Happy New Year

 

Well, another year is almost over. I like to reflect on my genealogy research from this past year and I must say, I didn’t do as well as I liked. However, it could have been worst. I started the year with no workable office. I purchased a new home in September of 2020 it took awhile before I was ready to do a refresh on the space.

The office space wasn’t set up for my needs. The previous home owner’s had a large kitchen counter top in an L-shape that appeared to be a good working surface, but without getting into too much detail, wasn’t mounted properly on the wall. The electric in the room needed to be updated, along with added a heat source since my home is located in Wisconsin and the small space heater that I had wasn’t working. The flooring was okay but didn’t extend all the way to the walls and thus I tore that up and laid new flooring. It had wonderful built in bookshelves that needed to be painted but the trim work was lacking. Therefore, after several months, of painting, laying floor, having my husband put trim work up, replacing an entrance door for more light, removing a poorly constructed storage space, updating the lighting, adding a Heat source with A/C, I was finally ready to move in.

Unpacking gave me a chance to sort and organize my piles of messes. I ended up buying a second office chair when the first one (pictured), just didn’t feel right. Buying office furniture was a little difficult during COVID, because everything had to be ordered. My desk came with a broken work surface and I waited a few more months for a replacement.

Therefore, I might not have done a lot of research; I did still manage to start a project with my sister-in-law on her mother’s maiden name line. A family member started a family tree about 20 years ago and she was given the task to update her branch and I talked her into doing all the branches.

Now I am looking towards my genealogy goals for next year, since I really didn’t set any for last year. I want to get back to many projects that have been sitting on the shelf. I also decided to start a “Bullet Journal” to keep me on track with not only my genealogy projects but the many other things that round out my life. Gardening, canning, crocheting, home improvements, golfing, exercise, TV watching, writing blog post so on.

Good luck with your Genealogy Research and Goals for 2022 and I will do my best to keep to all my Goals for 2022. See ya in the New Year. 

Look before you Leap!

 

I have found that on any topic in genealogy, you will find people with their own perspective. This is great because you can weigh the pros and cons of how they are doing something. Then decide on the best method for you!

Such as, I recently saw a Facebook post that asked about using ALL CAPS for surnames. Another post asked about how to input unknown names, whether first or last name.

My advice is to think about the pros and cons for you on how you are going to input your data into your genealogy software. Another thing, be consistent. Make some personal rules when it comes to your data.

On the subject for ALL CAPS for surnames, yes this was the standard when we only had paper forms. I still do this when using a paper form, because it is easier to see the surnames. However, before you just start keying in ALL CAPS, check out your software program, can it convert surnames to ALL CAPS when it generates reports? If so, then you may not want to do it while inputting your data. Reading ALL CAPS on a computer screen is much different than on paper.

However, I have heard of other ways people use ALL CAPS on surnames. For their direct line ancestors only. It makes it easier to see them in the list of index of individuals. Again, can your software handle this in a different way? My software program can color code all my direct ancestors and I can see that color in the list of index and thus I can see my direct ancestors. This comes in handy when the descendants of your direct ancestor have the same name as your direct ancestor. So you are not sure which John Smith is your direct ancestor.  However, if you like seeing your direct line ancestor in ALL CAPS on a descendant reports, then color coding might not help you. Thus you might need to put in ALL CAPS. However, are you going to be sharing your data in the future as a book and thus your direct line will be in ALL CAPS? While your direct line may not be the exact same line as say your distant cousin.

Some use ALL CAPS to show someone they haven’t proven, they put the entire name in as all CAPS and thus they know at a glance they need to do more work. Once they have cited some sources, they change the name. Again, my genealogy software program allows me to color code individuals and thus I could always flag them as RED or whatever color I choose. Some use all lowercase for the surname of women where they don’t know their maiden name and thus type in their married name as all lowercase.

This brings me to unknown names; I heard a funny story where someone typed in UKN for unknown names. Someone else came upon this tree and got excited because the surname was found and it appeared to be UKN. I use to put in parentheses the wife’s married name when I didn’t know the maiden name. Unfortunately, when I looked at the list of individuals, those unknown maiden names didn’t jump out at me.

A genealogy standard is to use five underscores, I personally use seven because when I print a report, it leaves just enough space for me to print a name or allow other’s to print a name, if they know it. I use the seven for all unknown first names and seven for all unknown last names. These unknown surnames will show up at the top of my list of individuals.

For inquiring minds, the software program I use is Family Tree Maker, however many packages offer similar features. So explore your existing program and see what it can do for you. As the saying goes, “Work smarter not harder”. What I love about software programs such as FTM, it offers features that allow me to customize it for how I want to record my data. My advice is to “Think before you leap”. Try a small experimental tree and turn on and off features, look at reports you might want, see if you can customize reports so you can get the data you want. 

Have fun researching!