My 2022 Genealogy Paper Chase

Here we are, halfway through 2022, and already it's been quite a year for family history! 

Thanks to the big Census releases, my genealogy paper chase has been extremely productive in the first half of this year. 

In fact, I'm making good progress on all my projects and plans:

• Find ancestors and the FAN club in the 1950 US Census (results: yay, lots and lots of info and really interesting clues).
• Look for hubby's ancestors in the 1921 Census of England (results: found some, will look for a couple more).
• Write and post bite-sized bios for aunts, uncles, and great-grandparents on genealogy websites (results: some completed, a few in draft stage)
• Reorganize family photos into archival albums (results: hundreds of 20th century snapshots reorganized, but oldest photos and negatives still to be reorganized--a big project to accomplished in small chunks). 
• Follow up on genealogy clues from Burk/Birk branch of my father's side and Schwartz/Winkler/Preisz branch of my mother's side (results: yay, made new cousin connections!).
• Continue making presentations on genealogy topics (results: talks scheduled July through autumn of this year).

Next steps

One top priority is to write more bite-sized bios, with the goal of keeping these ancestors' names alive for future generations. Currently, I'm finalizing details for bios of my hubby's great-grandparents and my great-grandparents (actually just posted hubby's great-grandpa's bio). Even when I know very little about these people, I can still write about milestones in their lives (BMD), number of children and/or siblings, where/when they lived, and the social/historical context of of their lifetimes.

Another priority for the second half of 2022 is reorganizing older photos, captioning, and maybe even writing brief narratives about a few of the series photos. I did this with one of my late dad-in-law's albums chronicling the summer of 1917, when his father drove the family from Cleveland to Chicago in a new 1917 Ford. 

I'll also be testing additional archival photo storage possibilities during the summer, to see which are best suited to the small and odd-shaped old photos and negatives inherited from my late dad-in-law. As I wrote in my book, Planning a Future for Your Family's Past, life by the inch is a cinch--life by the yard is hard. I'm stretching out my photo reorganization and taking small steps to keep this project from becoming overwhelming. Digitizing these photos is only part of the process. It's just as important to keep the originals safe for decades to come.

Paper chase in my future

I'm still busy following the paper trail to trace more of my Eastern European ancestors. DNA has less helpful than I'd hoped. Yet there are documents and family tree clues about a few branches that came to America, some around the time of World War I and some after World War II.

In recent months, I found a couple of distant cousins I never knew about. Together, we're pooling information and coordinating research to try to connect with more descendants while documenting those who came before. 

The second half of 2022 promises to be as productive as the first half! And of course I'll be blogging about challenges, breakthroughs, techniques, issues, and more. More than 13 years of genealogy blogging, with more to come.

Reorganizing Family History, Part 1

 

The longer I'm involved in family history, the more I appreciate practical organization.

Not just for myself...but for those who come after me.

Genealogical materials for my husband's family tree are in one set of archival boxes, while my family tree items are in a different set of archival boxes. All are clearly marked by name or surname. 

These boxes are being passed down to different heirs, one on each side of the family.

Too many archival boxes?

Lately, I've been the happy recipient of genealogy materials from relatives and FAN club members. Not just photos and negatives from my late father-in-law, but  photos and documents from other ancestors. All need to be stored safely, which is why I just received a fresh shipment of archival boxes, above. And I'm keeping my label maker handy!

My bookshelves now hold 36 boxes in all. They are neat, they are safe, they stack well, they keep contents intact. They are my favorite way to safeguard genealogical materials like photos, original documents, etc. This organizational method has worked well for the past decade. And boxes are easy for my heirs to move and store.

Yet just yesterday, I began to wonder if I have too many boxes. This led me to Part 1 of my reorganization experiment.

Album experiment

Now and in the future, family members might actually prefer to view old photos in a more traditional album format. This could encourage them to open the album once in a while, instead of leaving boxes unopened on a shelf. 

Hoping my hubby will be part of my experiment, I asked whether he would prefer to put corners on photos or slide photos into the sleeves of an album. He was squarely in favor of an album with sleeves. So I browsed good quality archival photo albums and purchased one that holds 500 photos, up to 4" x 6" size, with space for captions alongside the sleeves. 

