Genealogy Do-Over 2016: The Go-Over 3.2

As we enter Week Two of Month Three of the Great Genealogy Do-Over, 2016 edition, I must make a confession ..... or three.

I thought I was humming right along. Keeping up. Following in spirit, if not in letter.

But then I started to really look at things.

On the side, I am doing a 30 x 30 challenge to organize my more immediate ancestors. I had gotten as far as my maternal grandmother when the wheels came off.

I thought I had a lot more on her (physically) than I apparently did. I rummaged through the box of stuff I had inherited when my dad passed.

Found zip.

On her.

Found a bunch of great stuff on other ancestors that I had not organized or classified yet. (How did I miss this box?)

Went to the files on my computer. The {apparently} very unorganized files on my computer. Sure the file says GENEALOGY and there are rudimentary subfolders. There's a lot of good stuff in that file, by the looks of it. But for the most part it's really just a big cyber genealogy junk drawer. Everything jumbled together, torn, folded, crumpled - bits of string, a stray paperclip ... oh, there's that old resume, how'd that get here?

How can you get any real research done with this sort of chaos?

Adding to the chaos, it dawned on me that there were files on at least three other computers around the house ..... three!!!

I've been bad.

But today I am making amends.
And a new plan.

I am stocking up on binders, plastic sleeves and a My Passport external hard drive that I will use exclusively for my genealogy files, photos, etc.

Yes, I do have an external HD now (two, actually). Yes, I do back up daily to the 'cloud' and monthly to the HD's. BUT the hard drives are not exclusive, and that is what I think I need.

I am still a lover of paper, and would prefer to print all my docs and put them in binders, but I am working to embrace the new. Perhaps this is why my computer files and folders are so neglected.

Don't even get me started on bookmarks.......

..... to be continued

There Will Be Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth: Genealogy Do-Over Recap: Weeks 1 - 4

What have I gotten myself into? I like a good challenge as much as the next gal but I am really feeling in over my head here. In my other (non-genealogy) life I am in the middle of leaving one position (read steady paycheck) and beginning a new chapter in my life as my own boss. (Again) Not much stress there, right?  Throw in the Mercury Retrograde, a colonoscopy, scheduling cataract surgery. winter, old dogs, not one, but two genealogy challenges, and a slew of other everyday stuff we all have to deal with, and there will be weeping. And gnashing of teeth. And more weeping.

There is so much information being discussed in the facebook Do-Over group that I can't keep up. And so much of it is over my head! I admit to being a technology toddler. I though I had a pretty good knowledge of genealogy, I've been at it since the 70's, but it's all on paper and hurts my head to think of how I am going to get it all into the programs people are talking about.

I downloaded Dropbox. I downloaded Evernote. Now I have these cute icons on my computer! Yay me! I have a new Win8.1 laptop that I can't figure out. I had hoped to install FTM (latest version) on it and finally learn how to use the darn program. But when I did it made the computer all wonky. So I uninstalled it. And installed it on my Win 7 desktop. GREAT. Now all my Ancestry synced trees have at least three entries for each Timeline item. Awesome. More weeping.

I love genealogy. I would do it 24 hours 7 days a week. I don't love all the stuff I'm not understanding. It is making me angry. And frustrated. And really, really stressed out. Which is the opposite of what a hobby is supposed to be.

My ultimate goal (from Week 2) with this Do-Over is to have a true, clean, sourced and correct pedigree. This will take some time. Perhaps lots of time. Perhaps years of time. It won't/can't happen in just 13 weeks. And I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to.

I got so caught up in the excitement, the flood of new information, the possibilities of doing it over. Of imagining that it would be just that easy, that I could undo all my mistakes in 13 weeks and come out the other side with a sparkly new true and genuine pedigree.

But here's the thing ....

That will never happen. It's not supposed to.

My Aha! moment came this afternoon, after both weeping and gnashing of teeth. This 13 weeks is a classroom to learn new things. To take notes. To try some new techniques. To do a little or a lot. To take what you like and leave the rest. NOT to redo your pedigree. That comes later. After the learning.

I feel like I have been in a wrestling match these last four weeks. Trying to figure out what was right for me. Trying to keep up. Trying to master everything that was being presented, immediately. Spending untold hours on facebook reading post after post until well into the night. Weeping.

Clearly I had become gluttonous, I had attempted to eat the entire elephant in one sitting. I had  forgotten what I had vowed here,
and here.



The clouds parted, the sun shone, and the angels sang this afternoon when I had my epiphany. I am taking a deep breath, a giant step backward and a hands-off approach to the remainder of the Do-Over. I will still lurk in the Do-Over group, but I will not become overwhelmed. I will read the assignment/lesson plan/syllabus for the week and make notes, but I will not become overwhelmed. I will start at the beginning, again.                   And take
                                One bite at a time ......

That is how you eat an elephant.

Genealogy Do-Over: Week Two - Interview The Living

This week we are asked to set research goals, interview ourselves and interview our family members.  I have talked about my research goals here.  So, it's on to interviews. I have begun to write about myself. I chose the first person, autobiographical style. Seeing as I am living I have chosen to keep that interview to myself. I am fortunate to have in my possession group sheets my grandmother had filled out when she was researching. I have letters from her cousins, aunts, etc too that she had contacted in working her genealogy. Since I am doing my do over solely on my maternal line I will focus on those relatives.

