Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #43: Verify family stories

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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 will help you create reliable research.

Verify family stories

We all have family stories that have always been taken as the truth. But when you put on our genealogist, you really need to verify those stories. As when playing the Telephone Game, stories have a way of changing upon repetition. If you want a family tree you can trust and share, use those stories as a basis for research questions and treat them as clues, not fact. I think there’s no bigger thrill than to get to the bottom of a family story and establish it (or a version of it) as fact! Then be sure to cite your sources, so others know that the facts are verified.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Got a brick wall?

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If you’re like every genealogist I know, you have at least one brick wall, a pesky ancestor for whom you haven’t been able to find more information. Actually, you probably have more than one. I know I do!

I’ve got good news for you! Genealogist extraordinaire Amy Johnson Crow is debuting a new eight-week individualized program called Beyond the Brick Wall. According to Amy’s website, “The Beyond the Brick Wall program is a combination of individualized coaching and genealogy education, based on Amy Johnson Crow’s proven WANDER research method. You will be putting into practice what you are learning, while having access to a professional genealogist to guide you through your research.” I think it sounds amazing. It’s limited to 20 participants, so you can get individual attention from Amy, who is so knowledgeable (and so nice)!

Registration opens today for the program, which starts September 20 and runs weekly through November 14. The program consists of a combination of pre-recorded presentations and interactive live sessions. The live sessions will begin at 7:00pm Eastern and last 60-90 minutes. The various components of the program are valued together at over $1500 and Amy is offering it all for $349.

Just go to her website to find loads of information and register for the program. If you sign up, please tell Amy I sent you!

Using Ancestry clues to find images at Family Search (screencast)

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Five years ago, I created a screencast of how I found my great aunt’s death certificate on family search after finding an FHL film number on Ancestry. While the user interfaces at Ancestry and Family Search may have changed a little in the last five years, I do think it’s useful information, so I decided to run that 2019 post again today.

Today I was doing some research on Ancestry. (I’ve finished my backlog project and have lifted my ban on searching–more on that in a future post.) I was looking for a death certificate for my grandmother’s sister whom I had just learned through Find A Grave had died at the age of six, in 1922.

A simple Birth/Marriage/Death records search produced a collection called Washington, Select Death Certificates, 1907-1960, but when I clicked on it, it said “No Image Text-only collection.” (A picture of that screen is at the top of this post.) I saw that there was a FHL film number, so I went to Family Search to try to track down the document.

I was successful in finding an image of the death certificate, though I had to jump through a few hoops. After I successfully downloaded and processed it, I decided to do a screencast of the process, in case it helps someone here.

Here’s the screencast:

A quick summary is that I searched on the film number in the catalog at Family Search, then when I got another No Image Available message there, I drilled down further to the actual microfilm number mentioned on Ancestry and did another search. That brought up the image. If it hadn’t, I would have gone to the image number (listed in the initial search result at Family Search) in that digitized microfilm. Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re told an image isn’t available!

You can find more information on using Family Search’s card catalog in this post from a year ago: Using the card catalog to find elusive documents on Family Search. And if you’re interested in how I processed that death certificate after I downloaded it, check out the blog post How I process a downloaded document. (For a deeper dive, check out my Orderly Roots guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow.)

Quick Tip #42: Check multiple sites before giving up

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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 is a good lesson on being persistent.

Check multiple sites before giving up

It can be frustrating when you can’t find a document, especially when you’re pretty darn sure it exists. Even when you pull out all the stops and search every way you can think of  at an online site,  you can come up short. But don’t give up yet! Instead, take a look at another online database. Your document may have been indexed differently by that other database and could show up in your search. (This tip applies to in-person research as well!)

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

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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.