Organize Your Family History

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Downsizing when you’re the family historian

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I was so delighted to see in my email this week that my friend, Amy Johnson Crow, is promoting the podcast episode she and I recorded back in the fall of 2019, Downsizing and Family History.

When I spoke to her in 2019 I didn’t have any personal experience with dealing with inherited family history items. I always viewed my parents as non-collectors and figured when the time came I wouldn’t be faced with too many challenges. But I’ve gained some experience now and there were plenty of challenges. In March, my father’s older sister moved into skilled nursing and I sold her home for her. (I’m her Power of Attorney.) I requested that any family-history related items be taken to my father’s condo for me to go through later. Then in May, I moved my father into assisted living and faced down going through his stuff and my aunt’s stuff in the same week so I could get his condo on the market. He passed away August 20, only three months after moving, and I needed to clear out his assisted-living apartment in a matter of a few days.

I tried to practice what I preach and get in touch with what’s important to me about these documents and photos. I tried to evaluate their potential value for future historians. I offered a bunch of stuff to my brothers (one took stuff, the other didn’t). And I shipped some boxes to myself.

I have sorted through the seven boxes I shipped in May but am still processing those documents and photos. I am anticipating a shipment today of stuff from my father’s apartment. I’ll spend some time in the coming week going through those items and figuring how/where to store them. I know that Stacy Julian’s method, How to BEGIN with the BOX, will be very helpful again.

As the family historian for my family, I feel a lot of responsibility for these items. But I’m going to use my expertise as a professional organizer to try to save those items that are the most valuable from a genealogy standpoint. My perspective, as I shared on Amy’s podcast, is that the more I keep of any one category of item, the less special any of it is. But I also know that now isn’t the best time to make decisions with lasting repercussions. So I will probably save more than I might otherwise for later consideration.

If you’ve been through this, I’d be very interested in hearing about your approach!

 

Are old photos hiding from you?

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I just spent a really rewarding nine days in my hometown of Walla Walla, Washington. I helped my 91-year-old father, Gene Adams, move into a lovely assisted living place. He’s really happy there and I’m feeling so good that he’s content and safe.

As part of my time in Walla Walla, I emptied his condominium so we could put it on the market. He and my mother bought the condo in 1991 and while my dad wasn’t a big accumulator of stuff (thank goodness), there was a basement storage room that I had not spent much time in. When it came time to empty the storage room, I discovered box upon box of old family photos and other ephemera. (One of the photos was the one of my brothers and me taken in about 1965 that’s at the top of this post.)

I was simultaneously thrilled and disappointed to find these photos. Thrilled because I can’t wait to carefully go through them. Disappointed because I would have loved to have gone through them with my mother when she was alive. She died in 2015 at 82 from Parkinson’s disease and in her last years wasn’t very mobile. We could have had a lovely time talking about and organizing these photos together.

So that leads me to a question for you: Are there family photos tucked out of sight in your home or in the homes of your relatives? Could you uncover them and enjoy them with your family members? It might be worthwhile to think about who you might ask and, of course, what you might do with them.

In addition to the boxes that were in my dad’s condo’s storage room, I also went through boxes of photos and documents that had come from my aunt’s home. When she moved into a care facility in February, I had these boxes delivered to my father’s condo to go through later. “Later” came very quickly! There are some treasures there as well. (And there were a lot of papers that she didn’t need to keep that added to my task. I blogged about that on my organizing blog yesterday.)

In all, I had seven boxes shipped to my home from Walla Walla. They should arrive at the end of the week. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t overwhelmed at the prospect of how I’m going to deal with them. My plan right now is to use Stacy Julian’s How to BEGIN with the Box methodology to get started. I’m so grateful to have that starting point.

Keep an eye out for more posts as I go through this stuff! I’m sure it will be an organizing challenge that perhaps we can all benefit from.

How They Do It: Diana Elder

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Today’s entry in my How They Do It series in an interview with Diana Elder of Family Locket. I’ve admired her talks and her contribuitions to the genealogy community through the years and I was delighted when she agree to do this interview. Diana Elder AGⓇ is a professional genealogist accredited in the Gulf South region of the United States. Diana authored Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide and co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence. Diana and her daughter, Nicole Dyer, are the hosts of the Research Like a Pro Genealogy Podcast and share research tips on their website, FamilyLocket.com.

How They Do It: Diana Elder

How long have you been doing genealogy research? 

I started researching my family in earnest in 2003 when my dad gave me all of his research in a suitcase. In 2015 I started doing client work and found I loved researching in a variety of locations.

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

I love making discoveries  – especially solving brick wall cases.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genealogy?

Right now my biggest challenge involves the three large file boxes of documentary work I inherited from my father and added to once I took over the research in 2003. I’m slowly working through the files and making sure the research is digitized and organized in my digital files.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

Hands down, my favorite tech tool is my Airtable research log. I use it for all my research whether it involves DNA or not.

If you were starting out new as a genealogist what would you do differently?

I would follow my Research Like a Pro process – doing a project for each ancestral line and ending up with a source-cited report for each ancestral couple.

Do you keep a research log? If so, what format?

Absolutely! I don’t feel that I’m doing real research unless I am working from my research plan and tracking the results in my Airtable research log.

How do you keep track of clues or ideas for further research?

The Airtable research log template has a column/field for comments or results. I add notes here or sometimes add another column for ideas for further research. My research report always includes a section titled “Future Research Suggestions.” I’ve found that no project is ever finished – there is always more that can be done. (That’s a screen shot of Diana’s Airtable DNA Research log at right. Click on it to see a larger image.)