How to arrange the photos was another big concern. A number of friendly folks at #AncestryHour on Twitter suggested arranging photos chronologically. This approach will guide descendants through the Wood family's history, visually and with brief captions. 

When the album arrives and I begin this reorganization, I'll post about the process and lessons learned. 

Reorganization issues

I have to consider safe storage for the negatives that accompany many of my late father-in-law's century-old photos. Because negatives can't be safely stored in the same sleeve as the photos, I'm thinking about separate storage and a numbering system that indicates which negative corresponds with which photo in the album...which adds another layer of complexity to the reorganization process.

Another issue: How to accommodate photos with notes on the back. An  #AncestryHour friend lets the notes show by not putting two photos back to back in the album. It's something to try if my new album (currently in transit) has clear sleeves that work in this way. 

Reorganizing family history will be a long-term process, best accomplished little by little. But then again, genealogy is a long-term process. If I tackle the photos in one archival box and get them situated (in order) in the album, I can return to caption them at a later date. It's a learning process...

One photo at a time, one box at a time, one album at a time, I'm learning more about how to reorganize family history and plan a future for my family's past.

-- This is my entry for the Sept 2021 Genealogy Blog Party.

Organizing and Storing Family History

In an informal poll on Twitter this week, I asked how people organize and store #Genealogy and #FamilyHistory materials. Here are the results, with 109 answers recorded.

Most used method: file folders

File folders took first place, with nearly 39% of the votes. Additional tweets noted that some people use color-coded files and folders. (Color-coding doesn't work for everyone, as Janine Adams wrote in a blog post this week.)

A lot of people said they use file folders in combination with other storage. Me too! See below.

Binders!

In second place: binders. I really admire how Paul Chiddicks organized his genealogical records, which he blogged about last year here. Do take a minute to see how he uses binders, with color-coded labels. Plus a table of contents in each binder. Great organization.

Digital storage

Several participants noted their use of multiple digital storage methods to supplement or replace physical storage. New to me was the concept of network attached storage, high-capacity digital storage that allows you to access files on the network from multiple locations (at home, at work, etc.). PC Magazine has a recent review of these devices, in case you want to see capacity and pricing.

One comment mentioned rotating two different hard drives; another comment mentioned off-site storage, such as keeping a hard drive backup at a second location. I have two hard drives plus cloud storage. I back up automatically every day at the same time, and also back up manually when I'm working on a particular file. 

My fave: archival boxes 

Although I use file folders extensively, my originals (including old photos, certificates, albums, yearbooks, and more) are stored in archival boxes, keeping the contents safe yet easily accessed.

As shown at right, these have reinforced corners and can be stacked without crushing the contents. With my trusty label maker, I write surnames and contents on two sides so I can see at a glance what's stored where.

The key is to experiment and find out what works best for you. 

Free the Faces on Slides to Unlock Family Stories

Do you, like me, have binders or boxes filled with 35mm slides?

Think of all those faces and stories trapped on those teeny, tiny slides. Some of my big breakthroughs in genealogy have come when a cousin recognized a face in a photo and dredged up an old family story. If those little faces don't escape from the slides, family stories may not come to light.

My late father-in-law, Edgar James Wood, had a dozen slide trays filled with travel images. Others in the family stored slides in binders (see above). These slides were not only dated, they had a table of contents with each binder and notes about where/why the photos were taken. A great head start for family history research!

However, it's not a good idea to leave slides in these plastic sleeves for decades, unless they're archival quality. Even then, remember that slide technology is old technology.

How many of our descendants will have or want a slide projector? I have one spare projector bulb. In 15 or 50 years, will another bulb be available if a grandchild or great-great-grandkid wants to view slides? Probably not. Will they even know what a projector was??

So it's time to downsize, move to newer technology, and organize.

• Decide what to save, then toss or give away the rest. With apologies to my dad-in-law, 95% of his slides were of unknown landscapes, well-known world landmarks, grass or sky--we tossed those. We saved the 5% of slides with people and/or recognizable homes/rooms.  
• Transfer the slides to digital images. We digitized nearly everything and filed them digitally by surname. We printed some images to blow up and share with the family, adding full printed captions to the hard copies. Keep the technology up to date, switching away from CDs to USBs and the cloud, or whatever is the latest.
• Share the images. Printing allowed us to show photos to relatives who helped figure out who was who. It was fun to blow up a couple of slides of holidays in the old homestead, which would never have been seen again if they were trapped in 35mm slide technology.
• Caption, caption, caption. While relatives can still remember who's who and when slides or photos were taken, write the captions now. Store captions with printed photos and/or write up the captions and file by surname, referring to digitized images and their location in the cloud or on a DVD or wherever.

