Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

I trust my tree. Do you?

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When I first dipped my toe into genealogy research around 20 years ago, I went online and found Family Search and Ancestry. I subscribed to Ancestry, printed out some five-generation pedigree charts and started writing down what I found, by hand. I collected names and dates and quickly went back many generations. I still remember what a thrill it was.

I made many mistakes back then. The biggest was probably that I didn’t write down a single source. The second biggest was that I didn’t apply a critical eye to anything. I didn’t check any sources, let alone create source citations. I just wrote down the information as I found it.

Of course, before long I started finding information that contradicted what I’d written in my pedigree charts. And, because I lacked sources, I couldn’t verify anything. I came to the realization that I couldn’t trust my tree. And that’s when I became overwhelmed and threw in the towel.

Fast forward to 2011 when I decided to try again. This time I realized that my handwritten pedigree charts were useful only as clues. I downloaded some genealogy software (I chose Reunion) and started with myself as the base of my tree. And I slowly started to grow my tree. I made two vows to myself:

  1. No person would be added to the tree unless I had a strong evidence they belonged there.
  2. Only facts supported by sources would be added to the tree.

As a result, my research is much slower paced than it was back in that first attempt. And it’s also much more satisfying. I love that everything on my tree is based on a source. And if I do find contradictory information I can easily compare the sources and come up with a conclusion.

For me, being able to trust my research, as it’s displayed on my tree, is everything. Do you trust your tree? Or do you have some weak branches?

If you can’t trust your tree or you don’t know if it’s trustworthy, you can do a couple of things to try to remedy that.

  • You could do a genealogy do-over. Thomas MacEntee over at Abundant Genealogy started a popular Genealogy Do Over program a few years back. He outlines his 12 steps for a Genealogy Do-Over at www.genealogydoover.com. He also offers a workbook for a do-over on that site.
  • You could go through your tree and make sure that every fact there is supported by a source. If it isn’t, you have research question to solve! I would suggest marking the unsourced “facts” somehow so that it’s easy for you to add sources (and then remove the mark). Be sure and keep track of the facts you need to verify.
  • You could check all your sources to make sure they’re cited sufficiently and that you’ve picked all the meat off the bones. I started doing systematically going through my source documents that in 2016 (but stalled out). And then in 2018, I started going back through my source documents to make sure that I had collected all the information I could from each source. That process is ongoing.

I went from having a wildly inaccurate family tree to one that I feel confident about. That’s made all the difference in how I feel about my hobby.

Exploring ICD codes on death certificates

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Death certificates can provide such great information, which is why I always try to track them down. Often my eye makes a bee-line for the names of the parents of the deceased, but of course there’s much more information to be found. One area, cause of death, is always of interest. Unfortunately, that information seems to often be the most illegible. In the past, if I could make out the words I would add them to my database. But if I couldn’t, I’d just move along.

But I’ve learned that with a little more effort you can decipher the cause of death and learn more about your ancestor. Often, in addition to the written-out words describing cause of death, there’s a ICD (International Classification of Diseases) code as well. If you can’t read the words, you can look up the ICD code to get more information. Just visit the International Classification of Diseases page at Wolfbane.com to track down the meaning of the code.

Let’s use a death certificate from my great grandfather’s brother, Jesse Wiley Rasco (1978-1957), to illustrate this.

Here’s his 1945 death certificate. I’ve put a red border around the ICD codes.

Death certificate for Jesse Wiley Rasco

 

As you can see, the ICD code for the primary cause of death is 94a. And the ICD code for the secondary cause of death is 83d. I could read the words for the primary cause of death. To me, it looks like Coronary Arteriosclerosis. Ordinarily, I would have stopped there. But the secondary cause of death was hard to decipher and I was curious.

I went to the International Classification of Disease page at Wolfbane.com and clicked on ILCD Revision 5 (1938), which would have been the version in use in 1945, since the next revision came out in 1948. The codes are listed in numerical order, so it was easy for me to find 94a, “diseases of the coronary arteries.” The secondary cause of death, 83d, is “hemiplegia and other paralyses of unstated origin.” Once I read that, I could see the word hemiplegia in the handwriting. It’s hard to make out the word after, but it looks to me like it could be “stroke.” I looked up the word hemiplegia and learned that it means “Paralysis on one side of the body.” [Edited to add: I received a note from reader Dennis Young suggesting that the handwriting says “Rt. side.” That makes complete sense and now seems obvious! The plot thickened a little when I received a note from reader Brad Pierce suggesting that the words say Lt. side, not Rt. side. Brad’s a physician himself so is probably good at deciphering doctor’s handwriting! I can’t tell whether it’s left or right, but I’m so glad to accept the “side” part. Thank you Dennis and Brad!]

