Genealogy Do-Over: It’s not a Relapse, it’s Prep Work!

This series of posts are based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

Oh No! What did you do?

I can only blame today’s events on the craze of holiday preparations. There has been so much going on that I haven’t been thinking straight. This doesn’t mean that I regret what I just did, because you’re going to be excited for me too. In the interest of full disclosure though, I just did something that probably should have waited longer in my Do-Over.

Just Tell Us!

What you see above is a screen shot of my unfinished shopping basket at the UK General Register Office website. That’s right, I ordered records! You didn’t hear me wrong, I got more than two!

You might be asking yourself why this could be considered a bad thing. First things first, I did this after 9pm at night. That means I’m doing it when my mind isn’t at its best. I’m pretty tired and I’m probably not thinking my best right now. Secondly, I probably should have waited until I reached this point in my Do-Over to spend any more money on records. I mean, what if I’m wrong and these aren’t my people?

To be fair to myself, I have been steadily working my way up the family tree and ordering records along my main line of descent. There’s no way to work up the family tree but to order records, go to the repositories to get the records, find the records online, or hire someone to find them for me. I’ve chosen the first option for now!

Well, since you did it, you might as well show us the rest!

The website has changed since May, when I last used it. You are now able to search the indexes. Well, that might have been there before and I didn’t notice. I usually just get the GRO Reference details from Ancestry or FindMyPast’s Indexes. This time, all I had to do was put in the information I knew off the top of my head and hit search! I got 1 result! The best part is that in this search, it is showing me that his mother’s maiden name is Beattie. The other indexes don’t tell me that!

Note from blog writer: I know that if I was doing a reasonably exhaustive search, I’d be doing more than an exact search. It was 9pm and not 9am though and I wanted to buy four records, not seventy. haha! Don’t worry, I won’t sully my new, beautiful, organized, sourced, exhaustively looked over file. 

That doesn’t mean that it is your guy though.

This is my family file before the Do-Over. I know, I’m not supposed to be looking at it but I am and we’re moving on from that. 😉 You might ask why I put the Richard part in the search since it’s a middle name. Well, in 98% of the records for William Richard Parkin, the Richard is shown. Even after his death, in city directories, Ann lists herself as “Richard Parkin’s widow”. You can also see in my old file that there was a big question mark for the maiden name of his mother. I have her birthplace from the England censuses but I had no clue about her maiden name.

I’m also ordering the birth record for Ann Maltis/Malthouse/Malthuse/Mattis/Whateveritis. What is wonderful for me is that in the marriage record I found for a William Malthouse, my guess on the name of his wife was Amelia Lilburn. It looks like the GRO office index agrees with me on that spelling but not the surname spelling of the father. Oh well, you can’t win them all!

Okay, but I’m still not getting why you are beating yourself up about the old file.

The short of it is, I would have loved to have been “good” and stay away from my old file completely. These lines have been dormant for a long time for me. To have any movement is so refreshing. I’m not “actively” researching this old file. I’m still chugging along on my Do-Over at a slow, wonderfully organized rate. Being able to order these records ahead of time is going to save me time later. If you’ve ordered records from another country, then you know why! It takes awhile to get them here, but it’s oh so worth it!

Besides, my file wasn’t that messed up along the main line, it’s the siblings where things started getting murky. Mainly because I have actually ordered records for the main line. Imagine that, it’s more accurate when you actually seek out the proper documents! Ha!

Note from the blog writer: I use the term actively loosely since technically ordering records is an activity and it has to do with my old tree. We’re moving on though, remember!! Besides, there’s no way to rule out records without actually looking at them. See, I’m thinking rationally even though it’s currently 10:37 pm.

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Genealogy Do-Over: My Reasons

This series of posts are based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

Before I get back in the swing of things, I thought it would be nice to see a general overview of where my files stand now. I’d also like to show one of the main reasons that I decided to do this Do-Over. It might surprise you, but it wasn’t because I was shaky about my family tree! I’m actually pretty confident about it. Though, I’m enjoying the process of questioning every piece of information I find.

