Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

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!

Creating history for our descendants

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I wrote this Thanksgiving post last year and still really appreciate its message. I’m reposting it today in honor of Thanksgiving. (Perhaps I’ll make it an annual tradition!) Happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. readers.

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.

Are you storing family keepsakes properly?

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Take time to properly store inherited itemsI had a wake-up call this morning. My one-year-old standard poodle, Bix, and I came down to my office to start work for the day.  No sooner had I sat down at my computer when I heard him chewing on something. Thankfully I didn’t ignore the sound like I sometimes do; I immediately investigated. There was Bix, lying on the floor chewing on page 34 of the epic 37-page letter my grandfather wrote my grandmother in 1927. Bix responded to my thunderous “NO!” and dropped it, but the damage was done.

At first, I couldn’t figure out where he got it. I looked all around for where I had stored that precious letter. I found it up high, stored loose on top of the Adams archival photo box in my office closet. That’s right, on top of the box. (How lazy can I be?) For some reason, that particular page had fallen off the top of the box and Bix noticed it on the floor. I hurriedly put it back and started plucked bits of paper off of Bix’s legs. Before I knew it, the page fell off again.

Clearly, this is a very poor way to store a delicate item that’s precious to me. I’ve already scanned and transcribed the letter, so the torn words aren’t lost to me. But I’m heartsick that my carelessness resulted in damage.

So I’m taking action this morning to properly store the letter. It’s shameful–I even have the supplies on hand to store it properly. I actually have acid-free tape, which I picked up at a genealogy conference, so I will see if I can tape the fragments back onto the damaged letter. I consulted my copy of How to Archive Family Keepsakes, by Denise May Levenick, so I know I should carefully unfold the letter and store the pages flat, in order, in an archival file folder inside an archival document box. As soon as I post this, I will take care of it.

Do you have any precious inherited items that you could be storing more safely? I encourage you not to wait until you get a wake-up call like mine: take the time to properly store them now. If you need help on proper storage, Denise’s book is excellent.

We’re creating history for our descendants

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thanksgiving-tableThis 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.

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.