Knowing that this 76-year-old farmer was living with paralysis on one side of his body at the time of his death gives me a bigger picture of what his life experience (or least the end of his life) was like.

As you can see, taking time to look up ICD codes when you see them might provide you with more information about your ancestor or might even solve a mystery. Just be sure you’re looking at the pertinent Revision!

Sneaking in a few hours at the Family History Library

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An aisle of microfilm at the Family History Library

I leave for Salt Lake City on Tuesday morning to attend RootsTech. It just hit me that I have about three hours on Tuesday afternoon before I have to be at the social event for speakers when I could visit the Family History Library. Unfortunately, it’s been such a hectic month between travel and organizing work that I haven’t been focusing on my genealogy research as much as I’d like.

The Family History Library can be so overwhelming and I know that the key to success for me will be to know what I’m looking for so I can make the most of my brief time there. I took a look at my Library Lookups notebook in my genealogy stack in Evernote and was pleased to see some physical books as well as microfilms listed there that I am able to see only when I’m at the library in Salt Lake City. (That notebook also contains notes for items at can see locally at the an FHL-affiliated library.)

So plan is to be arrive in Salt Lake, check into my hotel (if I can), eat lunch, drink plenty of water and hit the library with a whole lot of focus. I had great visits there in 2017 and 2018 and I hope to repeat my success.

As I asked in 2017, if any of you have any advice on strategies or things to bring along to the library to make it easier (I’ll have my phone and my laptop), I’m all ears!

My “good enough” research log

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My good enough research logWe’re in the midst of a 30 x 30 challenge this month so I’ve been researching every day. It feels great. I have no more than 30 minutes (sometimes less) to research most days this month, so I rely on my research log to help me start each session.

I’ve blogged before about my research log and its value. This month, because I’m working on my RootsTech talk “The Imperfection Genealogist,” I’ve been reflecting on the fact that my very informal research log is far from perfect. But it’s certainly good enough.

How do I know it’s good enough? It’s because I’m in touch with why I want to keep a research log and the ways I use it. For me, it’s about knowing what I’ve researched in a given session and (perhaps more importantly) what my next steps are. It also tells me at a glance how frequently I’m researching. I keep my research log in Evernote, but I track of all my documents and family tree elsewhere, so I’m not creating source citations or storing documents in my research log. You might have a research log for different reasons. And yours may be very different from mine. And that’s great.

My good-enough research log is an Evernote notebook by year (I started the 2020 research log notebooks ten days ago), pinned as a shortcut in the sidebar. Each time I research, I open the notebook, create a new note with today’s date, and then write in free from what I worked on that day. I write down the questions that come up. I write down any discoveries. And I end the session by writing down the next steps. That way, when I start the next session, whether it’s the next day or the next month, I know where to start. That’s been a huge time saver for me. (I blogged in more detail about my research log in this post. About a year ago, I wrote a post about how my research log keeps me focused.)

This month, I’ve added an Evernote template that allows me to check off that I completed a session and I also add how many minutes I researched, because I’m hoping that I’ll get in 900 minutes in the 30 x 30 challenge, even if I don’t manage 30 minutes in some individual sessions. This is motivating to me, because when I see the checkmarks each day it makes me want to not break the chain. I also jot down in a couple of words what type of work I did. The picture at the top of this post is screenshot of the note that contains the template, which is in addition to my usual daily note but also stored in the 2020 research log notebook. (To get that template, I clicked on New Note, then on Template right in the note, then Habit Tracker in the Template Gallery. That inserted the template into the note and I edited it a bit.)

When I first started contemplating creating a research log in 2012, I could understand its value but I got wrapped up in trying to do it perfectly. Predictably, my first attempts failed. But as soon as I got in touch with what I really wanted out a research log and I made it easy to accomplish, things fell into place. Now, I’m glad to say that I’ve developed a habit of logging my session every day.

A couple of years ago, I created a Facebook group called Genealogy Research Loggers. We’re a pretty quiet group, but if you’d like some help and accountability for creating a research log habit, please join us!