Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Pinning my map

By 2 Comments

The first pins on my genealogy mapI wrote a couple of weeks ago that I was purchasing a large map of the United States so that I could mark where my ancestors lived and get a better sense of my geographic origins. I figure it will also be helpful in planning research trips. Mapping my genealogy has proven to be great fun.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how to mark the map. I didn’t know if I should include just birth places, just death places or both. Should I include marriage places? How would indicate who a pin represented? Should I color code? If so, how many colors? What kind of pins?

After a week or two of thought, yesterday I settled on this strategy:

  • I’m using one-inch-long pins with colored heads
  • I’m color-coding the pins by branch of family (to match the way I’ve color-coded my paper files, one color per grandparent and his/her ancestors)
  • I’m marking both birth and death places
  • Each pin is the appropriate color and has a flag on it indicating the ancestor and birth or death date

I’m using Avery return address labels (#5167) for the flags.  That seems to be a good size to capture the information legibly. On the first line, I put first and middle initials and last name. On the second line is the birth or death date. The info is right justified. Once I’ve printed out the label, I fold it in half around the pin and it sticks to itself.

I’ve decided to pin systematically and have started with my grandparents and great grandparents. Once I finish pinning all the ancestors for whom I have verified information and the backlog is complete, I’m anticipating the thrill of adding a pin when I establish the birth and death date of an ancestor.

I’m kind of shocked at how fun and rewarding this is. Time is flying as I work on it. A side benefit is that it’s making me realize the ancestors for whom I’m missing birth cities or counties (my paternal grandparents, for instance!).

This is just one of the many ways that family history research is such a fun and satisfying hobby for me.

Planning a genealogy research trip

By 2 Comments

I live in St. Louis and my maternal roots go back to western Missouri. My mother was born in Jefferson City, but moved to Spokane, Washington, in 1936 with her family. I grew up in Washington and always knew I had Missouri cousins. Though I’ve lived in Missouri for 23 years, I’ve yet to seek out those cousins, nor travel to the area (some four or five hours away) to try to track down genealogy records.

But now that I’m back into the family history research, I’m itching to go on a genealogy research trip. Looking at my calendar, I see that I have three free days next week, so the thought occurred to me that that might be just the time to take a little road trip to look into the Browns and the Jeffries.

Of course, as an organized person, I know that such a research trip will require some planning if it’s going to be productive. But I have to admit that when I think about planning it, my head starts spinning a little. So I figure what I need to do before I take such a trip is the following:

  • See how many of the four western Missouri counties in my database I can realistically fit in a quick trip
  • Choose the counties I’d like to visit
  • Figure out what family members I’d like to research, what records I already have and what I’d like to track down
  • Locate the cemeteries where I know folks were buried, based on death certificates
  • Create a list of other family members who might be buried in those cemeteries
  • Find out where I might be able to obtain the records I seek
  • Know just what I’m looking for when I go to courthouses or libraries
  • Figure out where to stay
  • Figure out driving routes
  • Ask my mother for names of cousins I might reach out to

When I write it all down like that, the spinning in my head slows down somewhat. I need to remind myself that I don’t have to get everything done in one visit. I can take plenty more road trips. But I do want to put some planning into my first one so that it’s at least somewhat productive.

This sounds like great fun. I will post the results (and some photos) here, after the research trip takes place!

Mapping my family

By 6 Comments

I feel the need to have a better sense of the geography of my ancestors. In my research so far, which goes back as far as 10 generations, all ancestors but one were born in the U.S. The fact that I’m dealing with just one country makes me feel like I can get my arms around this.

I decided that I wanted to be able to see where my ancestors lived on a map. I’m sure I could probably map them online and create something to look at on my computer screen. But that’s not what I want. I want a big map, on my wall, with pins on it. I want to sit back in my chair and gaze at that map. And I want the satisfaction of putting in a new pin when I identify a new person.

So I bought a large map of  the U.S. on Amazon. I need to mount it on some foam core and hang it on the wall and start sticking pins into it.

I’m still pondering what to pin. Birth places? Burial places? Both? I’m figuring I’ll color code by branch of the family using one color for each of the branches starting with each grandparent. It might be the kind of thing I have to try before making a final decision.

I find myself itching to get this project done. Just today I was looking at information on an Iowa Genealogy Crash Course webinar being offered by Family Tree University. I do have Iowa ancestors, but off the top of my head, I don’t know who they are (or which branch of the family they’re from), nor what part of Iowa. I want to just glance at the wall and get that information. That will be satisfying.

I’ll post again (with a photo) after I finish this project and let you know how I decided to use the pins!

Just do something

By Leave a Comment

One of the goals of this blog is to help readers not feel overwhelmed when it comes to their family history research. I got so overwhelmed some years back that I stopped doing it all together.

I advise my organizing clients who feel overwhelmed to break the project down into tiny components and just do something, anything. I also suggest setting a timer for 15 or 30 minutes. Telling yourself you can stop when the timer goes off is a great way to get past that overwhelmed feeling.

With genealogy research, I’m usually eager to do the work, but sometimes there are so many options I can’t figure out where to start. “What should I work on today?” is a question I ask myself all the time. And if I don’t quickly figure out the answer to that question, the time slot I’ve set aside from research can degenerate into indiscriminate web surfing or watching of Project Runway or something on the Internet.

I was delighted to see in the October/November 2012 of Family Tree Magazine an article called Weekend Warrior that lists seven genealogical projects that can be accomplished in a weekend. The ideas in the article, like locate your family’s grave, solve immigration mysteries, find patriot ancestors in the Daughters of the American Revolution Database, will lead me on paths I haven’t explored before. And the article provides starting points for all those quests.

Even better from a “just do something” perspective is the article’s sidebar called “Quick Fixes,” which lists five genealogy tasks you can do in thirty minutes or less. Last weekend, when I wanted to sit down for just a little while to work on my research, I pulled out this sidebar and started searching for genealogy and historical societies and libraries from my ancestors’ hometowns. That particular task had never occurred to me.

If you feel overwhelmed when you think about doing family history research, please take my advice. Just do something to get the ball rolling and feel the thrill of discovery. Write down your findings (with sources). Then come back for more later!