Showing posts with label genealogical research. Show all posts

Obituaries in Your Research

    As genealogists, we are just as interested in mundane details about an individual’s life as larger ones. Getting birth, marriage, death, and divorce information about someone is essential in building out a biography, while the minor details, like hobbies, occupations, and achievements, help flesh out a story and bring it to life. 

    Obituaries are most commonly found for ancestors deceased within the last 120 years and are a great way to help fill in these peripheral details about a person’s life. 

What Can Obituaries Do For You?
    Obituaries are something of open-ended questions for researchers. We aren’t certain there was an obituary published unless we have first-hand knowledge of it. If our searches turn up empty, are we not finding it because it does not exist or because we are not searching the right location? Also, we do not know what information is included or if it will be accurate. Despite these challenges, obituaries provide a wonderful glimpse into an ancestor’s life. 

   Some things an obituary may provide you with include: 
  • Birth, death, and burial dates and locations
  • Marriage dates and spouse names
  • Children and grandchildren names
  • Names of siblings and respective spouses
  • Occupation, Hobbies, Religion 

Where Can You Find Obituaries?
    Obituaries can usually be found printed or online in newspapers, or online from funeral homes local to the deceased’s last place of residence. A person who dies in Sioux City probably won’t have an obituary in New York City, for example. 

    Newspapers often have a recent archive available online. A quick search of the newspaper’s website will help locate the archive. Sometimes these will cost money to view articles or gain access to the archive.

    If the newspaper does not keep an archive, or the date of the possible obituary is outside the range of the online archive, searching repository sites like the Library of Congress, Google Newspaper, FultonSearch, and SmallTownPapers can help track down a local newspaper. 

    Another possibility is a local library. Infrequently, local libraries will have an index of obituaries or may have access to local papers via their online resources. Even if you are not a member, contacting the library for assistance will usually pay off if they have a holding that might be of use for your research. 

Modern Obituaries
    Modern burial packages often include an online obituary hosted by the funeral home’s website. This move towards online obituaries was fueled by the overall decline of newspapers and brings with it a variety of challenges. 

    Because these obituaries are online, we can no longer access an archive at a college or library to get that old newspaper that has grandma’s obituary. Some funeral homes host obituaries for a predetermined amount of time before they either disappear or end up behind a paywall. 

    Obituaries offer genealogists and family historians a wealth of information. Sometimes difficult to find, the payoff is typically worth the effort it takes to find them. For assistance in finding more obituaries, I have a list of free newspaper resources over on the Genealogy Resources section of this site. 

Happy Researching, 
- Patricia Gray

at Location: Portland, OR, USA No comments
Labels: , , , , ,

Single-Tasking for Genealogy

    Have you ever sat down to research a family tree only to have this happen? 


Multi-tasking is known for leaving overly-exhausted people and half-done tasks behind. Juggling multiple tasks at one time is only sustainable in short bursts, if at all. More often than not, quality is impacted for the sake of quantity. 

Today is Single Tasking Day - a day that celebrates and encourages completing one task at a time, flying in the face of all those compliments you got for being able to multitask so well. 

Single-tasking is not only engaging in a single task at a time but also breaking down that task into smaller parts as needed. This allows you to pay greater attention to what you are doing, completing the task with more quality and accuracy.

Implementing this can be difficult with limited time and a strong desire to complete a task. This situation can lead back to multitasking in an effort to just finish something.

So how to stay on track while researching?

Write It Down

I like to start by jotting down what I want to research. This is the main goal that I keep in front of me while I’m researching. I usually write this on scrap paper to keep on my desk so it isn’t lost in a sea of open tabs. I don’t worry about how long it will take or if I can finish it in one sit-down. 

Before I begin any session of family history research, I pull up my database and documents and do a quick search to see if I have any previous research on this subject. 