My Maternal Grandparents Robert and Elizabeth Thomas c.1927

There were four children in my mother's family. My mother and one brother are the only two still living, having lost her oldest brother almost 25 years ago, and her older sister several years ago.  There are 14 grandchildren, my cousins, 12 of us are still alive. Scattered across the country from Wisconsin to California, and points in between. What is very awesome is that my (still living) uncle has spent the last 10 years writing his autobiography. My mother has a draft copy that I plan to borrow as part of my interview process.  My cousin, the daughter of this uncle, and I have been collaborating for nearly 6 years on family research. We have been in contact with our cousins in the past, but I will make another attempt to see what I can learn. You never know!

This exercise has, if nothing else, focused my attention on learning the whereabouts of all my cousins, one set considerably older than I.  And perhaps, the siblings of my maternal grandparents and their children and grandchildren. Sometimes going that far sideways gleans some very good information. I plan to draft a set of questions to send to each cousin that I hope will spark some memories and will be enjoyable for them to answer. Not everyone loves genealogy like I do. (I know, right!? Hard to imagine!)

I did do a similar thorough search when I was working my father's side. He was an only child so I had no aunts, uncles or cousins. I reached out to the all the living children of our common great grandfather only to discover that I had more historical information than any of them. However, I did get some "new" relatives out of it and a bunch of great family stories I had never heard before. We still keep in touch. The bonus for me, I got a whole new family with my surname and DNA that I never had growing up as the daughter of an only.

Even if I don't get any good new information, I will be reestablishing ties with my living blood relatives, which is always a good thing.

Pruning The Tree: Genealogy Do-Over

Since I began the Genealogy Do Over on Jan 1, I have been working on cleaning up some bad info I had linked to my tree early on in my genealogy adventure. I have decided the best way, for me, to address this issue is to break down my tree into four mini trees. One for each of my grandparents. My paternal side is mostly good, and doesn't need a complete genealogy do-over overhaul. I have set those two mini trees aside. For now.

My maternal side ..... whole different story entirely. It desperately calls for a complete re-do. BUT I did not want to mess with anything on my main tree, so I left that intact and just set it aside. I have created two sets of mini trees for my maternal grandparents. One with collateral and one direct only. I started with the direct only and began ruthlessly pruning anyone that was not either a) in my grandmother's original research or b) sourced with legitimate sources 

First to go: everyone collected from Public Family Trees. I had "relatives" as far back as the 1100's! What was I thinking? Eager newbie. Now I'm paying the price of being an enthusiastic clickophile. This will take some time.

Public Tree Hints - Oh My!!!

One problem solved.

What I am discovering is that I really like the clean, neat, direct line I am creating. I can work it. It makes sense. And I really don't care about all the offspring of my 6th great grandparents. Sorry. I just don't. I had an epiphany last night as I was pruning. With all the "One Trees" out there now, that might be the way to go for collateral relatives. Once my direct tree is cleaned and sourced I am thinking of uploading it to FamilySearch or WikiTree and using THAT as my collateral tree. 

It's a thought in progress. I could change my mind. Probably will a few times before I settle on a direction I feel most comfortable with. But it is making sense to me for the moment.

I am beginning to see a light at the end of this crazy ancestral maze I have built over the last 10 years. I wish I hadn't been so afraid of a little pruning earlier on, I might have saved myself some time and been on to better things. Ah well. Lesson learned. The hard way. This time. 

Grandma's Big Box Of Stuff: Setting Research Goals: Genealogy Do-Over

This week we are asked to set research goals.

As my Do-Over is a complete redo of my maternal lineage, this is fantastic! I inherited a big box of all my maternal grandmother's hand written research dating from the 1940's to the 1980's, when she passed away. Her handwriting is terribly hard to read so I have been putting off this task, for years! But it is the place I need to start. It has so overwhelmed me that I have ignored it, until now.

The only person who can really make sense of it is my mother. Brilliant! Why? Because we are also asked to conduct family interviews. What better way to "kill two birds" as it were, then asking my mom to read the research to me while I interview her!

This will most likely not happen this week as she lives a good distance from me and would require a long car trip to visit.

ETPT - Genealogy Queen

But I do plan on going through all the papers and making two files. One I can read, one I can't (that's where mom comes in). The research goal I am setting this week for the Do-Over, is to thoroughly document, enter, or otherwise read every shred of my grandmother's research to set a solid foundation on which to build.

My grandmother was a lot like I am. She had the entire family in her head. She could rattle off facts and knew who married whom, when, where, etc. BUT it is all written by hand or badly typed and stored in paper folders, aging very ungracefully. There is correspondence to cousins, a collection of obituaries, letters to counties and states, newspaper clippings, more. She had made a 5 gen pedigree, but her research goes back so much farther. I am grateful that she made such thorough notes. My goal is to get it all together and recorded digitally.

She would have loved this new digital age of genealogy! I know she is with me in spirit.