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The 2020 Census is here!

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As genealogists we understand the importance and value of the census. If you’re like me, you’re excited that this year is a census year. I’ve always loved filling out the census form and see it as a privilege, as well as an obligation. I spent my first five years after college working for the Population Reference Bureau, a non-profit clearinghouse for demographic information. We used census data all the time. Then when I got into genealogy the census became even more important.

I received my census mailing this week and opened the envelope eagerly. This year, of course, I did not find a form to fill out. Instead, I found a code to enter when I went to the URL provided in the mailing. Filling out the form was quick–there were very few questions to answer. There are just two people in my household (my husband and me) and we have a straightforward relationship (opposite sex, married). I found it very interesting to read the various relationship options and was pleased at how inclusive it seemed to be.

The only challenge came in the Race section, when asked to provide origin. I actually checked my updated Ancestry DNA results so I could provide an accurate answer (“English, Irish”). But my husband wasn’t home and I wasn’t sure what to put for him. So I texted him for the answer (“Russian”). While I waited for his response, I took a look at various “Race” options and was kind tickled that I there were races I had to look up. I had never heard of Chamorro, for example: “a member of the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands (including Guam).”

If you haven’t taken the Census yet and would like a preview of the questions, check out this Questions Asked on the Form page on the Census2020 website. It provides rationale for each question, which is interesting.

My 89-year-old father doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t use the Internet. I offered to fill out the form for him on my computer (he received the mailing with the personalized code) but he’s hoping the Census Bureau will eventually send an enumerator. (Presumably after the COVID-19 crisis is over.) He’s a social guy and would welcome the human interaction!

In any case, filling out the form was a thrill for me, as it is every ten years, and it’s making me very excited for the 1950 census to be released in April 2022!

How They Do It: Julie Goucher

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I’m so glad to bring you another post in my How They Do It series! This month’s interview is with Julie Goucher, a UK genealogist and one-name study expert who was recommended by a reader. Julie is a well-respected writer and speaker on genealogy and is the Pharos Tutor for three One-Name Studies/Surname studies courses. She is a Trustee for the Guild of One-Name Studies and has two One-Name Studies for the surnames Orlando and Butcher, which represent her parents. Julie writes for several genealogy magazines, including Family Tree Magazine (UK) and Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. Most recently she wrote a Surname Research Guide for the Guild of One-Name Studies, a new course for Pharos on the practicalities for One-Name Studies and is currently writing a book called Last One Standing which should publish later this year. You can keep up to date with Julie at https://anglersrest.net.

How They Do It: Julie Goucher

How long have you been doing genealogy?

Since 1988, so about 32 years. Where did that time go?

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

The thrill of the chase of information plus the journey our research takes us on. Not to mention the friendships we make along the way as we research and connect with others.

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

Keeping on track with the research and filing documents and items away when I am researching. I do though consistently keep notes.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

I think this has to be the availability of the internet, which shrinks the world to the size of a matchbox and a smart phone.

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

Spend more time with family members, asking questions. Even though I did that, there is still many I wish I had asked. The other thing I would do differently is to research and “deal” with that research immediately so there was no paper backlog.

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

Yes, I do. I am a prolific note taker, so have research logs since I began researching, though those early ones are sketchy in places. I have used a written log and an electronic log, which I kept as a spreadsheet. My favourite way is via pen and paper. I use a notebook and use it confirm what I have researched and what I have found (or not found). I build a to do list at the same time.

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

Trusty notebook and pen. On occasion I use my notes area of my iPhone, but these are migrated to my notebook as soon as I can. I use the same for blog posts, articles and presentation ideas too. I also date everything. Notebooks of choice are Leuchttrum1917 for notetaking and journaling. I use a Traveller’s notebook system for a catch all when I am on the move. I recently have moved into a A5 Filofax for organising and planning blog posts, especially useful if I am working on a series.

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

Blog and newsletter and website. I do have online trees, but they are not my preferred method.

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

Consider the aims of the trip. What specifics I want to locate, and I always do background reading. The most important thing I can share is to note down or photograph, if you can, all the records you see. Just in case surnames that originate in one area have moved to another. Our people were more migratory that we really think. If I am not sure if it is the same family, I note it down, and assess later as opposed to discounting it during the trip. Also, date everything.

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

Keep it simple! Use the right tools for the job and take the time to learn how to use a piece of software. Make use of genealogical programmes for studies that do not involve just your family lines, such as a surname study or place research. Spreadsheets are good, but they are not meant for storing or creating family trees.