After I have my research topic and some notes about what I might already know, I begin my research. This process usually brings out some additional questions. For instance, my main research topic might be ‘John Planchard’s early life’ and I know from my previous notes that he is buried in a National Cemetery. This means he served in the military or died as a dependent of someone in the military. So now I know to look for possible military enlistment, a subtask I can add to my list. I may not be able to immediately switch gears to this subject, but I don’t want to forget it for later research. 

Use a Research Log

Research logs are AH-mazing! tools. If you are not using one, start as soon as you can!

The research log I use is as easy as it can be - I use a single Google Doc for everything. I have had it for years. If I do something related to genealogy, it will probably get recorded in my research log. Make a backup of my files? It goes in the log, this way I know the last time I backed things up. Email a library? Goes in the research log. Get an email or Ancestry message? It gets copied and pasted into the document. This allows me one place to search. 

I have also known people who successfully use paper notebooks. These, however, have the downside of not being as easily searchable as something on the computer. It is also easy to forget these at home. Google docs can usually be signed into from wherever you happen to be, either on your phone or a library computer.

Write A Summary

As your research session comes to an end, try to carve out a five-minute block of time where you can summarize your research and record it in your research log. It does not need to be fully complete documentation and sources do not need to be included unless you want them to be. This can be something like, ‘Researched John Planchard’s early life. Located birth & military records, index only, no originals. Found mother’s name: Mary Stevens on birth index.’ 

This is just a summary to help jog your memory later on when you come back to researching this topic again. This helps reduce the amount of duplicated research tasks. Summaries are only as good as your notes, so be sure to include full names so you know which John and Mary you were researching the next time you look. 


    Single-tasking can be more stressful than multitasking, especially at first. Our society is so accustomed to being BUSY that the very idea of not doing more than one thing at a time can seem difficult or inefficient. 

Single-tasking your genealogy sessions will make them more productive and result in research that is better documented and more thoroughly examined. 


at Location: Portland, OR, USA 2 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Organizing Digital Files for the Family Historian or Genealogist


     One of the top complaints I hear from family researchers and genealogists has to do with organizing their digital files.

Often, part of the problem is the overwhelming volume of documents and records that we tend to collect during our research.

Then there is also the problem of not remembering what a document is once it is downloaded. File names like 'image681x689from0x57to4892x5010.jpg' certainly do not help the situation.

A typical view of my Downloads folder


So how are we going to finally get our crushing mountain of unorganized document neatly organized and tucked away neatly into organized folders?

As with any job, we need to first break this down into manageable tasks.

1. First, think about how you use your database

When you go looking for a file, how do you move through your documents? Do you just click around aimlessly – ‘… it might be over here… what about here … in my downloads? … what about here…’ A smarter approach would be to search using your file manager’s search box. This is possible if you are organized and have files named with searchable and useful terms.

Locating files using the search box is more efficient than aimlessly clicking around.


2. Use with broad categories

Most importantly, have a dedicated folder to house all your genealogical research. I use a top-level folder named “Genealogy.” Categories beyond this top-level should be simple and direct, yet broad enough to be effective.

“Death,” for example is a great folder name for housing all kinds of death-related material like death certificates, obituaries, death indices, and records.

“Texas Death Records,” however, probably will not be as useful. Even if you have plenty of family from the Lone Star State, you will still be guessing if an individual’s record will be in this folder or perhaps another folder. Will you need folders for every state? What about countries?



3. Find a naming scheme

This might take a couple of shots to settle into something that works for you.

File names should include enough information that you know what the file is and to whom the file mainly pertains. Remember not to use periods (.) in the file name to avoid system conflicts.

"Death Certificate - Smith, John P," is how I name most of my files. Marriage records will get both spouse's names: "Marriage License - Smith, John P & Brown, Susie M."

This keeps things simple, easy to read, and neatly organized. Records that have multiple pages, I simply add an 'a' and 'b' to the end of the file name. (Ex: "Marriage License - Smith, John P & Brown, Susie M a")

Census files get a little trickier because they contain so many people, especially when two or more related families live near one another. I've found that just including the highest-ranking person in the family, generationally speaking, in the file name works the best.

