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Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

On Thanksgiving, we’re creating history for our descendants

November 21, 2018 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

Two years ago, I wrote this Thanksgiving post. I ran it again last year and now I’ve decided to make it an annual tradition. Enjoy!

This Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about how the ordinary lives of my ancestors are endlessly fascinating to me. As I slowly plow through my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, I get very excited when I come to a form he filled out 125 years ago that has a little extra information in it (like the names and birth dates of his children). Any peek into what his life was like is a special treat.

It got me thinking about how mundane aspects of our lives today might be really interesting 100 years from now to the people below us on the family tree.

Of course, we fill out fewer paper forms now. And genealogy will probably look very different in the twenty-second century. But I think photos and records will always be valuable.

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving (or really just go about our lives), we have the opportunity to create history for our descendants. We can be mindful of our legacy as we’re taking pictures. We can take care to label them (or add metadata to digital photos) so future generations know who the people in the photos are. We can do oral history interviews and carefully preserve them with labels for future generations.

If you have older relatives around your Thanksgiving table, I urge you to ask questions and preserve those conversations for generations to come (as well as for your own genealogy research). I sure wish I had. Wouldn’t it be great to put your hands on a recorded interview with one of your ancestors? You could be the person making that possible for your descendants.

Thanks to smartphone technology, it’s so easy for us to record conversations and take videos. Let’s do that while we can and mindfully tag and back up those recordings. (And hope that the medium will still be readable decades from now.)

As much as I urge my organizing clients to part with paper or other items that don’t serve any purpose any longer, I do sometimes encourage them to hang on to documents or photographs that might be of interest to their descendants. I encourage you to be mindful of that and store those items that so that they might be passed on to family-history-minded descendants when you pass.

Remember: Every day we have the opportunity to create history.

Photo by Robert and Pat Rogers via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Filed Under: Challenges, Preservation, Reflections Tagged With: family photos, keepsakes, planning, social history

Creating history for our descendants

November 22, 2017 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

I wrote this Thanksgiving post last year and still really appreciate its message. I’m reposting it today in honor of Thanksgiving. (Perhaps I’ll make it an annual tradition!) Happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. readers.

This Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about how the ordinary lives of my ancestors are endlessly fascinating to me. As I slowly plow through my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, I get very excited when I come to a form he filled out 125 years ago that has a little extra information in it (like the names and birth dates of his children). Any peek into what his life was like is a special treat.

It got me thinking about how mundane aspects of our lives today might be really interesting 100 years from now to the people below us on the family tree.

Of course, we fill out fewer paper forms now. And genealogy will probably look very different in the twenty-second century. But I think photos and records will always be valuable.

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving (or really just go about our lives), we have the opportunity to create history for our descendants. We can be mindful of our legacy as we’re taking pictures. We can take care to label them (or add metadata to digital photos) so future generations know who the people in the photos are. We can do oral history interviews and carefully preserve them with labels for future generations.

If you have older relatives around your Thanksgiving table, I urge you to ask questions and preserve those conversations for generations to come (as well as for your own genealogy research). I sure wish I had. Wouldn’t it be great to put your hands on a recorded interview with one of your ancestors? You could be the person making that possible for your descendants.

Thanks to smartphone technology, it’s so easy for us to record conversations and take videos. Let’s do that while we can and mindfully tag and back up those recordings. (And hope that the medium will still be readable decades from now.)

As much as I urge my organizing clients to part with paper or other items that don’t serve any purpose any longer, I do sometimes encourage them to hang on to documents or photographs that might be of interest to their descendants. I encourage you to be mindful of that and store those items that so that they might be passed on to family-history-minded descendants when you pass.

Remember: Every day we have the opportunity to create history.

Photo by Robert and Pat Rogers via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Filed Under: Challenges, Preservation, Reflections Tagged With: family photos, keepsakes, planning, social history

LeVar Burton’s RootsTech 2017 talk now available for viewing

September 15, 2017 By Janine Adams 8 Comments

I attended RootsTech in February and one of my favorite keynotes was the one given by LeVar Burton, the original Kunta Kinte in Roots, the 1977 landmark mini-series. Roots aired on eight consecutive nights when I was in junior high and it made a huge impression on me.

I was really excited to hear him speak and I was not disappointed. The keynote was funny and moving and profound. I am not a crier and he brought tears to my eyes. I planned to share a link to my blog readers so you all could enjoy it and was disappointed that a speech wasn’t available for later viewing.

So I was delighted today to get an email saying that speech has been made available for viewing!

You can watch it here on the RootsTech website. In the 25-minute talk,  “LeVar Burton shares powerful thoughts on equality, race, history, and self-perception.” During the talk he himself cried. It was really moving. I urge you to watch.

Filed Under: Excitement Tagged With: excitement, learning opportunities, RootsTech, social history

Filling in the history in your ancestors’ timelines

April 19, 2017 By Janine Adams 7 Comments

A couple of years ago, at RootsTech, I learned about HistoryLines. I was intrigued and signed up for a subscription. Then I pretty much forgot about it. (I blogged about it back then.)

HistoryLines creates a timeline for your ancestor (after you upload a GEDCOM or fill in data on an ancestor), referencing the historical events and social history of the time in which your ancestor lived.

This week I received a notification that my subscription was going to autorenew. I went to the site, intending to cancel since I never used it. But once I started exploring, I realized that this really is a tool I’d like to use.

This past quarter I focused almost exclusively on my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1845-1938) and his children. When I called up a HistoryLines story for him today I really enjoyed the context it placed his life in. I can see doing this for many of my ancestors, especially those I’ve studied more in depth. (So many of my ancestors seem like just names and dates to me, though I’m trying to change that.)

If you’re intrigued, here’s a promotional video from HistoryLines.

If you try it out, let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Excitement, Genealogy tips, Technology Tagged With: excitement, genealogy tools, organizing aids, resources, social history, technology

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about me

I'm Janine Adams, a professional organizer and a genealogy enthusiast. I love doing family history research, but I find it's very easy for me to get overwhelmed and not know where to turn next. So I'm working hard to stay organized and feel in control as I grow my family tree.

In this blog, I share my discoveries and explorations, along with my organizing challenges (and solutions). I hope by sharing what I learn along the way I'll be able to help you stay focused and have fun while you do your research, too.

Janine Adams, creator of Organize Your Family History

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