Free the faces and unlock those family stories!

Tuesday's Tip: How to Index Your Family's Documents

Whether your relatives left you a small bundle of letters or 25 years' worth of diaries, you'll learn a lot about your ancestors by indexing what's in your family's documents. You'll also be able to tell your relatives details about their ancestors, by referring to your index. And you may uncover clues to family ties you weren't aware of!

Even a baby or wedding book can be indexed if it includes a family tree and/or names of people who visited or gave gifts. This has helped me trace more distant relatives, by the way.

My index for my father-in-law's 25 diaries (shown here) has a few headings. I use the "comments" column to add details referring back to particular documents, a way of reminding myself of the exact source:

Name (alphabetical by surname)
Relationship (as specific as possible)
Date (so you can sort by date, try year, month, day)

Place (again, be specific if possible)
Comments (details, context, significance; identifying the particular document)

Indexing is not difficult if you take it one step at a time. Remember: Life by the inch is a cinch--life by the yard is hard. So build your index little by little:

1. Organize the documents into chronological order. That way, you'll be able to follow along as the narrative mentions upcoming events or evolving relationships. I did this with letters to my mother during the time she was dating my father. It was exciting to read what led up to his proposal and their future plans!
2. Focus on one document at a time. Don't try to index everything at one sitting. Just pick one letter, one month of the diary, one of anything in your collection. Complete one, and if you feel like it, complete another. Keep your place so you can pick up the indexing when you have a few minutes. Use your index to summarize the most critical info from each document before moving on to another.
3. Identify the people and their relationships. Use a pad and pencil or, if you prefer, a spreadsheet or database. The first time you see a name mentioned, write it down in full and note the relationship, if you know it. Also jot down the date or some other way of going back to that document for the full reference. If you see a name mentioned repeatedly, note it even if you don't know the relationship. 
4. Compile your list of people, dates, and brief explanations for each. For instance, say the Wood diaries mention a second cousin named Mac McClure for the first time on May 3, 1963. The next time Mac McClure is mentioned is July 4, 1963. My entry in the diary index might read: McClure, Mac (second cousin to E. Wood?). Visit to Wood family in Cleveland on May 3, 1963. Call on July 4, 1963 about birth of Mac's baby Julie. If baby Julie is mentioned later, you can cross-reference by saying something like: McClure, Julie (daughter of Mac McClure).
5. Watch for groups of people and repeat appearances. Maybe a letter or diary mention of several people getting together is really a mention about a family occasion. If certain names pop up regularly, especially on significant dates (such as a birthday or a holiday), chances are they have some close connection to your family. It won't take long to determine who you should be following closely and who seems to be just a casual friend. 
6. Watch for disappearances and enigmatic mentions. Sometimes people are mentioned once and never again--did they move away, was there a quarrel, did they pass away, was there a divorce? This is the puzzle part of our genealogy research. Maybe someone else in the family will have some insight if you mention what you're trying to figure out.
7. Type up your index neatly, date it, and enclose it with the documents and with the main surnames mentioned. That will give you a handy reference when you're looking someone up and will also be available to anyone who takes care of your documents in the future. Return to update your index as you learn more about the relationships and who's who. Also note the "update date" so you can keep track of your most recent copy of the index. Colleen, in her comment below this post, suggests noting the location of the documents--an excellent idea!
8. Talk up your index! Tell your relatives what you've learned, and offer to copy for them a few relevant sections of the documents. Who doesn't want to know something new about their parents and grandparents, whether just a hint of personality or a particularly surprising anecdote?

One of the most maddening things in my father-in-law's diaries was when he would write something like: "B called with disturbing news." What was the news? I knew who B was (figured it out as I indexed his diaries). But what did B have to say? Ah, the mysteries of family histories.

PS: See my next post here for ideas about how to use the indexes to solve genealogical mysteries.