Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #36: Do it now!

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one helps keep my backlog lean.

Do it now!

It is so easy to let a backlog of documents to be processed pile up. If you’re researching online and you download a document, it’s very tempting to move on to the next document to download, rather than processing the one you just found. (I process documents by extracting the facts from a document, entering them into my database on Reunion and creating a source citation that is used for each fact.) Way too often, I just download willy nilly without processing and the result is a backlog of documents to be processed that sometimes weigh me down. If we don’t extract the data from the documents we find, they’re not benefiting us.

So here’s my advice, when you’re doing online research, I encourage you to build time into your research session to process the documents that you find in that session. Either do it right after downloading or process all documents found in that session at the end of the session. This way, you’ll keep your backlog to a minimum and potentially valuable documents won’t languish in your backlog.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #35: Have a place for your unprocessed digital files

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one helps me keep an eye on the work I need to do.

Have a place for your unprocessed digital files

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I refer to my backlog all the time. When I talk about my backlog, I’m talking about the documents that I have downloaded and renamed, but not extracted information to add to my Reunion database. My backlog doesn’t stress me out (too much) because I know exactly how large it is and I know where all the documents are.

In my case, I download all my documents to my Surnames folder. It is only after they’re processed that they’re moved into an individual ancestor’s folder. Thus any unfiled documents (which will always float at the top above the subfolders because they start with a year) are easily visible. This is a sanity saver for me. I would hate the idea that I’d lost track of any unprocessed documents.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tips #34: Brainstorm variations of your ancestors’ names

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one might be helpful when you dive into the 1950 census.

Brainstorm variations of your ancestors’ names

With the release of the 1950 U.S. census less than two weeks away, now seems like a good time to suggest that you take a moment to come up with alternative ways your ancestors’ names may have been spelled–or interpreted by indexers–on documents. Once you have your list, you can use the different variants when searching at the various online site, like Ancestry, Family Search, the NARA 1950 census site, MyHeritage, and Newspapers.com.

Variations might include:

  • First and middle names
  • Initials in place of first name
  • First initial, middle name
  • Phonetic spellings
  • Possible misinterpretations of handwritten letters — I talk about this in my blog post, Sometimes you gotta browse.

If you’re compiling your list of ancestors to look for on the 1950 census, it might be smart to add these variations–then hang on to them for future searches.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #33: Always check the document image

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one could be really helpful if it’s not already your practice!

Always check the document image

If you’re doing research online and locate a document that pertains to your ancestor, you usually have the opportunity to click on a link that shows you the (typewritten) indexed information. And you also have the opportunity to click to see an image of the document itself. Please take the opportunity to look at the image.

Why look at the document image? Here’s a great reason: Not every bit of information is necessarily indexed, so you may glean information from looking at the document that you would have missed had you relied on the index. Another reason is that the document may not be indexed correctly, something you might be able to tell by looking at the document image.

Plus, in my opinion it’s fun to look at old handwritten documents. I take every opportunity I can!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash