Piles O' Paper Part 2--Mom's class on organizing your research and papers
Believe that is where I left you all. Tonight we are going to continue to talk about that pile of papers you all have in the middle of the room. First, we are going to talk about what’s in them. And the first thing I'm going to give you all is a list of the kinds of documents you should have in them. You might want to grab a pencil quick like.
Now obviously, you won't have the originals of all of these documents - and that’s fine. It is a beginning list of things that should be trying to fill up your Pile O Papers in the middle of the room. This inventory work can make you the hero of the family. If you tell everyone that they don't have to keep track of ANYTHING, just help you find stuff.........Promise everyone that you will give them all a copy of the book you will be doing on the family. Lying to your family, in this instance, is permitted in this phase. But however you do it - try and get as many as you can of the above records, and if you have any that you dispute - we can talk about that later and I will explain the whys. Now I want to talk first about your memory. Bet your heads are stuffed full of dates, and places, and names. Right Take a blank pedigree chart. For those of you that may not know, a pedigree chart is a diagram that identifies the direct ancestors for a person -that is, their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. With this chart in hand, and from your MEMORY, try and fill in as much as you can about yourself, your siblings, and your immediate ancestors. Most of us fail at the birthplaces of our siblings. If you are able to fill in the complete pedigree chart from memory, you should probably be teaching instead of taking this class The blanks on this chart should suggest some ideas of things you need to accumulate. Who knows this stuff? How can I prove it? Where can I find it? or even WHAT AM I GETTING INTO.......With this chart as a guide, the discovery process begins. The process starts at home. Start with the stock information you should have - and if you haven't talked to your parents or grandparents at this point. Run, do not walk to the telephone and make an appt now. You are looking for anything at all that might mention names, dates, or places of residence for people in your family tree. With this information, you can and will find ANYONE. These can be any of the papers I mentioned above, and these records - the beginnings and the proofs of your research should be added to this pile we have created. Unless you have the ability to communicate with the dead, you need to interview your living resources first. These interviews are part of the inventory for two reasons: One is that information given to you by a living person, of an event that happened in their lifetime is ABSOLUTE proof and is accepted as such by nearly all genealogical societies. The second is, these are the building blocks that you build the next generation back, and the next, and the next. You goal is to please, God, fill in the blanks. But - the first person you need to interview is yourself. If some important official (like a clerk at the convenience store) asks your for your identification, how do you respond? think here a minute.....You would probably produce some document to prove your identity, right? A drivers’ license? You often have to produce such ID before cashing checks or for getting stopped for going 85 in a 35 mph speed zone when you are late for work. But aside from this documentation, the ID you carry on you, what other documentation can you produce that proves who you really are. For example, do you have a copy of YOUR birth certificate?????? What other written documents would there be that identifies you -Most of us have way more of the personal facts of our lives in our heads, not on paper. But to get prepared - and begin the process of discovery, you need to gather these facts as though they were documents in a courthouse. Write the STUFF DOWN!!!! In genealogy, you need to obtain documents that prove what you say about yourself is true -more importantly; you need to collect this for each person in your pedigree.... To do this you should first collect documentation of the facts now residing in your head. Now - add these to the pile in the room. In order to collect these further documents, you needs must become a sleuth. You need to turn into a detective, and ask questions and read and collect all the heavy information that you can. These are the WRITTEN documentation that supports what you say from Piles 2 and 3. These are the facts that will be used to underwrite your database remember. Make out a fact sheet for each person you interview as well. Use the same one for everyone you talk too. It can be a plain sheet of paper with a title what I know about my father heading or anything that suits you. always try to interview siblings together in the same room Since siblings normally can't agree about anything, it makes for good fun to see who throws the first punch. But they also can verify, remind and recollect together, than alone. Now - in last week’s class, we left you with a large pile, and the first half of class, I have given you more to look at. We identified, you remember, three categories of paper you have collected. We then separated them into three unique piles The notes and documentation pile 2, the compiled sheets, and pile 3, the Research Aids. Now, we have begun to deal with pile two and three in last Week’s class - the compiled sheets, such as family group sheets and Pedigree charts, from the large pile, we were able to organize. These went in one file, or folder, or notebook - however many you have to deal with. In addition we removed all of the Research Aids into another pile and that was fairly easily organized as well, by location. For instance, all the research for Minnesota went in a folder or file aptly titled Minnesota. This seemed to work fairly well. But you still have that first category, Notes and Documents. This is still an impressive pile of paper. In this pile, you have all the notes and documents on everyone you have collected. You have your paternal side of the family as well as the maternal side of the family in there. This is the main cause of your piles of paper in the first place and will take some special organizing to get control Before we take on this awesome task, however, lets take a quick break here for questions and a stretch. anyone with anything to ask, now is the time
Question asked: what if you have some notes that could be important but have no connection so far same pile or different
Answer: that's the 2nd category. Notes and Documentation is your proof
Question asked: Which is the best way to keep Birth Certificates.
