Organize Your Family History

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What to do with original documents after scanning

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I do most of my research online, so this hasn’t come up a lot. But this week I’m going through documents that had lived in my parents’ home and my aunt’s home and some of them are original vital records. I did my first group of ten a couple of days ago and scanned and processed them. And then I had to decide what to do with the originals.

This morning I went through the little stack one by one and followed my gut about those I wanted to file into the paper files I have left over from before I processed everything digitally and those I would feel comfortable discarding.

In truth, I could discard any of them, since I’ve captured the images. But my gut tells me to hang on to those documents that have original writing or signatures. An example is my parents’ marriage certificate, shown above. They were married by father’s uncle and I think he filled out the form. I don’t have a good, logical reason for this decision. It just feels right because these documents feel special. I have the space in my file cart and the files are already created, so it will be a simple matter to file them. If I have to create a new file folder label and put it on a folder to file something, I might feel like more trouble than it’s worth.

This is a matter of personal preference and I understand that my preferences might change. (And you may have a completely different preference.) If I end up with a lot more and it feels too laborious, I may revisit this criterion!

Free access to all of Newspapers.com this weekend!

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In honor of Mother’s Day, Newspapers.com is offering free access to their premium collection through May 9.

I happily pay for a Newspapers.com Publishers Extra subscription because I find so much great information there. But if you’re not a subscriber, I encourage you to give it a whirl for free this weekend. I suggest you check the available newspapers (you can search by state) and make a list of the family members you can search on in various localities before you start.

It’s great to see what kind of news your ancestors may have made. And, of course, finding obituaries can be a treasure trove of information. (Just remember to a grain of salt!)

Personally, I have found lots of little articles about my family members that individually can feel kind of tedious to process but collectively can paint a nice picture. (I find it’s worth the time to download and add the information to my database.) And every now and then I find something more juicy, like an article about my grandfather’s uncle being arrested for assault for beating up a citizen who voted against his father in an election for county judge. (That’s an image of that article from the 4 Nov 1909 edition of the Messenger-Inquirer of Owensboro, Kentucky at the top of this post.)

If you have some time on your hands this weekend, you might enjoy exploring Newspapers.com at no cost. And you might find it helpful to check out my blog post, How I Process Newspaper.com articles.

Before you get started, I encourage you to come up with some research questions. That will help you use you research time well. It’s so easy to fall down a rabbit hole with newspaper research!

What’s hiding in your unprocessed documents?

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One of the mysteries I’ve been pondering for years is the whereabouts of my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1938-1945) after his divorce in McLean County Kentucky in June of 1920 and before he checked into the National Home for Disabled Soldiers in Danville, Illinois, in July 1922. I haven’t found him on the 1920 census and it’s been bugging the heck out of me. In the divorce, he was awarded custody of his 12-year-old son Wayne Horace Adams (1907-1976) and for the longest time I was looking for the two of them.

A few years ago, I found Horace (as he was known then) on the 1920 census living with his half brother. I blogged about how an indexing error kept his whereabouts elusive. But I still haven’t found George on the census. When I was at RootsTech this year, I did a free consult with a genealogist from Trace, seeking help on the question George’s whereabouts between 1920 and 1922. The genealogist asked me why I wanted to know. I didn’t have a good answer, but I still wanted to know. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any Eureka! moments in that short session, but she gave me some avenues to pursue.

In any case, as I was working through my backlog of downloaded documents during the August 30 x 30 challenge, I processed a couple of newspaper articles that shed some light! It was very exciting. (I found out an article about him visiting a son in Oklahoma in 1921 and returning to Kentucky in 1922, a month before entering the soldiers’ home, with his son, after an extended visit to Oklahoma. I don’t know which son, but it’s something.)

Those newspaper articles had been languishing on my hard drive for two years! If I were processing my documents as soon as I downloaded them, which is always my goal, I would have had this information years ago. This is an inconsequential example, but it shows how these newspaper articles–which can be a bit tedious to process–can contain important nuggets. (Here’s a post I did on how I process newspaper articles.)

Lesson learned. My resolve is stronger than ever to eliminate that backlog, which I’m working on once again in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge.

A special 90th birthday present

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My dad, Gene Adams, two days shy of his 90th birthday

I am so happy to be posting again! I left St. Louis on September 6 to drive to 2,000 miles to Walla Walla, Washington, to help my father celebrate his 90th birthday. (He was born 11 Sep 1930.) I drove because I didn’t want to risk transmitting the coronavirus to him and I felt more in control of who I interacted with driving than flying. On the way, my MacBook Pro went belly up and I ended up having to send it in to Apple for repair. I wasn’t up to trying to blog from my phone, so that’s why I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks.

In any case, my computer has been returned good as new (it had a swollen battery that had to replaced) and I’m delighted to be back to blogging.

I had a lovely visit with my father, whom I hadn’t seen since February, and I’m so glad I made the trip. I took four days/three nights in each direction and I drove alone. It was amazing to see this part of the country. I spent the night in two states, South Dakota and Montana, that I’d never been to before. That brings my total number of states visited to 48! I listened to lots of podcasts and I even managed to do a little cemetery research on the way home. (More on that in a future post.)

What I wanted to write about today is the birthday gift I gave my father. At 90, he doesn’t need stuff. Because of COVID, we couldn’t have a birthday party. So, at the suggestion of a friend, I reached out to dozens of people from various parts of his life, asking each of them to send me a 30- to 60-second video wishing him a happy birthday and marking the occasion any other way they wanted to.

I used Trello to track my invitations and responses, which made it really easy. It was such a joy to communicate with these folks and receive their wonderful videos. I ended up with forty videos. I purchased an iPad for him so he can watch the videos when he wants. (He’s a Luddite with no computer and no internet access and no desire for either.)

I put the individual videos on the iPad and also used iMovie on my Mac to string them all together into one video, which I put on the iPad. That turned out to be the way he likes to watch it most. Finally, I bought a lightning-to-HDMI adapter so that he can watch the video on his TV. I did everything manually and found it quite easy, but since then, I have found out about a service that will send out the invitations and the compile the videos for you for a small fee. It’s called VidHug.

He was blown away. Because he’s a Luddite I think he thinks it was a lot harder for me to do than it actually was, though I tried to set him straight. The hardest part was finishing the project without a computer! He really enjoyed hearing from so many loved ones. The video was just plain heartwarming.

This is the best gift I’ve ever given (I’m not great at gift giving) and my father appreciated it so much. I mention it here in case you have an elderly relative (or, really, anyone) you’d like to honor this way.  It seems particularly helpful these days when travel and in-person gatherings are so difficult.