Week 14: “Check it Out”

The theme for Week 14 (and the monthly theme for April) is "Check It Out." We often use this phrase when we want someone to pay attention to something neat. ("Hey! Check it out!") It's also something you do with some library books. What does that inspire you to write about? Click here to check out all the themes for 2022.

Most genealogist will have some sort of books. I started with “How to” books because starting anything new, I wanted to do it right. Well, it didn’t help. (giggle). It helped a little but I did do my share of mistakes and I even restarted my genealogy, lucky I had less than 300 people in my tree, so it wasn’t all bad.

Through the years I look for books on skills I want to improve on. I have books on organizing my genealogy, many books on DNA, I have some dealing with digitizing my family history, how to cite your sources, about the genealogical research standards, how to become an accredited genealogist. Even books on various software packages that I can use for recording my genealogy.

I also have some history books, one for Columbia County, Wisconsin (a remake), another on the families in Mohawk Valley, New York and a few specific family history books, one for the Boone Family, the Hiltz Family, the O’Brion Family, and the Quinn family.

Genealogy is the only hobby (I use that word loosely because it’s a passion for me), that the more time you spend on it, the harder it gets. Think about it. For example, I crochet, I started out learning the stitches, and the more I do it, the easier it becomes because the better I get at it. Of course, I might have to lookup a new type of stitch or watch a tutorial on how to do that stitch, but everyone is going to do that stitch the same way.

Genealogy on the other hand gets harder because finding the documents to prove the next generation are rarer to find. Everyone’s might be basically doing the same thing, researching their family, their ancestors, etc.… But where they are looking are different based on where your family lived, what records survived that location and as in the book listed above on the families in the Mohawk Valley, New York, what has already been researched. Plus, how far you are able to trace your family will be different for each person because our families are so different. 

Books help me become a better researcher, to see what others are doing to find records. I can learn from others and apply those skills to my work. I always say, work smarter not harder. This also applies to Genealogy. Besides books, I watch a lot of Webinars, YouTube Videos, read other people’s blogs, belong to various Facebook groups so that I can become a better Genealogist. If I learn only one new thing, it is worth it to me. Yes, sometimes the topic is a review, however the lecturer might show me a different way of doing something. We are creatures of habit, thus if we keep doing what we have always done, we will always get the same results. Learning new websites or learning new search strategies might lead us to new results. 

My advice, CHECK IT OUT, and grow your knowledge and skill base for doing genealogy.