Before my Do-Over

Before my Do-Over

The one thing that was frustrating me the most in my genealogy research was that I could never find anything. It was all organized but I felt like I was constantly clicking around for things. The above screenshot was just my birth records. I could use my identification numbers and find things or I could look for the right number but it wasn’t very efficient. I felt like if I was trying to find something, I could never find it. It wasn’t until I was starting my Do-Over and I realized that when I was looking for people, I was thinking of them by their names. The numbers were just distracting me! Once I made the decision to throw out the numbering system, things seemed to start moving along a lot better for me!

After my Do-Over Started

After my Do-Over

From the screenshot above, you can see this is just one person! Everything for my Grandpa Moore is in the same place. If there is someone else involved in that record or in the picture, they’ve got a copy of the file in their own folder. I’ve named every file so that if I know the year, it’s right in the file name. It’s also easy to see at a glance where my blanks are in terms of the years. Just looking above, I can see I don’t have digital files for the years between 1935 and 1940. I also jump from 1958 to 1967! This gives me the motivation to say, “What was happening in these years?”

What else is different?

My Pedigree View

Another thing I am doing different this time is smaller than everything else. I’m actually adding pictures! It isn’t that big of a deal, but I find that it makes me smile when I’m jumping around the tree and I’m seeing my cousins, my siblings, and their children’s faces staring back at me. It makes me remember the reason I’m doing all of this.

My Binder Indexes

You last saw my Binder Index Excel file in August in the post, Genealogy Do-Over: In the Thick of It. The only change I’ve made is the new tab for “Digital Records”. It seemed silly to me to be so detailed for my paper files and treat the digital files like they were just as important. The only change I made was in the first column, where I named it ‘Downloaded’ instead of ‘Scanned’. The one thing I am also doing but isn’t being shown is I’m slowly adding everything into Evidentia. I don’t know why, but for some reason I didn’t add some of my digital records into the program. Now that I am going to be generating proof reports for everyone, I really need to add those records in. It sure is a good thing I’ve actually been keeping track of my records or I would already be sunk in my Do-Over!

Thanks for hanging in there for this recap, hopefully we’ll start getting back into the fun part soon! 🙂

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Genealogy Do-Over: Update to my Research Log

genealogydoover

This series of posts is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

The last time you saw a glimpse of my Genealogy Research Log was in the post I made titled: More Prep Work. I’ve made some changes since that post. Once I was working through my immediate family members, I got a better feel for what works best for me.

Research Log - Log Tab
Research Log – Log Tab

It is the same basic things I had before, but it’s a little more compact. I went with less fields because I found myself not using the previous version. That defeated the purpose all together, so I sat down and made something that I knew I would use regularly. All the vital things are in there and with my current digital filing system, I’m hoping I won’t miss those extra fields.

Using the filters feature, I can quickly find anything I need by person or type of record. I still analyze the documents in the log and have a citation for each record. The screenshot above shows what I see when I look on my second screen with the file open. There is only one field not visible and that is the “Proven” field.

Genealogy Research Log - Order Tab
Genealogy Research Log – Order Tab

Moving the list of records to find to my research log was a great idea. Its much more efficient in this file. It is right in line with my workflow. I am able to add something in right when I’m already elbow deep in my research. I very easily move from tab to tab from beginning to end. I think the only thing I would change is the order of the tabs. Moving Search Attempts to the beginning would make a lot of sense.

Genealogy Research Log - Plan Tab
Genealogy Research Log – Plan Tab

I’ve obscured the names in my Plan Tab for privacy sake but this little gem is the reason I’m able to know exactly where I’m at in my research. This really helps because I took a break after my brief hospital stay and I’m only just now looking at it again. This tab was born from my previous file that was my Research Plan/Goals. This is streamlined for me, so I can see at a glance what key facts I still need to look for. As a basic guideline, this really helps me and I can easily add to it if I chose to. This will fill in pretty quickly for my immediate family members but once I move on to earlier generations, it’s going to help so much!

