The theme for Week 19 is "Preserve." We preserve a lot as genealogists: papers, stories, history itself. There is also the tasty kind of "preserve." (Now I'm hungry for some strawberry jam on fresh-baked bread.) What have you or your ancestors preserved? Click here to see all the 2024 Themes.
The biggest concern I see among many genealogists, especially the older ones, is who will “Preserve” our research after we are gone. Many of these people state that no one in their family is interested, or they don’t have any children to take over their research.
First of all, as someone who got interested in Genealogy on my own, I didn’t know that my aunt was interested in genealogy. It wasn’t until I went to a family reunion and I saw all the work she had done on her maiden name line. Thus, if you don’t know of anyone in your family who is interested, my question to you “Have you asked everyone?”. If not your children or grandchildren, what about any nieces or nephews or their children or grandchildren? What about your cousins or their children or grandchildren? Perhaps you need to make a bigger search. Get the word out that you are looking for someone to give your research too. You might be surprise who you find hiding in the shadows.
Even though I have warned my children that I will come back and haunt them if they don’t preserve my genealogy, there are no guarantees that they will respect my wishes. Plus, how well will they protect my research? Will it end up in a damp basement to get moldy or in a hot attic with the bugs that will eat my research?
I have decided that the best way to preserve my research is to publish my research in a series of books. I decided that I want to take my immigrant ancestor couples and create descendant books for them. I can then donate those books to various libraries for their collections, especially the FamilySearch Library located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Now creating these books is not an easy task, and my immigrant ancestor for various lines have arrived in the United States at different times. Thus, some books will be bigger than others, or perhaps split it between two or more volumes. I decided to start with one set of 3rd great grandparents whose line I haven’t done much research on. I had obtained some information on this line from a couple of family history books that were done on two other lines of my family. In one if those books, “The O’Brion Family” the daughter of my ancestral couple is the spouse of the grandson of the primary person of “The O’Brion Family” book. Therefore, some research was already done, and I just have to verify the information. In the other book, the granddaughter of the primary couple is the daughter of the grandson of “The O’Brion Family”. In fact, the information on my direct line was copied from the other book into the "The O’Brion Family" book. When I mean copied, it was actually photocopies of the other book pages. Thus, no new information there!
I hate being critical, but “The O’Brion Family” book format is difficult to follow, because as the author went down the lineage, he didn’t repeat the surname, and thus, I sometimes got lost where in the family I was. Also, he only gave dates, no locations, and thus I have no idea where this family may have been living at the time of the book. However, I did learn what I don’t want in my book. (wink wink).
My main genealogy program is Family Tree Maker and I am lucky that there is a plug-in program, Family Book Creator, that will take the data from my FTM and help produce four types of books, one of them being a descendant book.
I have done two other books using the plug-in, one for my sister-in-law and the other for her first cousin, as a learning tool to get familiar with the program. They are being sold through lulu on my author's website.
I am currently on the research step for my book. I have set a goal of finding as many descendants of my ancestral couple. The most difficult step was determining when I am actually done with the research process. I am basically using on-line resources. I may use some in-person research later, if I think more verification is needed.
I am taking a systematic approach, similar to following an outline descendant chart to research all the descendants. Obituaries are wonderful for finding names for the more current generations. Based on these names, I then look for marriage records or indexes that match up to those names and addresses. Using the US Public Records database on Ancestry has allowed me to find birth dates for people who live in the area that is listed on the obituary. Newspapers.com help confirm marriages when announcements list the parents of the married couple, or children names in various articles or birth announcements.
Knowing when to stop researching one family or person and moving onto the next person is the challenge. I have a few designated databases that I check based on the state they appear to be living in. Some states are more helpful than others. Using Ancestry.com hint system when I find a record that I am confident is my person, the additional hints can lead me to more clues. If I don't find anything or can't determine with some confidence that this is my person, I just have to move onto the next person.
Once I am done with the actual research stage of finding names and vital information, I will turn to my DNA match list and see if any matches are showing having a common ancestor with my ancestral couple and verifying if they are in my tree or doing further research to see if I can place them into my tree. I will also look at our shared matches to see if any of them could be added to my family tree.
My last step will be looking at other people’s trees who have my ancestral couple in their tree. My thought is that these trees if also created by direct descendants of my ancestral couple, might help me verify the number of children a couple had, even if they are showing up “living”. Also, the tree owner’s username might be their actual name and aid in verifying my tree. I would hope the tree owner knows who their own parents are, finger’s cross they know who their grandparents are and I can then compare their tree to my tree. This is sometimes how I find young children who died between census years, or who are not mentioned in obituaries and have no gravestone marker to generate a Find A Grave memorial.
What I am learning from this process? My ancestral couple had a lot more descendants than I realized. That the next book I do, I want to make sure it is for a more recent ancestral couple and do those books before moving to the families that have been in the United States for multiple centuries. My goal is to get as many books done as possible. Thus, looking at the more recent immigrants or even those lines I know that don’t have a lot of descendants, such as my maiden name line.
How are you going to “Preserve” your genealogy?
Just have fun and remember Just Do Genealogy!
