Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Listen to me on the Exactly Enough Time Podcast

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I’m thrilled to be the guest on the most recent episode of Stacy Julian’s Exactly Time podcast. The episode, which was published yesterday, is called Janine Adams: Share with Confidence. In our conversation, Stacy and I discuss getting started with family history research and  organizing our research, along with sharing genealogy information with others, and favorite family stories.

I’ve been a fangirl of Stacy since I heard her speak at RootsTech in 2020 and if you’ve been reading this blog awhile you know that I write about her How to BEGIN with the Box methodology and how I’ve applied it to my own inherited documents and memorabilia. (You can peruse my posts about Stacy by clicking this link, if you’re interested.)

Stacy is a wonderfully positive person with an enthusiasm that’s contagious. I hope you’ll give her podcast a listen–she has a lot to offer the family history community!

Sharing with confidence

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I had a wonderful conversation yesterday with Stacy Julian for her podcast, Exactly Enough Time. We talked about family history, organizing and sharing our family stories. The episode will be published later this month and I will definitely post a link.

Part of our conversation has stuck with me and I wanted to share it here. We talked a little about balancing the desire to share our research with the need to make sure what we share is accurate. In my opinion, it’s important to be confident about the accuracy of your research before sharing it. That doesn’t mean you need to write a fully-sourced history before you can share anything. It just means that what you share should be sourced and reliable.

Here’s what I do to make sure my research can be trusted:

I ensure that every fact that is entered into my database in Reunion has a source attached to it. And I look at every source critically before entering it into my database.

With those two procedures in place, I know that I can share everything in my database with confidence.

I encourage you to let go of the idea that you can’t share any of your research until it’s “finished” (whatever that means). Instead, just make sure your research is reliable so you can share any of it with confidence.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Inherited items: From overwhelm to order

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As I mentioned recently, last month I shipped seven boxes of photos and documents that had belonged to my father and aunt, both of whom have moved into care facilities. Actually, one of the boxes contained just a few large items, so it’s really six small-size moving boxes full of small items. They arrived last week and I vowed to not let them linger.

But looking at the unopened boxes, I felt overwhelmed about dealing with all the stuff. I told myself that I would go through a box a day for a week and I’m happy to say that I have been able to do that. I have one box left, which I plan to go through today.

My plan was to take everything out of the large boxes and sort the items so that they feel approachable.

So far I’ve been able to follow the plan! I used Stacy Julian’s How to BEGIN with the BOX approach, which I had used when I was dealing with a box of stuff I brought home from Walla Walla in 2020. That gave me a great framework for storing the sorted items until I can start going through them. Using Step One of Stacy’s methodology (adapted a little for my current needs), I divided the contents of the boxes into these categories:

  • Documents
  • Narratives and correspondence
  • Photos
  • Framed photos
  • Albums

I put the albums and framed photos in a bin to go through later. (But I did enjoy looking at them while I was emptying the boxes.) Once I get through the last box, I’ll turn my attention to the documents, as well as narratives and correspondence. I’ll employ Stacy’s Step Two, in which I’ll select 10 items at a time–the ones that interest me most–and scan them, then process them as I would anything I found online. After the first ten are finished, I’ll go back to the documents and select ten more and so on.

The photos will be a little trickier for me, but my plan is to scan them, share them with relatives and keep the originals stored in an archival box or boxes. I’ll do the same, in turn, with the framed photos and albums.

Incidentally, the unruly bunch in the photo at the top of this post is my father and aunt, with their parents, grandparents aunts and uncles. I’m not sure who all the kids are (yet). I had never seen that photo before this week and now, thanks to this project, I’m able to recognize my great grandparents, William Reese Rasco (1878-1957) and Luella Watts Rasco (187-1953), in photos. That makes me really happy.

Having a methodology to deal with the contents of these boxes is giving me huge peace of mind. (Thank you, Stacy Julian!) Having places to put the sorted items after I go through each big box has been hugely helpful in keeping me from feeling overwhelmed. I’m excited to go through the final box so I can started processing documents. I found a number of death certificates, birth certificates, diplomas, passports and newspaper articles that I know I’ll enjoy going through.

This has been a great focus for this month’s 30 x 30 challenge!

Going through my box of inherited items: step two

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In August, I blogged about taking the first step to process a box of inherited items. I’m using the process I learned from Stacy Julian in her terrific RootsTech talk last year (you can read all about it in her blog post How to BEGIN with the BOX). Her process allows you get started on something that can feel very overwhelming.

I promised that when I took step two, I would post about it.

According to Stacy’s methodology, step two (after sorting the contents of the box into categories in step one) is to go through the items in a category and assess the value of each item, then note the needed actions. Here’s the secret sauce of the whole thing: You put the items that you most want to take action on–the most interesting or thrilling or beneficial finds–and put them in an Action file. And you’re allowed to have no more than 10 items in the Action file. Once you have that many items, you stop the assessment process and take action.

I want to take a moment to say how brilliant I think that is. Since you put the best stuff in the Action file and limit the number you can put there, then the Action file pretty much only contains stuff you really want to do. And there’s a built-in trigger (10 items) to get started taking action. Stacy says in her blog post that you should follow your heart and intuition in terms of deciding what goes into the Action file.

So in my efforts, I immediately gravitated to the Written Stuff file, as opposed to the Picture Stuff. That’s just my nature. I found a 50th anniversary card (pictured at the top of this post) from my mother’s brother with a snarky inscription that was so typical of my Uncle Joe. You can click on the image to see it larger, but I’ll tell you that the inscription says, “So you made it to 50 years!! Gene, I admire your tenacity. Happy anniv. Love, Joe”. I scanned the card and sent it to his kids.

Among the Written Stuff were some old newspaper clippings that were fun, though of little genealogical value, including one that shows the new jackets of the Yakima (Washington) High School basketball team circa 1949, with basketball players, including my father, Gene Adams (who is 91!), modeling them. I decided to scan the clipping and email it to my brother (who is a big fan of sports uniforms) and then put it aside to take to my father when I see him later this month.

Here’s that clipping. My dad is second from left.

I just kept going through the stuff, noting the actions and putting some of them in the Action folder. I actually ended up taking action on all the Written Stuff (I don’t think there were even 10 items) because when I started looking at the Picture Stuff I got overwhelmed.

I’m feeling great about the Written Stuff and will systematically start going through the Picture Stuff. Since the photos overwhelm me, I know that I will benefit from using Stacy’s methodology and I know that a timer will be my best friend. I’ll work on it just 10 or 15 minutes at a time. When I get finished, I’ll post again!