Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Full transparency: Getting rid of my backlog

By 8 Comments

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!

Using Family Search to find images referenced on Ancestry (screencast)

By 14 Comments

Today I was doing some research on Ancestry. (I’ve finished my backlog project and have lifted my ban on searching–more on that in a future post.) I was looking for a death certificate for my grandmother’s sister whom I had just learned through Find A Grave had died at the age of six, in 1922.

A simple Birth/Marriage/Death records search produced a collection called Washington, Select Death Certificates, 1907-1960, but when I clicked on it, it said “No Image Text-only collection.” (A picture of that screen is at the top of this post.) I saw that there was a FHL film number, so I went to Family Search to try to track down the document.

I was successful in finding an image of the death certificate, though I had to jump through a few hoops. After I successfully downloaded and processed it, I decided to do a screencast of the process, in case it help someone here.

Here’s the screencast:

A quick summary is that I searched on the film number in the catalog at Family Search, then when I got another No Image Available message there, I drilled down further to the actual microfilm number mentioned on Ancestry and did another search. That brought up the image. If it hadn’t, I would have gone to the image number (listed in the initial search result at Family Search) in that digitized microfilm. Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re told an image isn’t available!

You can find more information on using Family Search’s card catalog in this post from a year ago: Using the card catalog to find elusive documents on Family Search. And if you’re interested in how I processed that death certificate after I downloaded it, check out the blog post How I process a downloaded document.

Process vs results

By 8 Comments

When it comes to your genealogy research, are you in it for the process or the results? I got to thinking about that question recently when I was teaching a client how to process her genealogy source documents in Reunion. When you’re first starting, it can be a slow process. It definitely gets easier.

As we were working through some documents, she asked me how long it takes me to process a document. (The answer to that question, of course, is “It depends on the document.”) Then she asked, “Does it get faster?”

As a new genealogist, she understood that it’s necessary to analyze and glean information from all her documents (and create a source citation) if she wants to be a researcher, not just a searcher. But she was finding progress to be frustratingly slow. I had to break it to her that, even for experienced researchers, genealogy is a marathon, not a sprint.

That got me thinking: Am doing this for the process or the results? I realized that, speaking personally, it’s about the process for me. I think that’s because I don’t feel there’s a finish line with my genealogy research. There’s always more to learn about my ancestors and I really enjoy the process of discovery. And I actually like the painstaking process of the documentation that follows the discovery.

I’m also a knitter and we have this same discussion in knitting. When I start a project, am I doing it for the finished product or for the enjoyment of the knitting? The answer to that question can inform what projects I take on. A Fair Isle sweater would be (for me) a bear to knit, but if I love them and would wear one with pride, it’s worth the effort. That’s not the kind of knitter I am, however. For me, in knitting as in genealogy, it’s all about the process. I have any number of hand-knit garments, shawls and bags that I ended up rarely using. But I sure loved making them.

How about for you? When it comes to your genealogy research, do you enjoy the process or are you in it for the results? (Or perhaps there’s a whole different element I’m not thinking of.) I’d love to hear.

Photo by Nynne Schrøder on Unsplash.

Who’s ready for an October 30 x 30 challenge?

By 35 Comments

I’m feeling the need again for a 30 x 30 challenge so that I make daily research a priority again. In my 30 x 30 challenges I challenge myself (and anyone who wants to join me) to doing 30 minutes of genealogy every day for 30 days.

I find that when I have a challenge going I’m much more likely to prioritize doing research and get it done first thing in the morning. When I don’t have the outer and inner accountability that a 30 x 30 challenge brings, I sometimes put genealogy research on the back burner.

I love doing my research each day in small bites because it keeps me engaged in my research and usually means that I don’t fall down a rabbit hole in marathon research sessions.

So who would like to join me on October 1? You can work on an organizing task or just do research or whatever else feels beneficial.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to join me!

Join the mailing list!

When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.