Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Even “paperless” genealogists should keep some records

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If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve embraced the idea of minimizing paper in my genealogical research. I never print out the documents I find online. Instead, I download them, immediately rename the file according to my file-naming protocol and, once I’ve gleaned all the information I can from the document and created a source citation, I file it within my folder structure. My blog post called How I process a downloaded document takes you step-by-step through my digital workflow. And there’s lots more information in the Paperless Genealogy Guide, the 44-page downloadable guide that Brooks Duncan of DocumentSnap and I wrote as we prepared to speak on that topic at RootsTech in 2017.

As someone who espouses letting go of paper, I’m often asked if there are papers that those who are trying to minimize should keep. I usually reply by saying that documents that are impossible or difficult to replace–even if they’re scanned–are worth hanging on to. That means, for instance, there’s no need to hang on to census records but original birth certificates are worth keeping in a file or binder.

I recently came across a post on the Abundant Genealogy blog from Melissa Barker, The Archive Lady, on this very topic. (Melissa was the subject of my How They Do It Interview in August 2017.) Her Abundant Genealogy post, called 5 Genealogical Records You Should Never Throw Away, goes into some detail about five types of records that you should hang onto. It’s definitely worth reading. (Spoiler alert: The five types of records are original records, diaries and journals, scrapbooks, old letters and photographs. Read the blog post to find out why.)

I would have a hard time throwing away hand-written letters and, in fact, though I carefully scanned it, I still have the epic 36-page letter my grandfather my wrote my grandmother right before they got married, in which he confessed the family secrets. That will be passed along to my niece or nephew or, perhaps, a cousin. But will I keep all old photographs once I’ve scanned them? I’m not so sure.

What about you? Are there are any records you would add to the list of keepers? Any that you don’t think belong there?

Shifting my focus

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My strategy for focusing my genealogy efforts in 2014Looking back at May, I realize that I wasn’t able to research a whole lot. Life got very hectic in the middle of the month when my husband was in a bad car accident that left him unharmed but his car very harmed. It was a total loss and we had to shop for a new car, which is always surprisingly time consuming. Between that and his negotiating for and accepting a new job, I probably went two weeks without doing any genealogy research.

I love doing daily research, so this made me feel really disconnected from my ancestors. Over Memorial Day weekend, I got back into it, thank goodness. I went to my research log and was reminded that I’d been transcribing deeds recently.

I’m here to tell you that transcribing deeds isn’t my idea of a great time. Which is probably why I didn’t get an itch to research when other priorities took over. So I shook things up a little, just to make things more interesting.

I’ve been researching my Adams family line for the last 16 months. Desperate to get away from deed transcribing, I poked around on Ancestry and took a look at the small family tree of my first cousin (my father’s sister’s daughter). She had the parents of our great grandmother listed (though not sourced). I took that clue and ran with it. I found conflicting evidence and I have not yet resolved who my second great grandparents are, but I’m all energized by the possibilities. I enjoyed the digging and the problem solving.

I think that I will shift my genealogy focus from my father’s paternal Adams line to his maternal line, the Rascos, at the end of the quarter (or perhaps before). I’m feeling the need to explore some fresh names.

I loved being focused on the Adamses for so long because I was able to remember who was who and it kept clarity in my research. But after more than a year with them, I’m taking the blinders off and shifting to the Rascos. I’ll stay focused, just on something else. That feels good and exciting to me.

How about you? Do you focus on a specific family group or line in a single session, month or quarter? Or do you like to mix it up?

How far on the branches do you go?

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Five years ago, I blogged about my quandary over whether to research my collateral lines, rather than focusing on my direct-line ancestors. That I even hesitated to explore collateral lines amazes me because the benefits are now obvious. These collateral lines provide valuable clues. They help verify that the person I’m researching is my person. My family tree is very obviously not complete without them.

Two years ago, I blogged that was rededicating myself to the task of adding siblings; that is, I going back to the censuses or other information I’d downloaded previously and filling in the blanks.

Now I have a new quandary on the other side of the spectrum: Should I limit my research when it comes to the collateral lines? In 2017 and so far in 2018 I’ve focused my research on my Adams line, barely even looking at the other three lines. In doing so, I’ve been able to really explore the collateral lines without feeling any pressure to return to my direct-line ancestors. It’s been really rewarding and fun.

This has added a little complexity in terms of organizing, but nothing I can’t handle. A year ago, I simply had a Collateral subfolder in my Surnames folder with all the source documents I’d downloaded for collateral relatives mixed together–I didn’t have enough to merit subfolders. But when the number of documents started to grow, I created subfolders for the surnames and the individuals, like I do with my direct-line ancestors, except that they fall under the Collateral folder. So the path looks like this:

Genealogy/Surnames/Collateral/[Surname]/[Name of Ancestor (YOB-YOD)]/Document name

I just checked. I have 419 documents in the Collateral folder.

I’m going to the library this afternoon, where I can access certain documents on Family Search that I can’t access at home, because the library is affiliated with the Family History Library. As I was creating the list of look ups in Evernote I realized that they’re for ancestors that are a bit far afield:

  • A marriage document for my 2nd great grandfather’s stepdaughter
  • A marriage document for my great grandfather’s half-brother’s wife’s parents

So I’m wondering whether I should ratchet things back closer to my direct-line ancestors or just continue happily exploring the folks who cross my path.

I thought I’d turn to you and ask. Do you limit who you research, or do you research anyone who is somehow related to you?

Photo by Anders Sandberg via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Broaden those search terms

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For about a year, I’d been trying to find my great grandfather’s half-brother, Wayne Horace Adams (1907-1976), on the 1920 census. His parents had divorced and I could not find Horace or his father, my 2nd great grandfather George Washington Adams, on that census. I knew that 74-year-old George had received custody of 12-year-old Horace in the 1919 divorce. And I knew that George would enter the Home for Disabled Soldiers in 1922. My curiosity about what happened to this teenager was strong.

I searched for him hither and yon, using everything I knew about him in my search terms. I thought I had searched for him with all his half siblings but in September I found him living in Oklahoma with his half brother John Quincy Adams, whom I apparently had missed checking on. That was an exciting find! (Because I was in a library when I found it, my cheers had to be silent, but that didn’t make them less exuberant.)

Once I found Horace on the 1920 census I wondered why he hadn’t come up in my searches on his name. I found the culprit: The enumerator had made a correction making Horace’s  age, which was 12, look like 42. (That’s a close up at the top of this post.) It was indexed as 42 and so he didn’t come up in my searches.

I realized that if I had left out his year of birth in my searches, I would have found him more easily. Lesson learned!