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Genealogy gratitude

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genealogy gratitudeI love Thanksgiving. I think it’s wonderful that we have a national holiday here in the U.S. dedicated to giving thanks for all those things we are fortunate to have in our lives.

On my organizing blog, I wrote a post about what I’m thankful for this year in my personal and organizing life. Here, I want to write about some of the things I’m grateful for in my genealogy life. The genealogy community is so rich and there is much to be thankful for.

Here’s my genealogy gratitude list.

  • Civil War pension files. I am so grateful that I was able to order the pension files for my three Union soldier ancestors as well as my one Confederate soldier ancestor. (The latter came via Fold3.) And that I figured out how to process them.
  • My blog readers. I love the comments you leave and I’m so happy and grateful to have met some of you in person at the various conferences I’ve attended!
  • A famous cousin. I was tickled to death to go to a talk by big-name genealogist Josh Taylor and discover that we are cousins!
  • My 30 x 30 challenge. Making the commitment to spend 30 minutes a day on genealogy research for 30 days was a huge boost for me. I need to start another one. January 1 might be a good time!
  • Transpose.com. This web app has allowed me to create genealogy forms online that have made my genealogy life easier. I’ve also used it to create other forms for other aspects of my life. (Sadly, Transpose is shutting down December 9, 2016.)
  • Genealogy conferences. In 2015, I attended RootsTech, the National Genealogical Society conference, the SCGS Jamboree, and the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois conference. I learned a lot from each and absolutely loved the connections I made. With a new puppy coming into my life in a couple of weeks (squee!) I think I may not be able to attend as many this year. But I look forward to going to at least one or two.
  • The growth of this blog. I’m on track to hit 100,000 pageviews in 2015, which will be twice what I had in 2014. (And five times as many pageviews as in 2013.) I am so grateful that so many people are interested in what I have to say!

I look forward to another year of genealogy research and exploration. I know that I will continue to have much to be grateful for.

What’s on your genealogy gratitude list?

Illustration by Julie Jordan Scott via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Keeping my research interesting

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Keeping genealogy research interestingSince I heard Josh Taylor speak in early August, I’ve been really trying to keep a laser focus on my short research to-do list in an effort to keep from being distracted. My 30 x 30 challenge helped a lot. Since I didn’t give myself the option of not researching during that time, it was very helpful to just go to the list (which had me either transcribing one ancestor’s Civil War pension file or working on citations for another).

But here’s the thing: When my 30-day challenge was over, I took a little break, because processing those pension files started to feel a little like drudgery. And I was reluctant to go back to it. It made me realize that I need to change up the research from time to time if I’m going to do it on a regular basis.

As I pondered that, I saw the error of my ways. I took Josh Taylor’s advice to have one to three projects on my to-do list. (I had two.) But I skipped the part about also having three to five extended projects (brick walls) that I can dabble in when I need to mix it up.

So here’s what I’m going to do to keep my research interesting and, I hope, to get back to daily research: I’m adding one main project to my list along with five extended projects/problems. That’s my list pictured above.

I have a leisurely weekend ahead, so I’m hoping to enjoy doing some genealogy research. My revamped list will help!

The value of transcribing

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The value of transcribing documentsWhen I took Julie Miller‘s class at the NGS conference, Anatomy of a Military Pension, I felt inspired and motivated. I went home that night and ordered the pension files from my three Union soldier ancestors. I took her advice on how to process the files. Starting with the first one that arrived (for my 3d great grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries, 1823-1914), I put the papers in the file in chronological order, created citations for each of the 26 documents, scanned the documents into one file and am now in the process of transcribing them.

When Julie told us to transcribe the documents, I remember thinking that sounded like way too much work. I had trouble picturing myself taking the time to do it. But Julie urged us not to skip that step. She said that when we transcribe, we learn things we would learn no other way. So I decided to take her advice. I’m now in the middle of transcribing this pension file. (I’m on document 19 of 26.) It’s what I’ve been doing daily in my 30 x 30 challenge–I find that it takes about 30 minutes to transcribe one document.

I am so glad I’m making effort! Reading and typing the documents word for word means that I’m not just skimming; I’m digesting what the documents say. I’m memorizing important dates and items that appear on every form. (He fought in Co. D, 18th Regiment, Missouri Infantry Volunteers–those words came out of my memory.)

I’ve learned things that I never would have noticed in a simple reading of the file. For example, his first (unfortunately unsuccessful) pension lawyer was a woman. In 1886! It’s also allowed me to really get to know this ancestor. He was a smallish man, 5 feet 8 inches, with dark hair and complexion and blue eyes. I’ve read and internalized in exquisite detail his physical ailments as he’s aged. Each application for an increase in pension is accompanied by a doctor’s report, some of which are quite personal in nature.

The next step, once I’ve finished transcribing, will be abstracting the data and entering it into my Reunion software. The pension file has been really helpful, revealing heretofore unknown-to-me between-census information, like the fact that he lived in the state of Washington for part of the first decade of the 20th century before moving back to Missouri. (Maybe some day I’ll find out how he traveled to and from Washington.)

I have two more ancestors’ files to process–one of them, for G.W. Adams, 1845-1938,  has over 100 individual documents (as opposed to the 26 of R.A. Jeffries). It’s going to take me awhile. But, as I know already, there is gold to mine from these amazing pieces of history. And I know that going to the trouble to transcribe will help me mine it even better.

Talk to your older relatives and create history for your descendants

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This Thursday is Thanksgiving for those of us who live in the U.S. I originally wrote this Thanksgiving post in 2016, and I like repeating it every year. Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! I am grateful for you!

This Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about how the ordinary lives of my ancestors are endlessly fascinating to me. As I slowly plow through my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, I get very excited when I come to a form he filled out 125 years ago that has a little extra information in it (like the names and birth dates of his children). Any peek into what his life was like is a special treat.

It got me thinking about how mundane aspects of our lives today might be really interesting 100 years from now to the people below us on the family tree.

Of course, we fill out fewer paper forms now. And genealogy will probably look very different in the twenty-second century. But I think photos and records will always be valuable.

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving (or really just go about our lives), we have the opportunity to create history for our descendants. We can be mindful of our legacy as we’re taking pictures. We can take care to label them (or add metadata to digital photos) so future generations know who the people in the photos are. We can do oral history interviews and carefully preserve them with labels for future generations.

If you have older relatives around your Thanksgiving table, I urge you to ask questions about their lives and preserve those conversations for generations to come (as well as for your own genealogy research). I sure wish I had. Wouldn’t it be great to put your hands on a recorded interview with one of your ancestors? You could be the person making that possible for your descendants.

Thanks to smartphone technology, it’s so easy for us to record conversations and take videos. Let’s do that while we can and mindfully tag and back up those recordings. (And hope that the medium will still be readable decades from now.) Or we can do what Stacy Julian does and ask our relatives to fill out a simple form.

As much as I urge my organizing clients to part with paper or other items that don’t serve any purpose any longer, I do sometimes encourage them to hang on to documents or photographs that might be of interest to their descendants. I encourage you to be mindful of that and store those items that so that they might be passed on to family-history-minded descendants when you pass.

Remember: Every day we have the opportunity to create history.

Photo by Robert and Pat Rogers via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.