Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Meeting cousins, visiting cemeteries

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Ancestry Day badgeOne of the huge benefits of starting this blog is becoming acquainted with my mother’s first cousins, the children of my grandfather’s siblings. They’ve shared genealogy info and family photographs and have been welcoming and interesting people.

I’m very excited because I recently learned about the Midwest Genealogy Center’s Ancestry Day, a family-history conference that will be held in conjunction with Ancestry.com on March 16 in Blue Springs, Mo. That’s a 3+ hour drive for me from St. Louis, but I like a road trip, so I eagerly signed up.

What makes it more enticing is that my grandparents Crawford Brown and Susie Jeffries Brown, grew up in western Missouri and I’ve arranged to spend the afternoon with my cousin, Penny, and visit the cemeteries where my great grandparents (her grandparents), Arthur John Brown and Rhoda Wheeler Brown, are buried, in Milo, Missouri. I hope to visit her mother, my grandfather’s sister, who just celebrated her 99th birthday. In addition, I think we’ll go to Appleton City, where my grandfather grew up. Penny says that his picture (or perhaps it’s his brother’s picture) still hangs in Appleton City High School.

I have family on my grandmother’s side who are buried in Appleton City. I need to do a little digging to see if I can find exactly where, but according to my records (I’ve been really successful in finding death certificates for this little branch of the family), my great grandfather, Earl Jeffries and both his parents (John D. Jeffries and Susan Price Jeffries) AND his grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries (my great great great grandfather!) are buried in Appleton City . I’m very excited at the prospect of seeing all these gravestones. Perhaps I’ll find other family members graves there as well!

I’m very excited for a triple whammy that weekend: meeting cousins, visiting cemeteries, and going to a family-history conference. Life is good.

If you’re planning to attend Ancestry Day at the Midwest Genealogy Center, please post a note in the comments. I’d love to meet you!

Folders or binders?

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binderAs I revealed in the post To Print or Not to Print?, I have a penchant for printing out documents I find online. I’m trying to get myself to download, rather than print online documents, but for the moment, I’m doing both. (I consider this a transition period.)

In any case, when you’re in the habit of printing papers out, you have to figure out how to store them so you can find them. When it comes to organizing genealogy papers, there are two popular options: file folders or binders.

I’m curious, if you’re a paper person, which do you use–and why?

I fall squarely in the file folder camp. This is true for me for all my papers, and here’s why. I think it’s just so much easier to file into a folder than it is into a binder. And the easier it is to file, the more likely it is you will file.

If you’re using binders to organize and store your papers, there are many steps:

  1. Pull the binder off the shelf
  2. Open it to the right place
  3. Open the rings
  4. Either punch holes in the paper or put in a sheet protector
  5. Close the rings
  6. Move all the open papers in front of it over the new paper
  7. Close the binder
  8. Put away the binder

By contrast, with file folders, there are fewer steps:

  1. Open the file drawer
  2. Locate the file
  3. Open the folder (which might or might not entail taking it out)
  4. Drop the paper in the folder

In my experience as a professional organizer, papers meant to go into binders tend to pile up. (Actually, I do that–I keep my dog’s vet records in a binder, for some reason, and I have a large stack of papers that need to be punched and put in the binder.)

But I know some people love to use binders for genealogy research.

Please share: What’s your favorite way to store and organize your genealogy papers?

Making time for family history research

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I love doing family history research. I really do. I’m also trying to figure out ways to integrate it into my organizing business, so technically it’s work. So why haven’t I done it in more than a week?

I can make excuses for why I haven’t made time to do any research. A week ago I returned from a week-long trip and I jumped right back in to full client load. My desk is a mess. (Embarrassing, but true.) But here’s the thing: since I’ve been home I’ve managed to catch up on most of the TV shows I recorded in my absence. I finished reading a book. I watched a couple of college basketball games.

It really does come down to priorities. (Priority management is a more accurate phrase than time management.)

As I contemplated the fact that I frequently close up shop and leave my desk for the day before I do any research, I realized a few things:

  • The messy desk really does get in the way. (Note to self: Clear it off every night like you used to!)
  • The time I thought I’d try to do it every day, 5 pm, isn’t conducive. Now that it’s winter, it’s dark at that time. I like a lot of light when I’m squinting at old handwriting.
  • If I’m running late trying to get the rest of my work done, I continue working past 5 pm and research is sacrificed.
  • I need to make it very, very easy to start doing the research. One way I might do that is to outline for myself at the end of each research session what I want to research at the start of the next one. Then it’ll be as simple as grabbing a file from the cart stored in a closet a few feet away, rather than rolling out the whole cart. And it gives me immediate focus.
  • I need to examine my priorities for my time and see where this research fits in. Is it more important than keeping up with social media or whittling my inbox down to zero? If so, I should do it before I do those daily tasks.
  • It’s important to recognize that I don’t need hours at a time to do research. As little as 30 minutes can glean some great results.

The process of writing this blog post has given me new resolve. I have a lighter day tomorrow and I’m going to make sure I do some research, earlier in the day. And I’ll make a note at the end of the session about how I want to start the next session.

I think I’ll take a few minutes to clear off my desk right now.

Nuts about genealogy blogs? Check out GeneaBloggers!

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GeneaBloggers logoI recently became aware of GeneaBlogger, which is a great resource for bloggers and blog readers alike. In its Genealogy Blog Roll it lists (alphabetically) over 3,000 genealogy blogs (including this one) you can peruse. I didn’t know there were that many genealogy blogs in existence!

If you’re a genealogy blogger, it offers daily blog prompts and a weekly e-newsletter.

I’ve been wanting to take the time to explore more genealogy blogs and I’m so delighted to have this resource to make it so easy! I’ll be “liking” the Facebook pages of favorite blogs, so I’ll have their updates handy. (If you’re on Facebook and haven’t done so already, please like the Organize Your Family History Facebook page.)

Happy GeneaExploring!