Answer: Notes and Documentation - in a plastic sleeve preferably.
For this category, think PROOF That is what should be in this remaining category. And first, lets define the reasons that are causing this category to be so difficult to organize. First, We have as our goal in genealogy, the job of identifying families. We are taught early on, that a family group sheet is our worksheet and everything we do should be based on the family group. The fact is, we NOT start with a family group sheet - we start with the genealogical events for individuals. Is this clear? The reason so many genealogists’ notes and documentation need help, is that they are trapped into a family oriented way of thinking. Perhaps a better way of thinking is to free yourself from families an develop a surname oriented filing system. I am going to try and walk you through the process of changing from a family system to a surname system for the care and feeding of your notes and documents. To explain, lets forget about families for a moment. Lets assume that the events for individuals, which are found in this category, precede the work of filling in a family group sheet.
And if that is true, then the first papers that need to be organized are not the family sheets, but the notes and documents you used to compile the family group sheets. Organizing family sheets, as you already know, is not the problem. The problem is finding that marriage record you know you have. You know when and where you found it the first time...you even remember the color of the walls of the library, the microfilm reader you were using the people who were in the room at the time - maybe even what you had for lunch that day. You just can't remember where you put that M. record when you got home!!!
I am going to explore a method that will allow you to find any marriage, any birth, any death or any residence event for any person. And you will be able to do this in seconds - if I do my job well. The second problem, we gather genie information on more people than just our individuals. As a person born with the name Rodrick, I was born curious where I got that name. Today, I collect any piece of paper on any person I can with that name, believing that we are probably related somewhere. Any genie person with an unusual name in their Background knows about this---we collect a lot of facts about a lot of unknown extra people, simply because they have the right name. Virtually everything we collect, as genealogists can be associated with 3 kinds of people in which we have an interest. Therefore, the notes that you have collected will have sheets of paper for these three types First is ancestors: Of course we are interested in our ancestors (or we would be out playing golf right now) -and any piece of paper that gives the names of an ancestor is something we save, however slight the connection two is collaterals: These are the people who are brothers and sisters of our ancestors, plus their descendants They are important to us because understanding their ancestry may lead to a discovery on our own. We are interested in saving any instance where a known collaterals name is written down somewhere.
Third is Suspicious:
This may be the largest group of people we collect (and Not all of us do this) we are always finding some person with the right name who lived in the right place and in the right time period. This means that this person is highly suspicious of being an ancestor, or at least closely related. Because of the nature of this research, these three types of people cause us to collect much more paper than just our ancestors. We don't want to lose contact with these people as they may turn into a VIP in our genie down the line. Okay - now, there IS a solution to this paper-collecting problem. Since we collect notes and documents for ancestors, collaterals, suspicious, and because we think they might just be related, then why not create a well-organized database of information. Just for the notes and documents. Instead of saving notes and such by family, we could save them by surname....Hey guys! This means that you could save notes and documents on anyone!!! It also means that if filed by surname, you might be able to find a record when you want it. More importantly - if you start thinking about surnames instead of families as the way you control the paper in your notes and docs, you have some new options For example, what if you treated the ancestors, collaterals and suspicious people as equals? What effect would that have on your note taking? If you sorted your notes by surnames instead of families, you could create a database of information that was not limited to a family relationship at all. Remember, the notes and documents happen BEFORE a family group sheet. Therefore, a surname is a unifying factor, which brings together people who also happen to be ancestors. Collaterals, or suspicious. It also frees you from the enormous filing task of a family-oriented filing system There is one other important unifying factor in genealogy hat is the place someone lived. For example, by collecting and then sorting all Rodericks who ever lived in Minnesota - regardless of their relationship to me. I would have a database of Rodericks that would be fairly easy to organize. And I would then be able to create family group sheets from that database much easier, and at will. So how do we create this new surname oriented database. We follow by following some simple rules -and again; I run out of time and will have to have a Part three for this subject. Again, I want to thank a gentleman who is a certified genius for the basics of this system, William Dollarhide from Salt Lake City. I will be visiting this person when I visit next week - and indeed, plan to pick his brain for some more subjects to cover in our classes. Thanks to all of you for being so attentive again and coming one more time.
Copyright ©2001 Rita Lace.
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