Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Using little snippets of time

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I think one thing that made me put off doing family history research for all these years (besides feeling overwhelmed and incompetent) was that I always felt like I needed a giant chunk of time before I could start a research session.

While it’s true that time flies when I’m researching and I can easily use a large chunk of time, it’s not a requirement. Yesterday at about 5:00 I thought about what I’d like to do next with my day. One option was entering financial data into Quickbooks. Family history research was a much more attractive prospect!

I ended up researching for about two hours. In that time, I found one couple (a pair of great great grandparents) on five censuses, thanks to Ancestry.com. I carefully documented what I learned from the censuses into my family tree in Reunion. And it felt great!

Next time you’re tempted to do a little research, but hesitate because you don’t have a whole lot of time, I say go for it!

Missouri vital records rock!

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James Jeffries death certificate snippet

My great grandfather’s death certificate

I was born and raised in Washington state and moved to Missouri in 1989, when I was 26 (after going to college in Massachusetts, followed by five years in Washington DC). My mother was born in Missouri, but she and her parents migrated to Washington state in 1936.

Today, with the help of a Family Tree Magazine article on identifying vital records, I was able to download, free of charge, my great-grandfather’s death certificate from the Missouri Digital Heritage site. He died in Missouri in 1944. The state has a searchable database for deaths between 1910 and 1961. Once found, I was able to download and print a facsimile of his death certificate.

The death certificate gave me a host of information, including his mother’s name and birthplace, the fact that my great grandfather died at a Veterans Administration Facility, of tuberculosis, and that he served in the Philippine Insurrection. (I knew he was listed as “soldier” in the 1900 census, but I didn’t know what conflict he was involved in.)

I am so grateful to Missouri for making that so easy! It was a lot more trouble and money to order a death certificate the state of California, as I did for my paternal great grandmother. And when I ordered that one, I didn’t even know what information would be on the certificate.

I feel fortunate that I have a number of ancestors who died in Missouri between 1910 and 1961. I can’t wait to see what other states offer me!

My research plan

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Earlier in this blog I wrote that I was torn between wanting to verify facts in my family history but also wanting to explore the stories behind the facts. I also mentioned that I was overwhelmed by all the unverified data that I’d collected and didn’t know how to proceed.

Well, I’ve developed a plan and I realized I should share it here. I have over a hundred pages of five-generation ancestral charts filled out by hand back when I was just writing stuff down willy nilly without regard for accuracy. They provide some nice clues, but I’m treating as clues and nothing more.

I’ve installed Reunion on my Mac and, starting with my parents and going back in time, I’m adding family members only after I have verified their existence through vital records or censuses. (I do recognize that censuses are rife with inaccuracies, but I’m using consecutive censuses to verify.)

So far, I’ve worked back four generations, to all 16 great great grandparents, and I have a few names in the fifth generation.

This feels so good.

My tree is growing and I’m confident in its accuracy. I know that every piece of information in Reunion has a source behind it.

I know that so far I’ve had it pretty easy. The ancestors I’ve been researching were all born in the U.S. and the earliest was born in 1845. So there are a lot of easily found records to look at. I know it will get harder as I go back in time and when I start researching immigrant ancestors.

The other thing I’m doing is entering every scrap of data, with sources, into the Reunion software. So far I have 83 sources in my source list. Sometimes the data entry can feel tedious, but I know I can’t rely on my memory for anything (nor should I). For example, I’m entering Residence for every year I find an ancestor on a census. That completeness is very helpful when I go back to look at individuals. At a glance, I can see how long they lived in a given location.

Having this plan has made me feel much less overwhelmed by doing family history research. It makes it very easy when I sit down to do some research to get right to work.

Ordering my first vital record

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Today I was trying to fill in some blanks on my great grandmother, Hattie’s, info. I wasn’t able to locate her on the 1880 census. I believe she was born in 1875 and married in 1897 and since the 1890 census was destroyed in the fire, the 1880 census is my only chance to verify her living with her parents.

Since I’ve decided I will not move up a generation until I have a good source to link generations (in other words, I think I know who Hattie’s parents are, but I don’t have proof, so I’m not willing to enter them into Reunion until I do), I feel a little stymied at my inability to at least use the census to verify her parents, as I’ve done with my other great grandparents.

When searching by her name and her parents’ names failed, I tried browsing the enumeration district from the 1880 census that Hattie’s husband, Elmer, was living in, thinking that’s how they might know one another. No dice.

I did find the death certificate and the Civil War pension application for the person I think is Hattie’s father, so I’m all jazzed up to enter him into the software. But I’m waiting until the relationship is verified.

So I decided to try to get a copy of her death certificate. I found an index entry in the California Death Index via Ancestry.com. So I did a google search to see how I could order a copy.

Here’s where my big tip comes in: One way I was searching (via Ancestry, I think) took me through VitalCheck, which charges a $12.95 service fee on top of the $16 fee Alameda County charges. That seemed exorbitant to me, so I went back to google and found that I could order directly from the Alameda County Recorder. No processing fee, not even a shipping fee if I go with standard postal mail, which I did. To be fair, the VitalCheck order included expediting, I believe. But I have no need for expediting–there are plenty of relatives to research while I wait. So now I’m feeling very good (and a little smug) about saving 13 bucks.

When I receive the death certificate, which will won’t be at least for a few weeks, I’ll post about the information I gleaned from it. I did a google image search and found a death certificate from the early 1970s that included parents’ names, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to definitively make the link between Hattie and the couple I think are her parents!