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Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Putting my imperfectionism to work

April 7, 2020 By Janine Adams 7 Comments

As I wrote in a post last week, I’ve been working on processing my 2nd great grandfather’s Civil War pension file. I got the tedious up-front source citation work completed, which involved creating source citations and labels for each of the 53 documents, affixing the labels to the paper documents and scanning the whole thing into a long pdf. I’m now working on transcribing the documents, one per day. (This is how I choose to process this type of document–I’m not saying it’s the only way or the best way, but it works for me.)

So today, I was working on Document Six and I realized that I have a typographical error in my source citation. The correct application number is 1007144 but I had typed 1006144 and copied it onto all my labels without realizing my error. That numbers appears 54 times (one for each document, plus an overall citation). Of course, it’s easy to fix in my software. But then I was faced with the pension document itself having the wrong application number on every document.

I considered my options:

  1. Fix all the labels, print them out again, affix the corrected label over the incorrect label on each document, and rescan the whole thing.
  2. Hand correct each label and rescan the whole thing.
  3. Add a notation to each label in the pdf itself
  4. Add a notation at the beginning of the pdf only

It felt like the “right’ thing to do would be option number 1. But what a pain in the butt that would be. I was okay with doing it once. But doing it a second time felt practically unbearable. Plus my printer is about to run out of toner.

I thought about what was important to me and realized that the most important citation was the one in my Reunion software (the one that I corrected in about 5 seconds). But I didn’t want my pension file pdf to be wrong, in case I pass it along to someone else.

So I added a notation in the pdf, 54 times, that says “correct application no. 1007144.” (That’s a picture of it above.) And you know what? That’s going to be good enough. It didn’t feel good enough to just do it at the top of the file. I want each citation label corrected in case someone is looking at only one document.

It took me less than 10 minutes to make this electronic correction (thanks to the miracle of copying and pasting), substantially less time than option number 1 would have taken. Bonus: I didn’t use up toner or risk the frustration of jammed documents in my scanner. Luckily, this is not a situation I will encounter with any kind of frequency, since I so rarely deal with paper documents.

I try to take these little lessons about “good enough” to heart and pass them along when I can. When does good enough speak to you in your genealogy research?

ETA: In the comments to this post, Kay asked for an example of a placement of the label. As I mentioned in the reply, I usually put it wherever it fits (or on the back of the page). Here’s a full-page view of the label placement.

Filed Under: Challenges, Reflections Tagged With: Civil War, electronic files, Igleheart, learning opportunities

Time for January 30 x 30 check in!

January 14, 2020 By Janine Adams 14 Comments

It’s almost the middle of our January 30 x 30 challenge. For those of you who signed up, how is it going? Are you managing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or scanning or whatever it is you set out to do)?

My challenge was made a little extra challenging by travel. I was in Walla Walla, Washington, visiting my dad from January 3 to 12.Ā  I’m happy to say that I did manage to research every day, but one of those days barely counts. The day I traveled home (a 12-hour journey by car and plane) I thought I’d get research done on the plane, but when I started working I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So the ten minutes I put in was barely productive. I give myself credit for at least trying, but execution was not impressive.

One thing that’s helped me get back on track is that yesterday, back at my desk, I decided to pull out my 2nd great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, which I’d received way back in 2015. At the NGS conference that year, I heard Julie Miller talk about these files: what they contain and how to process them. I immediately requested the complete pension files for my three Union veteran ancestors from the National Archives. I’ve already processed the other two but had not focused on the file of Benjamin Franklin Igleheart. Since I’ve turned my attention to the Igleheart line, this is a natural thing for me to work on.

Once I pulled it out of the file (I haven’t yet scanned it), I saw that I’d started by putting the pages in chronological order and created a source citation for the whole pension file. The next step is to create a source citation for each individual document, print the citation on a label and affix the label to the paper document before scanning the whole document. After it’s scanned, I’ll start transcribing it. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes creating the citations and their labels and got through about eleven documents before having to move on to something else. For the near future, this will be the project I’ll be working every day.

I’d forgotten how great it was to have a project like this that I can break down into tiny bites. I love knowing exactly what I’m going to be working on and I love that there are lots of little milestones in this giant project so I can celebrate my progress.

Enough about me. I hope your challenge is going well and I look forward to hearing about it in the comments!

