Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Explore WWII records on Fold3.com free through May 31

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Exploring World War II recordsHave you explored your family members’ World War II service? If not, you can take the opportunity to explore Fold3.com’s extensive World War II collection free of charge  through the end of May. That seems like a fitting activity for Memorial Day weekend, doesn’t it?

World War II is recent enough that you may have some family lore you could explore by checking out Fold3’s collection, which includes, among other things:

  • draft registration cards
  • enlistment records
  • photographs
  • navy muster rolls

You won’t be able to find service records, which, according to the Genealogy Insider blog, are available only to veterans and next of kin for privacy reasons.

I personally don’t have a lot of direct-line WWII research to do–neither my grandparents nor my parents served. But I have found interesting information in the form of draft registration. For example, the Old Man’s Draft–the fourth draft registration for that war–included men born between 1877 and 1897, so I was able to find information on my father’s maternal grandfather, William Reese Rasco. That’s the front page of his draft registration card pictured above. As you can see, it provides some great information: date and place of birth, residence in 1942, next of kin info, name and address of employer. The back of the card has a physical description–height, weight, eye and hair color, race, complexion and a box for other obvious physical characteristics.

In 1942, William Reese Rasco was 6′ tall and 195 pounds. He had a ruddy complexion and grey hair. I don’t think I’ve seen a picture of him, so I love that this gives me a bit of a mental image.

If you have some time and inclination, I encourage you to check out this collection (as well as the World War II records on Family Search and Ancestry) in honor of your veteran ancestors.

 

Going paperless

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Going paperless with my genealogy filesI just realized I’m gradually going paperless when it comes to my genealogy research. It’s been almost a year and a half since I wrote the post To print or not to print?  in January 2013. Back then, I was working hard to resist the temptation to print source documents for my files.

Well you know what? That temptation is completely gone. In fact, I’ve been going in the opposite direction as I slowly work on marrying my paper and electronic files. I’m in the process of making sure that all the documents in my paper files are properly named and filed on my hard drive. Most of these documents were originally found online, so it’s easy for me to find them in electronic form and save them to my hard drive. But if I don’t have an electronic version, it’s easy enough to scan the paper version.

I’ve found several advantages to going paperless:

  • My electronic files are at my fingertips; I don’t have to walk to the file cabinet
  • My electronic files are much more portable–they’re on my computer or accessible on mobile devices or remote computers via Dropbox
  • My electronic files take up much less space
  • My physical desktop is less cluttered during a research session
  • Typically, I can zoom in and magnify electronic files, so reading them is much easier on my eyes
  • I save paper and toner, of course

This feels like a really big shift and it happened so gradually that I didn’t even realize it! I think a key component was coming up with an electronic file system that works for me. That gives me confidence that I will find information on my hard drive. (I’m still working on properly filing all the electronic documents that might have been misfiled before I set up that electronic file system.)

How about you? Are you paper or electronic? Or perhaps both?

Getting ready for a family reunion

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Getting ready for a family reunion

A.J. & Rhoda Brown and their children

I’m very excited to be attending the Brown family reunion, in Nevada, Missouri, at the end of next month. These are descendants of my great grandparents, Arthur John and Rhoda Wheeler Brown. I have my interest in genealogy (and this blog) to thank for my even knowing about the reunion. My grandparents left Missouri for Washington state when my mother was three. So I haven’t had a connection with that part of my family, until my mother’s cousin, Jerry Brown, found my blog and added me to his email list of cousins. Last year I traveled to western Missouri and met some cousins (and my now-departed great aunt) and did some cemetery visits.

As I look toward the reunion, I started thinking about how I might get the most out of it. I know I’ll enjoy meeting these cousins in any case (all the Browns I’ve met so far have been so welcoming), but I think I’ll enjoy it even more if I do a little preparation. I came up with a little list of things to do before going to the reunion:

  • Finish filling in the Brown collateral lines in my Reunion software
  • Spend a little time memorizing the names and relations
  • Go through family pictures I’ve been emailed so I can recognize some people
  • Gather up all the family photos in my possession that need identification
  • Create a photo album of my little branch of the family to share with others on my iPhone/iPad
  • Come up with a few questions/research holes that my cousins might answer
  • Pack my LiveScribe pen and notebook so I can record the talk cousin Jerry will be giving on the genealogy of our family
  • Spend some research time on the Browns (which happens to be this quarter’s research line)

My husband’s family has periodic reunions and I go to them. His family is less far flung (at least his generation and those preceding were) and he knows many of the people there. This will be the first family reunion of my own family I’ve ever gone to and I look forward to meeting some family members for the first time!

When life gets in the way of research

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Finding time for genealogy researchI had a wonderful research trip last month and I really enjoyed being immersed in my genealogy research. But I don’t think I’ve done any family history research since then! That is a crying shame.

It’s not a bad problem to have:  I’m so busy with paying work (helping clients get organized) that I’m having trouble finding time to do genealogy research. But it’s also not acceptable. If I want to do this research (and I do), I need to make it a priority.

I know I’ve felt this way at times before, so I perused the articles from this blog tagged time management. And I was inspired. I noticed a shift in how things are going for me. My lack of research these days is truly due to lack of time, not lack of direction or feelings of overwhelm as it used to be. So that’s progress. (The end result–no research getting done– is the same, unfortunately.) My quarterly plan really gives me direction, which is so beneficial to how I feel about doing research.

But as I wrote in this article, it really is about priority management, not time management. I’m fortunate in that I have control over my schedule, both work and personal, since I don’t have kids and my husband makes few demands on my time. So I could, in theory anyway, reserve a day of the week for genealogy research. It might mean delaying (or possibly even losing) billable hours. Or it might mean prioritizing my desires over my clients’ (which feels really weird).

The bottom line is this (at least right now): If I don’t make doing my family history research a priority, time to do it is not going to materialize. I need to schedule it, not wait for free blocks of time. And, if necessary, I need to sneak it into available pockets of time.

In March 2013, I created a genealogy time-management plan. Looking back, it might have been overly ambitious and I admit it fell by the wayside. So now, I think if I simply block off  four hours a week where I focus on actual family history research (not writing this blog, not reading other people’s blogs), I will make progress. That sounds completely doable.

Maybe in June I’ll be able to schedule a little genealogy staycation of a few days’ duration. That sounds really wonderful.

How about you? How do you find the time to do your family history research?

Photo by nicksarebi via Flickr.