How do you go about sharing your personal research with cousins or other interested parties?

I write up my research in a fully cited report that I upload to an ancestor’s profile on FamilySearch. I can also easily share the report with other researchers.

What’s the most important thing you do to prepare for a research trip?

I prepare a research plan based on my objective, the available sources, and what I hope to discover.

What’s your biggest piece of advice to genealogists in terms of organizing their research?

Research by objective. Focus on something specific that you’d like to discover such as death date and place, unknown father, etc.

Do you have a dedicated space in your home for doing genealogy research? What’s it like?

Yes, I have an office with my desktop computer, two monitors, shelves for my many books, and a filing cabinet.

Thank you, Diana! If you’d like to explore more of Diana’s advice on researching like a pro, be sure to check out the Family Locket website and blog. She and her daughter Nicole have such clear and complete advice on many genealogy topics. (If you favor videos, be sure to check out their YouTube channel.) Diana’s enthusiasm for Airtable has me wanting to check it out! If you’re intrigued as well, check out this Family Locket YouTube video on using Airtable for creating a research log for FAN Club genealogy research.

How They Do It: Marian Burk Wood

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I’m so happy to present a new How They Do It interview! This one is with speaker, blogger and author Marian Burk Wood. Marian is the author of the best-selling genealogy book, Planning a Future for Your Family’s Past and the blog, Climbing My Family Tree. A Bronx native transplanted to New England, she holds an MBA from Long Island University in New York and a BA from the City University of New York. Marian’s special interest is helping people to preserve, share, and perpetuate family history. In this interview, Marian shines a light on how she organizes her family photos, which date back more than a century!

How They Do It: Marian Burk Wood

How long have you been doing genealogy?

My family history journey began in 1998, when the genealogist on my mother’s side asked about my father’s parents. I knew almost nothing about those ancestors. Little by little, I learned how to do research, and soon I was hooked, especially when my search led me to long-lost cousins.

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

Cousin connections! Although both of my parents had many first and second cousins, I met only a few when I was young, and never even knew the names of others. That’s why I jump for joy when I connect with a cousin and we have the opportunity to get acquainted, reminisce, and share family stories.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genealogy/family photos?

My late father-in-law was a photo buff from an early age, snapping and developing his own photos from 1917 on. It’s a challenge to organize and safely store these photos because they vary in size and shape, and a number are already deteriorated. Some negatives were stored in envelopes or paper wrappers, interleaved with prints, while others were in paper wrappers marked “not printed.” I’ve scanned and inverted most of the negatives to try and identify the people and places. It’s important to my family’s history to safeguard these century-old photos and negatives, plus the original handwritten notes.

I’m experimenting with putting photos, negatives, and notes in an archival photo album, rather than the archival sleeves and boxes I currently use. Here you see one of the handwritten notes with one unprinted negative from 1922-1923:

After scanning, the negative(s) and the note go into the archival album, with space for written captions. For the next batch, I’m going to use archival photo pages in binders so I can easily rearrange the pages:

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy/family photos?

My trusty Canon CanoScan 8400F does a dandy job of scanning photos and slides that I import into different photo applications for fine-tuning. In particular, I like Vivid-Pix for restoring faded, cracked, and torn digital images.

If you were starting out new as a genealogist what would you do differently?

If I could go back in time, I would carefully cite my sources and write down the provenance of old photos and captions, if not obvious. Back in the day, I was so excited about each discovery that I barely stopped to note my sources. I didn’t have the experience to know that in the future, I would want to retrace my steps and mine those sources for more details and insights.

How do you go about sharing your personal research/photos with cousins or other interested parties?

Cousins are invited to view my public family tree, posted on a variety of genealogy websites. I digitize and share old photos privately with individual cousins, asking for help identifying people. Then I digitally label each person on the photo before sharing an uncaptioned and a captioned version with cousins. For one group wedding photo, I color-coded the names I digitally put on the photo to indicate which branch of the family each person belonged to, my way of clarifying the relationships. That was a big hit with the cousins whose ancestors were in the photo. Here’s an example of a digitally captioned family photo (I use Preview on my Mac to add the captions):

For the wider world, and for cousin bait, I share finds from family history and selected photos of ancestors on my genealogy blog. The “ancestor landing pages” along the top summarize what I know about each ancestor or family and include links to individual blog posts. I also blog about research methodology and planning ahead so genealogical materials wind up in safe hands (family or non-family) later on.

Do you have a dedicated space in your home for doing genealogy research? What’s it like?

In my home office, a couple of steps from my desk and computer, I have a file cabinet just for genealogy, plus shelf space for my multitude of archival boxes and reference books. When working on a project, I temporarily store documents and photos in an archival box (or for really short term, a storage tub) so the materials are in one place. This is my alternative to piling things on my desk, where they tend to get in the way.

What’s your biggest piece of advice to genealogists in terms of organizing their research/family photos?

Think long term. We’re not just organizing for ourselves but for the sake of future generations. I love archival boxes for original documents and old photos–I have nearly 40, with surname labels–but I also recognize that archival photo albums would be easier to browse, which I want to encourage. The best organizational methods and materials are those that work for today and for tomorrow, keeping documents and photos accessible and safe. I consider my approach to organizing genealogy a work in progress. I’m always looking for fresh ideas to make my research more accessible for me and for those who come after me.

Thank you so much, Marian! I love these ideas for organizing family photos! Photo organizing can be so overwhelming for so many people (including me), so these very practical examples are much appreciated. I also appreciate your comments about our genealogical legacy. I can’t wait to read your book!