Organizing



January is the month of white sales, organizer sales, beginnings and new resolutions!  So let’s begin this year off right and organize your family history.  One of the most important tools for a researcher is organization.  Your future searches and your success depend upon how you file your papers, how you sort your sources and where you put the collected digital and paper files. 

My history of organization began in 1999 after I had been doing genealogy for about 5 years.  I took one week off from researching and decided to organize my genealogy papers.   I figured, what good was a document if I couldn’t find it?  After reviewing several organizing systems, I transferred everything to the numerical system that I still use today.  A few days into my organizing quest, while deep in the mist of piles of white paper and stacks of miscellaneous documents my living room looking like someone had spewed sheets of paper everywhere, I wanted to give up.  One of the wisest genealogical decisions I ever made was to decide to continue on and organize all my stuff!  Today, fifteen years later, I am still using the same basic system and more importantly, if I need a document, I can find it!

I do most of my research by location, the numbering system rather than the color coding system works best for me by allowing me to research everyone in a certain locale.  The best organizational tool is the one that works for you and the one you are able to keep up with.  Because after all, what good is a source if you cannot find it again?

January 2016 will examine organization and include motivation and ideas of how to organize paper and digital files as well as photographs.  

Good luck and let me hear on how you are coming on the organizing challenge

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Walking Where They Walked: Park Hotel

Image
Park Hotel, Rock Springs, Wyoming, September 2013, RR&B 19 Elk Street, Rock Springs, Sweetwater, Wyoming The Park Hotel opened in 1914 and was the hub of Western Wyoming until the late 1950’s. It was the largest and most modern hotel in the city. Advertisements boasted of hot and cold water in each of its 38 rooms, twenty of which had private baths and toilets. The fourth floor was added in the 1920’s. The Park Hotel catered to commercial men and automobile tourists traveling the Lincoln Highway. The hotel had a boisterous barroom and a sedate restaurant with sparking white table cloths. Rock Springs Miner, 30 January 1914, page 1, Wyoming Newspaper Project online. One memory of the Park Hotel, is related by Thomas P. Cullen, “One summer afternoon while walking up Elk Street toward the C Street Crossing, my attention was drawn to the small crowd assembled near the north end of the Park Hotel. A slight man, of short stature, stood rolling up his pantlegs
Read more

What is a mortcloth?

A mortcloth, or pall, is a funeral cloth used to cover a coffin in the funeral ceremony or the deceased prior to burial.   The deceased’s family usually rented a mortcloth from the local church and after each use, the fabric was washed and readied for use again.   The word comes from the Latin word “pallium” meaning cloak. The Mortcloth case of 1792 begins:   “ For many centuries, and probably up to the 20th, the Church of Scotland was the sole supplier of mortcloths.   As the name would suggest, they were cloths used to cover the dead prior to burial, and after use, were washed ready for rehire. The Church hired these for a few pence, or in some cases loaned out these cloths, until the time of the funeral. The revenue raised by this service, typically around £40 pa, was distributed to the poor of the parish at frequent intervals.”   In the late 1780’s a local Society of Colliers decided to purchase and rent out their own mortcloths preventing the local church from making re
Read more

Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales

Image
Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagillt) The parish of Bagillt was gazetted on 23 May 1844, having been created from the townships of Bagillt Fawr, Bagillt Fechan, Coleshill Fawr and Coleshill Fechan, which were formerly in the parish of Holywell. It is located in the Northern part of Wales. (Genuki, http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/FLN/Bagillt/index.html)   The 1841 British Census finds Margaret(2) Roberts, aged four years living with her parents and siblings in Bagillt, Flintshire, Wales. In 1831, J. Poole penned: "Bagillt is a bustling place, and will continue so, as long as her smelting and coal works go on in their present prosperous state. Well conducted boats go from this place to Chester every day; with a favorable wind, these little barks make the 17 or 18 miles in little more than two hours."   (J. Poole, Gleanings of the histories of Holywell, Flint, St. Asaph and Rhuddlan, 1831 as qtd.  in http://www.genuki.org.uk/
Read more