Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Making my Ancestry tree public

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Making my Ancestry tree publicBack in July, I was pondering uploading my family tree from my Reunion software to Ancestry and trying to decide whether to make the tree public or private on Ancestry. I invited comments on that question and was really thrilled to see a robust discussion about it, with advocates on both sides.

So I uploaded my tree, making it private initially. I was disappointed to see that the sources didn’t update as hyperlinks, so while my facts are sourced, others don’t have easy access to the sources.

After careful consideration, I decided to make the tree public. For me, the good of helping others with their research and potentially attracting connections with distant relatives outweighed the risk of my data ending up in incorrect trees.

The decision was made, but then I stalled. The perfectionist in me didn’t want to make the tree public until the source problem was fixed. But I haven’t made fixing that problem a priority. (It kind of overwhelms me.) Today, I decided to not let perfectionism get in the way of progress and I pulled the trigger and made my tree public.

Having done this gives me the impetus to do several things:

  • Create a checklist and schedule for systematically going through my Ancestry tree and hyperlinking the online sources included in the tree (and simultaneously making sure I’ve saved them on my hard drive).
  • Add the information and sources I’ve found offline in recent my recent trips to my Ancestry tree.
  • Come up with some sort of schedule for updating the Ancestry tree. (I keep the Reunion software on my hard drive up to date–it’s my primary database.)
  • Check out Family Tree Maker for the Mac, which I’m told automatically updates to Ancestry, and consider switching to it from Reunion.

I’m hoping that making my tree public will help others and, potentially, lead to some fruitful interactions. I’m looking forward to seeing where this might lead!

Using a timeline to solve a problem

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Use a timeline to solve genealogy problemsIn researching my great great grandparents, Laban Taylor Rasco and Margaret Dye Rasco, whose graves I saw last month in Alabama, I realized that I was seeing marriage indexes that listed their marriage date as March 14, 1865, but in my Reunion software, I’d listed May 14, 1865 as the day they wed. The source for the May date was the Alabama Census of Confederate Soldiers from 1921, a wonderful, information-rich form that had been filled out by hand by (I think) my great great grandfather himself. (I’m basing that on the handwriting in the form matching that of the signature.) Since I haven’t yet seen the original documents that were indexed, I was inclined to take my ancestor’s word for it.

But then I used the Ages feature in Reunion to see at what age Laban Taylor Rasco was when the various events I’d entered took place. And that’s when I realized (a palm-to-forehead moment) that his marriage took place while he was serving in the Alabama Infantry during the Civil War. Thanks to the amazing Civil War records from the National Archives available through Fold3, I knew he had a 60-day furlough starting January 31, 1865. He was residing at a hospital for wounded soldiers in Mississippi (courtesy of a shoulder wound he’d sustained at the Battle of Jonesborough), and his furlough papers listed his residence as Shelby County, Alabama. He returned to the hospital on March 28 and listed on the rolls of prisoners of war paroled at Talladega, Alabama, on June 3. The marriage indexes indicate that he and Margaret were married in Shelby County, Alabama, so the wedding must have taken place during that furlough. (So much for a honeymoon!) May 14 clearly isn’t within that window. So I’m changing my records to say March 14.

Laban would have been 77 years old (and still married to Margaret) when he filled out that Confederate Census form in 1921. So I’m willing to cut him a little slack if we mixed up month of his anniversary.

This was a great reminder of the value of using a timeline (and applying a little logic) when trying to resolve conflicting information.

Readers weigh in on blog-reading tools

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Feedly is popular among genealogy blog readersEarlier this month, I solicited your suggestions for blog-reading tools. I was interested in hearing how you keep up with the various blogs you read. I was thrilled to receive about a dozen comments with suggestions. As promised, I’m compiling them here for easy reference.

Feedly was the blog reader of choice for five commenters. Two of those were Thomas MacEntee and Jana Last, whose blogs highlight other genealogy blogs, use Feedly. If Feedly is good enough for these blog power-readers, I think it’s probably good enough for me. I’ve just downloaded it and am going to give it a go. So far, set up has been intuitive and easy!

Here are the other suggestions (each of which were mentioned once), in case you want to try any of them:

Several people mentioned that they formerly used and like Google Reader. Alas, Google, in its infinite wisdom, discontinued that service last year.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share information for this post!

Keeping up with blogs

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How do you manage your blog reading?There are so many great genealogy blogs out there. (I’m flattered that you’re reading this one when you have so many choices!) I am delighted to be part of the GeneaBloggers community, which points me to new and existing genealogy blogs, but I know I underutilize it.

Today I’m pondering how I might do a better job of (a) finding genealogy blogs to read; (b) remembering to read them and (c) finding the time to do so.

So I thought I’d turn to my readers. You guys are such a great source of information. Would you mind telling me how you organize your genealogy blog reading? Do you use RSS feeds and, if so, what platform do you use to read them?I’ve been thinking I could create a Flipboard of favorite blogs but I haven’t even explored it.

I think this is one of those situations where I’m overwhelmed by options and don’t know how to go about researching it without it turning into a huge time suck.

Any advice is much appreciated! I’ll do a follow-up post with the results of this little poll so we can all benefit. (I’d also love to hear what your five favorite genealogy blogs are!)

Thank you!!

Photo by Shardayyy via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.