Genealogy Do-Over: Tackle the Years of Mess
I have collected and inherited a lot of stuff in researching my family. One reason for starting this blog was to inspire me to get organized. Sometimes we need a little push.
Following on my Genealogy Do-Over theme from last summer that focused on setting some research goals, this post will focus on beginning to organize the massive conglomeration of STUFF.
Take a course
Over the holidays there was an advertisement from Family Tree Magazine about a course available through their Family Tree University (https://university.familytreemagazine.com) entitled “Genealogy Breakthrough: Organize with Purpose – 2024.” The course had been run before to good reviews and this one was slated to run from January 8th to February 4th. This would be a great way to start the year.
However, our daughter’s wedding was to be on January 13th. Access to the materials would last for a year. I also figured that if I did not jump on this course, I would never get started. So I signed up and began participating.
Collect
The first module, “Sort and Declutter,” recommended that I collect everything together into a single place. Ignoring the books and journals that are nicely shelved in my office, I collected the rest into one place: printouts from online searches; photocopies from various repositories; photographs over the last century both framed and unframed; original certificates from various institutions; yearbooks; newspaper clippings; little notebooks of notes; and more. It took me a couple of weeks just to gather all the materials.
My dining room table, built in the 1930s and originally owned by my maternal grandparents, opens to a dimension of eight feet by three feet. I piled it all on there, filling every inch, and ran on average over a foot deep. All of that material amounted to more than twenty-five cubic feet of stuff!
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Sort
The course instructed me to then perform a first sort where I ended up with a number of piles:
- Four piles representing one for each grandparent which held anything related to that line.
- One pile for all collateral lines like my wife’s family and daughter’s new husband.
- Another for conference materials and other learning or reference materials.
- The genealogy inherited from a maternal cousin (four boxes) – that will be a separate project.
- One for the current generations (parents through my kids).
- Lastly, one for active materials that would be quick to scan and organize.
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These were sorted on to two tables each measuring 30 inches by six feet with some overflow. Rather than do further sorting as suggested in the course, I am boxing up the organization as it is. The family would like the dining room table back in time for Easter.
Next Steps
While I have done this over the past six weeks and the course is concluded, one might be disconcerted at my lack of progress. Quite the contrary! Because I kept up with the videos in the course, and though I was not yet ready to put into practice what I was taught, it is all percolating in my mind….
Now with the boxes presorted and accessible, I will be able to move on to the next stage of scanning, recording in my software, then tossing or filing. Modules three and four covered these techniques. I find a natural beauty to this system in that I can choose a topic area to make a dent depending on my mood for a given day. Do I want to work on my paternal grandfather’s pile or do I want to play with the current generation’s materials?
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Conclusion
I am feeling truly accomplished. That first sort went through a lot of material. As I work my way through the piles/boxes I begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Later modules taught me more about analyzing my organized data and preparing to perform better research. We will look at that in a later post.
Sometimes taking a course and having like-minded individuals encouraging you is all it takes. Here is to hoping I can keep some momentum.