feeling!
Instead of transcribing a deed, I make a deed abstract for the main points about it. These days, since I don’t actually use a paper form any longer, I enter it as a list of fields (township, county & state, grantor, grantee, date of deed, date recorded, etc.) taken from an abstract form like one of the ones below, although I don’t mean to endorse PDFfiller. I usually cut down the land description to names of the abutters, parcel name if any, township, range, section number (for public land states), and other items that are fairly easy to glean by skimming. Occasionally you’ll see one that says something like: the land that I inherited from my father in 1834, as recorded in deed book 6, page 7. Of course, you’ll want that in your abstract.
https://www.pdffiller.com/jsfiller-desk7/?projectId=226794179&expId=3950&expBranch=3#f32695d3c04046feafd4ac1e2fbb18f0
https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images/stories/HouseHistory/deedabstract.pdf
I think it’s important to have a list of the needed fields in front of you (like a template in Evernote, a spreadsheet, a typable PDF, or a word processor), so that you won’t to forget to look for an item. (For me, a feminist, it’s oddly easy to neglect to record the dower release!) Someday you might want to review the deed itself, but a good abstract will often give clarity to your research in a way that a full transcription can’t.
Thank you so much for this! I was caught up in an all-or-nothing mindset about these deeds. I don’t usually transcribe documents, except handwritten deeds and my ancestors’ Civil War pension files. I feel like the deeds are so hard to read (a combination of challenging handwriting and unfamiliar terms) that transcription seems important. But I can see how filling out a form to abstract deeds would be really helpful and less laborious.
I really appreciate your comment, Marian!
Hope it helps! In addition to shortening the initial processing, I think it will make it easier to see the overall picture of what a family was doing with the land and confirm relationships between people that you might only suspect otherwise.
Good point. Thank you!
Congrats Janine! 🙂
Thanks, Barbara!!
I have started processing documents that have been in research folders for several years, the results of week-long research trips to the Family History Library. Many of them are deeds or tax records that take much longer to transcribe and analyze. Many are also for collateral lines (trying to exhaustive research, so had concentrated on the FAN club). What I’m doing is making note in RootsMagic that I have these documents, extracting out dates, and basic information, and then placing the images in their appropriate family folder for full analysis later. Some of these images are from 2012 and 2013!
Lisa, that sounds like a good strategy that allows you to put these documents in their appropriate folders without losing track of the fact that you haven’t fully analyzed them. Thanks for sharing. And good luck with that project!