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

Yes, I have an office at home. It has too many books, or perhaps too few bookcases! Two filing cabinets, an armchair, desk and shredder. I also have a stand with my printer (and several piles of filing) and a seat which houses a lot of genealogical data CDs. The tops of my filing cabinet house boxes of photos.

Do you have anything to add?

Genealogy gives me a great deal of pleasure, as do the friendships I have made along the way. The documentation that archives hold is so very important as that adds evidences to our family tree. Not everything is online, and the other important factor is citing the source. Even if you only cite where the material was found and not much else, it is better than nothing. The point of a citation is that you and others can follow the research pathway using the citations you provide.

I’m so grateful to Julie for taking the time to answer these questions. I found myself nodding as I read her responses, particularly the bits about processing documents as you find them and making decisions about whether something is relevant after you get home from a research trip, not during. And, of course, the advice about citing sources–even if it’s an imperfect citation–is so on point. Thank you, Julie!

Let’s create history for our descendants this Thanksgiving

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Once again, here’s my annual Thanksgiving post, originally written three years ago. I wish all my readers a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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 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.)

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.

Using Scrivener to help with transcribing

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I am participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) next month, in which I (along with about a half million other people) will be attempting to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Call me crazy, but that’s my idea of a fun challenge. (I do it every five years, and this is my fourth novel. I blogged about it yesterday on my organizing blog.)

Last week, I decided to download a free trial of Scrivener, software designed for people who are writing long documents. I’ve heard about Scrivener over the years but was never really tempted to try it until this year when I took a look at this introductory video and realized how helpful it would be for me in writing my novel. So for the last couple of days I’ve been taking tutorials in preparation for using it to write my novel in November.

Another thing I’ve been working on the last couple of days is transcribing a long, delightful newspaper feature that was written about my paternal grandparents in 1979. They were the founders of a small-town weekly newspaper, the Franklin County Graphic in Connell, Washington, whose first issue was published in 1954. (My grandfather, a life-long newspaperman, was 50 when he and my grandmother decided to take on this adventure!) They sold the paper in 1975 and on the 25th anniversary of the founding, the newspaper published a long, two-part feature on them.

My aunt had given me a clipping of the second part of the feature when I saw her a couple of weeks ago and I emailed the newspaper to see if they would send me the first part. They cheerfully complied, but the resolution of the image they sent is not the greatest.

So I decided to transcribe the article so that my dad could read it. (He doesn’t have a computer.) I started yesterday by opening the article in Preview (my Mac’s pdf reader) and toggling back and forth between it and Pages (my Mac’s work processing program). I’m pretty good at it (it’s how I transcribed my 2nd great grandfather’s 138-document Civil War pension file), but it’s a little clunky and time consuming.

This morning, it dawned on me that I could use Scrivener for transcribing genealogy documents to make the process a whole lot easier. In Scrivener, you can store images in a research folder and you can split your screen and see two things at once. So I split the screen vertically and put the article I’m transcribing on the left and the text document of the transcription on the right. Since I’m transcribing a newspaper article published in single columns, this view is excellent. (You can also split the screen horizontally.) Now, instead of switching back and forth from Preview to Pages, I just keep my eyes on the article I’m transcribing and touch type. It’s so much easier and faster!

I can export the document as a Rich Text Format file or as a Word document, so I’m not tied to Scrivener for reading the transcription.

Since Scrivener is brand new to me, I had to figure out how to do this. It wasn’t not hard, but it was also not completely intuitive for me yet. I was going to try to post step-by-step instructions here, but I realized that if you need help you’re better off getting help from the Scrivener site or from another site written by someone who’s actually knowledgeable about the program. But I found it to be easy to do, even as a novice.

I downloaded Scrivener using a NaNoWriMo free trial, which extends the free trial a few days beyond the standard 30 days and also offers a 50 percent discount if you actually write a 50,000 word novel. If you don’t, there’s a 20 percent discount on the license fee. The non-discounted license fee is $49.

When I downloaded Scrivener, I wasn’t thinking about genealogy at all. But now I’m getting kind of excited thinking of the genealogy applications this split screen might offer. It will probably be enough to justify purchasing the license after the free trial expires! Scrivener has come up in the comments on this blog a few times (including today, when Teresa mentioned she belongs to a Scrivener users Facebook group) and I’m glad I finally paid attention.

If you use Scrivener, I’m curious about if you use it for genealogy purposes. Please let me know in the comments!

Edited to add: The day after I wrote this, I finished transcribing the long article and doing it in Scrivener made it so much easier and more enjoyable! I think it cut the amount of time in half that it took to transcribe. Two thumbs up!