4. Stick with maiden names

Digital organization is one place that I strongly recommend against using married names for organizing. Even when a record names a female using her married name, I will still name that record as her maiden name in my database.

This is a deliberate decision on my part. I've written about using names in database organization before.

Here’s why:

When women marry, they tend to change their name. When a marriage ends, she may or may not go back to her maiden name. She may remarry and take on a third last name. Or more!

To make finding records about one person easy, I only use a person’s maiden name. This also keeps me from thinking Mary Smith, Mary Brown, and Mary Bates are all different people when I see their records.

By using maiden names, I can both easily find a person and reduce the chance of duplicates within my research.

5. Get rid of duplicates

This is going to take time but will happen naturally as you further organize your database. If you have selected a file naming scheme, this task will be made much easier as duplicate file names cannot be used.

For example, if you attempt to name two files “Marriage Announcement – Smith, John & Brown, Susie,” your file manager will alert you to the presence of a file already named this. You can check the file and see if they are, in fact, the same.

If they are not, add more information to the file name so that you can differentiate the two. For example, “Marriage Announcement – Smith, John P & Brown Susie M.”



6. Keep it up

Before you get invested in the next research session, sit down and clean out your downloads folder. Look at files and rename them before sorting them into the proper folders.

Taking care of this task refreshes your memory on who you were researching during the last few sessions and reminds you of any discoveries you might have uncovered. This habit also allows you to be better organized in the long run by keeping the contents of your unorganized download folder minimized.

Digital organization takes time to establish and will be an ongoing process after the initial setup. The reward is a somewhat neater database with information that is easy to find and use.

What are some challenges you face with digital organization? Let me know down below or over on my Facebook page.

- Patricia
at No comments
Labels: , , , , , ,

How to Tackle Your Genealogy Research for Free


     Genealogy can seem like an expensive hobby due to the overwhelming marketshare the paid sites have on the industry. They hold this stuatus for good reason, don't get me wrong. I also appreciate what the paid sites do for the genealogical community as a whole and the efforts they put forth to preserve and digitize records.

For the most part these paid sites are an aggregate of publicly available records. Therefore, if you know where to find the record, you can avoid paying to access free information.

This is not always possible, and this isn't to say that paid sites do not have their place in your research. They certainly do in mine.

Explore Your Options

Sign up for a variety of ancestry and genealogical websites. They'll each have a good base of the same information, but some may have a specialty they work with that could be handy to your research. Being familiar with the various offerings will allow you to learn where to research.

Get Organized

Keep a folder in your file system that is just for genealogy research. After you have a few different record types, you should figure out a way to organize these records that is both easy to maintain and also use.

Think about how you will access this information.

Be consistant in the way you name and organize files as you go to avoid being overwhelmed with a sea of files with names you cannot make heads or tales of.

Visit Your Library

Many public libraries offer free access to paid research sites like Fold3.com or Ancestry.com. You can only access these in-library and cannot connect items to your tree. You do have full access to their database for research and download.

You can also find free classes available at both public and genealogical libraries covering a variety of topics like DNA testing, research methods, and introduction to genealogy.

Engage Your Community

Reach out to who you know first. Begin with close relatives, asking questions about their knowledge of the family.

More distant relatives can be better corresponded with via email, which keeps a handy reference for future needs.

Network in person at some of the library events or local genealogical socieities. Go online and join a few Facebook Groups that are targeted toward your research interests.

On the whole...

 Genealogy certainly does not need to cost you a dime to enjoy!

Website subscriptions alone can cost hundreds of dollars per year. Memberships to local societies can cost that again.

But these same services have free offerings, as well. Taking advantage of these is the best way to get the most out of your family history journey while staying on a budget.

- Patricia
at No comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)