Organize Your Family History

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Quick Tip #32: Found a bad scan? Look again

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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. I’ve benefited more than once from this one!

Found a bad scan? Look again.

If you’re like me, you’ve encountered some documents that were scanned poorly. It can be so disappointing to locate a document, then realize you can’t read everything on it. Here’s what I suggest when that happens.

If the poorly scanned document you found is on Ancestry, see if you can find it on FamilySearch (and vice versa). Documents found on both sites were probably scanned (and indexed) by different people and there may be a better scan on the other site. If you can’t find it on a search, try browsing.

Early on in my researching I found a terrible scan on Ancestry for the 1910 census my grandmother was on. I didn’t think to look for it on FamilySearch and when finally did, nine years later, I found a beautiful scan.

Looking elsewhere for a better scan can be worth a few extra minutes of effort!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

My 2022 genealogy goals

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Are you a goal setter? I sure am. Every year I set aside a day to work on my personal and business goals. This year, I did it on December 16. But I ran out of time to consider my personal genealogy goals, so I did that this morning.

I sat down with a pad of paper and I did a little brainstorming session with myself. I achieved some clarity really fast. The release of the 1950 census on April 1 creates a natural break in the year. I decided to focus the first quarter of the year on preparing for that day and cleaning up my existing research. The latter three quarters will be about new research and avoiding a backlog.

So here’s what I decided:

First quarter 2022:

Rest of 2022:

  • Glean as much information from the 1950 census as possible
  • Shift my family focus to the Jeffries line (that’s my maternal grandmother’s line)
  • Do a deep dive on my Civil War ancestor Richard Anderson Jeffries

One overarching intention for the year is to try harder to do daily research. For the last few years, I’ve found that in the absence of a 30 x 30 challenge, I ignore my research. Sometimes, I’m able to sustain daily research for months at a time, but that’s fallen by the wayside. In 2022, I’m going to try to do at least a little something every single day to keep my mind in the game. I know that, for me, that means researching in the early morning. Perhaps I’ll try to go to bed a little earlier so I can get up earlier to accomplish this. I plan a 30 x 30 challenge starting January 1, 2022, so I’ll have that support as I kick off the year.

I realize that I didn’t so much set goals this year as clarify my focus. And that’s good enough for me. It feels great. The plan for the year feels simple and attainable.

If you’ve set goals that you feel like sharing, please share in the comments. I’d love to hear them!

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Quick Tip #28: Think of your future self

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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. I’m hoping this one will prompt you to go the extra mile, even when it feels tedious.

Think of your future self

I think we’ve all experienced fatigue when we’re analyzing a document and we decide not to record tiny details because it just feels like too much. Or we’re processing a census return and the ancestor had 14 kids and adding all of them to the tree is too tedious to bear. If you’re tempted to stop short of completely processing a document or perhaps wanting to take short cuts in a transcribing project, I encourage to think about how you will benefit from today’s effort tomorrow. When I first started researching, I took all sorts of short cuts that I regretted later on when I turned my attention a particular ancestor or collateral relative.

Next time you’re tempted to stop and move on, I encourage you to think of your future self and press Pause instead. Write down your next steps in your research log or elsewhere so you don’t forget. Come back to the task with a fresh brain. Remember, genealogy is a marathon not a sprint!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #27: Read the instructions to enumerators

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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 can be very helpful for census research.

Read the instructions to enumerators

When you’re processing a U.S. census record, it’s tempting to record the big information, like birth year and place and occupation, and leave it at that. But there are lots of other pieces of information that you can capture, which can vary by census year. Sometimes it’s not easy to understand exactly what the word or code written in a column refers to, and that’s where the instructions to enumerators come in.

Whenever I take the time to read the instructions, I benefit. They’re easy to find on the historical instructions page on  U.S. Census website or a simple google search like “instructions to enumerators 1910 census” will take you right there. In my experience, the quality of the work of enumerators is variable, so we don’t know for a fact that the enumerator followed the instructions precisely. But at least we can find out what the answer is supposed to mean!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash