Let’s have a conversation about documentation and preserving the work.
I recently attended a special interest class hosted by the Colorado Genealogical Society entitled “Disaster Proofing Your Research”. The speaker, Sarah Cochran, is a full-time professional genealogist with twenty-five years’ worth of research experience. It was very interesting to see how she, personally, tackled record keeping when it comes to her genealogy work.
There has been a certain amount of laziness on my part when it comes to my genealogy research, as have been very dependent on using Ancestry.com to preserve my work. I recognize that everything I have is not currently on Ancestry.com. There are a few documents, most of them relating to individuals that are currently alive, that are not there.
The approach that I had before July 2, 2022, included: three ring binders, plastic paper protectors, unorganized file folders, unorganized electronic documents, software such as Family Tree Marker and GenMerge, all in tandem with using Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, FindaGrave, and FamilyTreeDNA. I have now started taking the time to organize the records that I have, document the sources to a certain genealogical standard and coordinate my online documentation with my offline documentation, including electronic and paper records.
This is a slow process. That said, I wanted to show you what I’m doing.
At the individual level, I am going to share my grandaunt’s information, because she is one of the family members I have completed this process with so far.
Choices I have made with how to use Ancestry’s individual pages:
- Not using “Ancestry Family Trees” an Ancestry Source. I will use it as a starting point to get information that I am able to, in turn, validate. Using it as a lone source would not hold up to scrutiny in an academic sense. Saving myself the trouble now, should I decide to actual write a book later in life.
- Common name. My grandaunt had a beautiful name; in her lifetime, her colloquial name was Berta. Putting the name in quotes helps, as in some cases , such with her siblings, the names they used were not always their names of record.
- Adding the full date to Census records; sometimes the year is not enough when it comes to determining when family changes happen.
- Linking the media to events that come from sources that are not from Ancestry.com. In this example, Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion, Marriage.
- Adding appropriate citations to documents as exampled below, based on the St. Louis Genealogical Society examples.
Electronic files, setup by LASTNAME, FirstName MiddleName Suffix, using maiden name for females that have been married. Labeled documents in the same way with simple descriptor at the end. (Note: I just received the newspaper clippings, so I have not changed the naming convention on those.)
This information is on my personal computer and backed up on the cloud.
When it comes to the paper documentation, any family member that I have documents for will eventually receive a folder. Below is what I have in my grandaunt’s file. All of this information is online, and there are no originals, but the one item of note is that until her baptismal information became available online, the microfilm copy I obtained years ago was my only source of that information.
This process also has encouraged me to create a Research Record document where I could track what information that I have and what I could continue to look for. Since she is not my direct ancestor, she is considered a collateral relative to me, so her information is in a standard folder.
My direct ancestor’s paper file folders are blue, left tab for male, center tab for family group sheets or family information, right tab for female with all collateral relatives that descended from my direct ancestors but are not my line, organized by birth order, behind.
…and that is my current documentation and preservation system. Having the documents on my computer will facilitate ease in future research, as I can quickly print everything, throw it into a binder that I can then take to a place where I may be performing research and have no worry about damage or in the rare case, loss. I also would not reprint everything constantly, but if a family member came to me, it would be much easier to get the things to them they might want or need.
To quote from a personal favorite television show: Progress is slow but I’m in it for the long haul.