Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Just a little bit counts

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10minutetimerI’ve been trying hard to adhere to my new routine of doing genealogy research first thing in the morning. The trouble is that some mornings are busier than others. When I have an 8:30 client appointment it can be challenging for me to find the time to do research. My genealogy research is important to me, but it’s not urgent.

For the last month, I’ve done at least a little research almost every morning. I’ll set my timer for as little as ten minutes and research for that short amount of time. Since my current project is systematically going through my source documentation–which is actually proving to be really interesting and enjoyable–I know exactly where to start and I know that a little bit of focused time will move me along.

What I’ve discovered in doing this is that the benefit goes beyond furthering my research. Keeping myself engaged in my research on a daily basis makes me more excited to work on it. It also makes me feel more connected to my ancestors and helps me remember names and dates.

For the first half of the year I thought a lot about my genealogy research but I didn’t do a lot of it. Mostly I just felt anxious or guilty about not taking the time to work on it. These days, I’m still thinking a lot about it, but my thoughts are happy and productive. That’s a wonderful shift.

Doing just a tiny bit of daily action reaps big results. This is true in family history research. It’s also true in organizing your family history research. And let’s face it–it’s true in many other aspects of life, like exercise and healthy eating.

Daily habits are the foundation of an easy life. I’ve said that for years as a professional organizer. Now I’m seeing it come true in my genealogy research. I love it!

Resisting the urge to print

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1800sidebysideI used to print all my source documentation and then analyze the printed version and add facts to my Reunion software on my computer. In fact, as recently as 2013 I blogged about how printing gave me comfort.

But that’s changed and these days I’m not even tempted to print. In November, I posted 8 reasons not to print and I stand by it. Organizing my research is much easier now that I’m not looking at a lot of printed documents. Every now and then I pull out a paper file and look at something I printed years ago, but I bet that happens fewer than ten times a year.

Right now I’m going through all my source documentation and in the process cleaning up my electronic files. In doing so, I found the family who had been counted twice on the 1880 census. I needed to compare the two census documents side by side. That’s when I felt the urge to print. My initial thought was that it would be easier to look at the documents on paper, rather than on my computer. One of the documents had already been printed and was in my file. I came really close to printing out the other one, when I realized that looking at the paper documents would be harder for me, not easier. The type is so small on the printed document that I might have had to get out my magnifying glass and squint. That’s the opposite of easy!

I had originally found the census documents on Ancestry and saved them to my hard drive. So I just opened the documents on my computer in Preview (that’s the Mac default pdf and jpg viewer), zoomed in on the family in question and sized each of them so that they fit side by side on my screen easily–I didn’t need to see the entire document at a glance, after all. And then I was able to easily compare them, line by line. I had Reunion open as well, so it was simple for me to enter data into my ancestors’ records and source each fact properly.

What I’m learning in my research, over time, is that going paperless is just plain easier. When I transcribe my ancestors’ Civil War pension files, I use an electronic version, which allows me to zoom in when the handwriting is a little puzzling. And I’m not shuffling a lot of long pieces of paper. (Those documents came from the National Archives in paper form. I put source information on each and then scanned the whole file into one long pdf. I detail that process here.)

The keys to successfully eschewing printing, I believe, are twofold:

  1. A good file naming protocol and folder structure, so that I can easily see what I have for each ancestor. I file by surname and individual, which is working well for me.
  2. A solid backup protocol, in  case of hard drive failure. I use CrashPlan Pro to back up to the cloud and Time Machine to back my Mac onto an external hard drive that sits on my desk.

As commenter Maria Tello mentions, having a large monitor makes viewing electronic documents easier.

I was glad I resisted the urge to print that 1880 census document. It made analysis easier–and I’m sure it was easier on my eyes!

Doing research first thing in the morning

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Doing genealogy first thing in the morningI’ve been frustrated this year by the small amount of time I’ve spent researching. I do love it, but between a new puppy, a kitchen renovation and a busy business, I just wasn’t making the time for it. It felt like the day just wasn’t long enough to squeeze it in.

One thing I’ve discovered is that if I get out of the swing of researching, it’s harder for me to jump back in. When I research infrequently, I don’t have a burning desire to solve a particular mystery. Then it’s hard to get started. So for me regular research, even just a few minutes at a time, is really beneficial.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been doing a half hour (or even 15 minutes) of research first thing in the morning. It happens before email, before blogging, before Facebook. I’ll set a timer and start on it while I’m drinking my coffee. I stop when the timer goes off. It’s a fabulous way to start the day–I feel I’ve accomplished something and I get to work on something I enjoy. Best of all, I’ve stopped beating myself up over not researching.

I’m helped by the fact that my current project is checking my source documentation, which lends itself to short bursts of activity. But if I weren’t doing that, I could still easily jump into my research, because it’s top of mind (since I’m working on it daily).

We’ll see how long this lasts, but until life gets crazy again (which it inevitably will), I think this one little adjustment to my schedule will reap great benefits.

Photo by Thomas Ulrich via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Identifying military ancestors

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identifying military ancestorsWhenever I read about a records collection for a certain conflict (which seems to happen around military-related holidays, like Veteran’s Day or anniversaries of conflicts) I get excited about researching my ancestors in those collections, which can be such a treasure trove of information. But in the past sometimes I would have difficulty remembering which ancestor might have fought in which war and I’d become overwhelmed and abandon the effort.

So I created a document that shows me the prospective ancestors for each conflict, based on the dates they were born. At the time, I used a table from Family Tree Magazine but when I went looking for it to share in this post, I couldn’t find it. However, I did find an even-better table called Ages of Servicemen in Wars that lists 20 military conflicts, the years they were fought, the typical birth dates for soldiers and the  typical ages of soldiers. Thank you, FamilySearch!

Armed with that information, I created a simple spreadsheet (pictured, in part, above) with the following column headers:

  • Conflict
  • Likely Birth Year of Soldiers
  • Prospective Ancestor
  • Confirmed Ancestor

For each conflict, I entered the names of the ancestors who were born during the birth-year window listed in column 2. After I ascertained that one had indeed fought in that war, I entered an X in the Confirmed Ancestor column. What I should have done and will from here forward, is place a dash or an N in the Confirmed Ancestor column to indicate that I’d ruled that ancestor out.

This is a simple way to see at a glance who I might research when I’m looking at military collections at the National Archives, Fold3 or elsewhere. It’s easy to create and well worth the time spent.