Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Organizing genealogy records on my hard drive

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I have to admit I’m a little loosey goosey when it comes to organizing my hard drive. I use a Mac, which has marvelous search capabilities, so when I find a file, I typically do a quick search, rather than drilling down through file structures, like I used to do on Windows machines.

But when it comes to my genealogical research, I’ve decided it’s time to reform myself. It started when I started trying to get my head around the notion of saving images of documents (like census documents), rather than printing them and putting them in my paper file. I think for the moment, I’ll probably do both, until I can let go of the thrill I get by holding the papers in my hand. (I blogged about this recently, in a post called To Print or Not to Print?)

I also want to be able to help clients organize their genealogy, both paper and electronic, and I realized I really should practice what I preach. But when it came time to figure out a file structure I started feeling that familiar overwhelm creeping in. Then I noticed a little perfectionism too. What if I set up a less-than-optimal system?

I figure any system is better than no system. But the point became moot because this weekend I came across the marvelous website Genealogy Tools and its accompanying YouTube Channel. I watched a five-part video screencast series from Genealogy Tools guru Ben Sayer on creating a genealogy folder system for the Mac, in which he shared exactly how he does it. (He has Place folders and Surname folders.) In the video he detailed his file naming protocol, which is nice and simple. In my book, simple is good.

That liberated me! His system looks great, so I’m going to adopt it for myself. I haven’t taken the time to revamp my current file names, but today I had the chance to jump right in. I’m away from my paper files and I found an ancestor on the 1850 U.S. census. I made a folder for her and saved the census image in that folder. Time will tell whether I feel the compunction to print it out and put it in her file folder.

In the coming weeks, I intend to clean up my Genealogy folder on my hard drive and get into the practice of saving documents in an organized manner.

My electronic file system has evolved a great deal since 2013 when I wrote this post. In 2021 I published an Orderly Roots Guide called How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow that provides detailed information on how I organize my own genealogy research, which is now 100 percent digital. It is 37 pages and is available for $19.99.

Excited to use Reunion 10

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I use Reunion software on my Mac and today upgraded to version 10. I usually am pretty cautious about updating software that I’m happy with, but one look at the video outlining the new features and I was in. (And that was before I learned I could get the upgrade at no cost, since I’d bought Reunion 9 in 2012.)

I’d had no complaints with Reunion 9. When I started doing genealogy research 10 years ago, I hand wrote everything. But when I got serious about it again this year, I knew I needed software and I decided on Reunion, which is native for the Mac. So I had nothing to compare it to, but I was very pleased.

But Reunion 10 is even more exciting. They’ve added many easy-to-use reporting and charting features. They’ve also expanded what you can see on one screen and increased the ease of navigation.

As I’ve mentioned in a post about my research plan, my strategy is to use Reunion to document my family history research and to add nothing to it that has not been verified and properly sourced. At first that felt like kind of a drag…Reunion felt like a necessary evil. As I add data to it and watch my family tree grown, fully confident that the information contained in it is solid, Reunion is feeling more like a friend. And now that I have Reunion 10 to play with, it’s become an even more interesting friend. (Like going home from college with a friend and discovering she has a cute brother!)

Click below to see the video that outlines the improvements to Reunion 10. If you haven’t already updated, you might consider it!

The Top Ten New Features in Reunion 10 (video)

Census aid

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Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference.

I created a little two-column chart that I put up on my bulletin board. In the left-hand column is a census year for each of the censuses from 1790 to 1940. In the right-hand column is the corresponding ordinal number. So 1940 is Sixteenth, 1930 is Thirteenth and so forth.

If you’ve looked at a U.S. census, you know that the year of the census is in tiny letters but which census it is (Fifteenth, Fourtheenth, etc.) is in big letters. I can’t tell you how much squinting this little chart has prevented.

I love it when I can do one little thing to make my life easier.

In case you’re interested in printing one out for yourself, I attach a link here to a pdf of my chart: census ordinal numbers. I hope you find it helpful!