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Genealogy Do-Over: BSO ALERT!

genealogydoover

This series of posts is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

Hello everyone, I have had my first big temptation in the Bright Shiny Object category.

slides

The above picture is a small portion of the slides I inherited from Great-Grandma Llewellyn’s collection. I spent a long afternoon sorting them by batches and date. Now I am going through and scanning them to my computer. The reason I let myself get distracted by this, is I want to preserve these slides the best I can. To do that I’ve created a little wishlist for myself to slowly start buying the supplies I’m going to use to try and preserve these slides for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, the scanner I was using for this is pretty outdated. I was scanning along the other day and I’m pretty sure the light dimmed on me and stopped scanning as well. This scanner is probably almost 10 years old, so it’s not like it wasn’t on a replacement list anyway.

The slides are important to get scanned. They are a mixture of 35mm slides and 127 Superslides. The dates range from 1963 to 1971 from what I can tell so far. These slides represent my father’s childhood. The pictures vanished after his parents divorced. They all remember the pictures being taken, but had no idea where they ended up. I can’t say the exact percentage, but I can definitely tell these slides represent both my Great Grandma’s life and my Grandfather’s life. I would have to look deeper but it might even be as simple as the 35mm ones are Grandpas and the 127 Superslides are my Great-Grandparents.

greatgrandpa2

I was going through the slides using a slide viewer and my cell phone. Snapping pictures and posting them to Facebook for my family to see. I was even joking around that I was going to publish a book and it would just be Great-Grandpa standing and sitting next to things. I would title it, “Grandpa Standing and Sitting Next to Things.”

greatgrandpa

Then just when my family thought I was done spamming their day, I announced the follow up to my bestseller. This one would be titled, “Things Sitting on Grandpa.” Ha! It was all in good fun, but I think I might actually order a photo book of these photos when I’m done. I think it would be cool to take to the annual family reunion.

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Genealogy Do-Over: In the Thick of It

genealogydoover

This series of posts are based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

It’s been awhile

I know its been a little bit since my last Do-Over post. As I mentioned before, I had family visiting and we also had some other things going on around the house. Things are calming down now and hopefully I’ll be getting back into the swing of things. My Do-Over is still going strong.

My Grandparents in Legacy

This Do-Over has been great for me in one big way. I am moving much slower than I previously was. When I open up Legacy now, I see all this information entered in and it makes me feel confident. The best part is that the only records I’ve used so far are my paper records. I haven’t touched a big search site for census records or city directories yet. I haven’t searched Newspapers or obituaries. Everything is either a vital record or a family heirloom. This means there is a lot of information out there yet for me to find!

Why It’s Taking So Long

You might be wondering what is taking me so long. That probably has to do with my check and balance procedures. To be honest, I haven’t looked at the ones I wrote up in a previous post. Once I got to work, my procedures just happened naturally. I do have a little help though, to keep me on track. In my first post, Getting Started, I showed a screen shot of the Microsoft Excel file I named “Binder Indexes”. This is what that file looks like now:

Binder Indexes

It sure has come a long way from where it started. Every once and awhile I will have a slip up and have to go back and add something I said I wouldn’t add to the tree before. When I was making the switch from my paternal grandparents over to my maternal grandparents, I had to stop and double check by using my filters.

Grandma's Filter

Microsoft Excel Filters to the Rescue

In my opinion, the filters function in Excel is the most useful feature. I use them all the time. Even now when I look at the red boxes, I’m telling myself I can probably go ahead and add those things into my file also. They were scanned and added to my digital organization, just not into the family tree. The only reason I didn’t add them already was because I didn’t think any new information was given in them. Thinking back now, I think I was probably just tired.

This section of my Dad’s family is the most documented section. Not counting photos, which number in the hundreds, I have tons of documents saved by Llewellyn that need to be analyzed. If you don’t hear from me for awhile, you know where I’m at!

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