Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Help your kids know your heirlooms’ stories

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A reader of this blog, Jacqueline Krieps Schattner, sent me a link to a post she wrote recently on her genealogy blog, Seeds to Tree, that described the decluttering she’s been doing during the pandemic (she’s used her time very well!). The blog post also presented an idea that I think is absolutely genius, so I asked her permission to write about it here (and also on the Peace of Mind Organizing blog).

Jacquie’s decluttering work during the pandemic has been very thorough. She got so much done that she turned her attention to an area that’s usually last on the list: the family treasures around her home. In her post, Pandemic De-Cluttering and a Heirloom Book, Jacquie described taking stock of some of the treasures she has collected over 40 years of marriage (and inherited from her parents and grandparents). She’s still enjoying them and has no interest in letting them go. But when she started thinking about what will happen to these heirlooms if she and her husband were to downsize or were not around to explain the significance of each piece, she came up with an important piece of wisdom:

Heirlooms without stories are just stuff.

Jacquie came up with a great idea for making sure her daughters would know the stories of the individual items. She created a book with photos of each of the heirlooms, complete with captions that capture all the stories. That way, when the time comes, her daughters will be able to make informed decisions about which of these heirlooms they would like to keep. She titled the book, Why Did We Save This?

Jacquie spells out in detail how she went about creating the book (via Shutterfly), what it looks like, and what she’s done with the copies. This is such a helpful idea that I’m thrilled to share it! Thanks for allowing me to write about it, Jacquie!

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.

On Thanksgiving, we’re creating history for our descendants

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Two years ago, I wrote this Thanksgiving post. I ran it again last year and now I’ve decided to make it an annual tradition. Enjoy!

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.

A special gift for a genealogy lover

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I’m not a big gift giver and I when I do give gifts, I prefer to give experiences, rather than stuff. (I see how hard it is for my clients to let go of items that were gifts and I don’t want to burden anyone with that.)

But I dearly love one piece of jewelry that I bought myself as a gift. It’s the Original Family Tree Necklace from Lisa Leonard Designs. She creates custom, hand-stamped jewelry. This necklace is meant for moms, I think, to include the first names of their children. But I chose to have my grandparents’ surnames printed on the necklace.

I think it’s pretty and when I wear it, I feel connected to my family. If you ever see me at a genealogy conference, you’ll probably see it hanging around my neck.

As the gift-giving season approaches, I thought I’d mention it now in case you have a genealogy lover on your gift list. It also makes a good gift to give yourself!

When I bought mine (pictured here), it was being offered in pewter. Now it’s in sterling silver (and therefore more expensive). Lisa Leonard offers discounts all the time. In fact as I write this, there’s a 30 percent discount available, which brings the price down to $90 for the shorter chains. I love mine so much I just had to share!