Filed Under: Challenges, My family Tagged With: civil war pension, Igleheart, record keeping, time management

Time of day matters with cemetery photos

August 2, 2019 By Janine Adams 10 Comments

As I’m processing the photos I took on my Kentucky research trip, I’m realizing an important aspect of research-trip planning that I hadn’t taken into account: the time of day I visit cemeteries.

On my June 2019 trip, I visited two cemeteries I’d seen in October 2014. I took pictures in both cemeteries on both trips–there was more to discover on my second trip, since I knew more about my family tree. One thing I noticed is that my 2014 photos taken at noon at the Sacramento Cumberland Presbyterian Church are so much better than the ones I took at 6 pm in my June 2019 trip to that cemetery. (The I visited the other cemetery, Poplar Grove Cemetery, at the same both trips, about 2 pm.)

Taken 16 Sep 2014, 12:07 pm

grave marker taken in good light

 

Taken 24 June 2019, 6:04 pm

grave marker taken in poor light

I understand there are all sorts of variables that can go into getting a great shot, but you can see that the first photo, taken on a partly cloudy day at noon, is much better than the second photo, taken on sunny June day at 6 pm. It doesn’t help that the grave marker faces east! (Since I knew I had a great shot of that grave marker, I didn’t worry much about the quality of that second photo.)

Here’s another example, of the marker for my second great uncle, Ellsworth McEuen, in the same cemetery:

Taken 16 Sep 2014, 12:35 pm

Taken 24 June 2019, 6:03 pm

 

On my next research trip that includes cemeteries, I will do my best to visit them when the sun is high to avoid these challenges!

Filed Under: Challenges, Genealogy tips, My family Tagged With: cemetery, Igleheart, mceuen, planning, research, research trip

Reconnecting with my research

May 12, 2017 By Janine Adams 4 Comments

Reconnecting with my genealogy researchI was out of town for ten days and I managed to sneak in a little genealogy research. I returned on May 7 to a full client schedule for my organizing business. I’m certainly not complaining about that, but I have not had the energy and time to do any genealogy research for over a week.

I was regretting that state of affairs when I realized I didn’t have to have a large swath of time available to me in order to get some research done. Sometimes just spending a little time on it to reconnect me with my ancestors and get the ball rolling again can be really beneficial.

In the past, a big barrier to my starting a research session was figuring out what to work on. But now I have a few small, systematic projects I can always fall back on. This morning, I decided to set a timer and work on my research for just 15 minutes. I had three choices of easy things to dive into:

  • Checking my source documentation
  • Adding multimedia files to sources in Reunion where missing (step six of my digital workflow, which I didn’t add until later in my research life)
  • Transcribing the Civil War pension file of George Washington Adams (1845-1938), my 2nd great grandfather

For any of these projects, I could make some progress in just 15 minutes. I chose to work on option #1, checking my source documentation. I have a checklist in Evernote in which I check off each source after I’ve made sure that the source citation is good, the multimedia file is attached to the source and the pertinent data from the source was included in Reunion. When I finish a source I check it off so I can always see where I stand.

This morning, the next source on the list was the Compiled Service Record for a different 2nd great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart (1845-1913). I hit the jackpot, because I hadn’t done a great job of extracting data to include in his record on Reunion. The 15 minutes flew by as I noted his eye, hair and complexion color, for example. (His eyes were listed as black!)

I didn’t actually finish going through the 16-page record, but I employed a trick I learned years ago: When my timer went off, I stopped, even though I was in the middle of a document. I know that since our brains crave completion, I’ll be anxious to get right back to the document and finished extracting data from it. Then I’ll check it off my source documentation checklist (another satisfying thing to do). I made a note in my research log to remind me where I left off. I’d be willing to bet I’ll be so anxious to finish it that I work on it this evening.

I find that if I spend too much time away from my research I feel disconnected from it. Taking a little snippet of time to work on it this morning will help me get back to it this weekend, when I have more time.

Filed Under: Challenges, Genealogy tips, My family Tagged With: Adams, Igleheart, source documentation, time management

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about me

I'm Janine Adams, a professional organizer and a genealogy enthusiast. I love doing family history research, but I find it's very easy for me to get overwhelmed and not know where to turn next. So I'm working hard to stay organized and feel in control as I grow my family tree.

In this blog, I share my discoveries and explorations, along with my organizing challenges (and solutions). I hope by sharing what I learn along the way I'll be able to help you stay focused and have fun while you do your research, too.

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