Tea and Toast

My older sister used to fix tea and toast for me. It’s always been my go-to “meal” when I couldn’t eat anything else.

I haven’t been feeling well the past couple of days. As usual, I look to tea and toast (along with bananas, rice and applesauce) for sustenance.

It brings back memories of my childhood, and that’s a good thing!

Sandi 

PS  I’ll hopefully be back next week with a regular blog post.

Family Tree Re-Do – Progress Report

I am making slow but steady progress in my Family Tree Re-Do. I have my parents and grandparents, plus my siblings entered. On my husband’s side, I have entered his parents, grandparents, one set of great-grandparents, and his children.

Every fact has a source – or will have before I go any further.

I have scoured vital records, family records, legal documents, etc in my possession. I still need to check digital sources on my computer (scanned newspaper articles, census records, etc) for any additional information.

I’m trying very hard to avoid being distracted by the shaking leaves on Ancestry. I don’t want to spend time right now on a hint about a 2x great-uncle when I need to be sticking to the basics.

Now that I have the beginnings of my new tree, it’s time to review. I might need to tweak some of my source citations. I need to make a list of what’s missing (facts, sources, notes).

I still need to set up my new filing system. Again, just the basics, but I want to make sure the digital system matches the paper system.

It’s going to be another busy week!

Sandi

 

 

Getting Started

I have so much paper and so many digital documents! I need to sort everything and figure out who belongs to each document. I’ve tried to use logical file names, but I may re-visit that.

The next step is to enter each person, starting with me, into the database.

So that brings me to my next problem: I have Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic; neither one is the latest version. I had intended to start over with RootsMagic 6 (over two years ago!). I think I’ll stay with that plan and upgrade to RM7.

(NOTE: Legacy is also highly recommended, but I want to stay with what I’ve got.)

Documentation and source citation has always been my weak (as in very weak!) area. I need to look at some examples to make the concept click in my head. Then I think I will be fine.

As I go through this process, I’ll cross-reference my Ancestry trees and download any documents I have attached there.

I think this is why I’ve been procrastinating the past few years. I wanted to do it right from the start; I didn’t want to have to go back again to fix things. The result, though, is that nothing really got done.

 

 

Genealogy- Where I’m Coming From

I’ve been in a love-hate relationship with Genealogy for over 30 years. My Mother had sent me some family historical information and memorabilia. A friend showed me some charts that I could use to track the information.

Of course, that was just the beginning of my journey. At the time, I was about 2700 miles from my hometown. The internet wasn’t around then – at least not at the household level, so any research had to be done by correspondence- snail mail.

With everything that I had going on in my life at the time, genealogy fell by the wayside. I began to regain my interest in the late ’90’s, then discovered Ancestry.com, and there began the emotional up-and-down relationship that continues today.

I love genealogy. I love the investigations, the searches, and the joy of discovering a new piece of the puzzle.

For some reason, though, I go for months and months without working on my family history. It has literally been years since I entered information into either of my genealogy programs. (I think that having two programs actually made things worse: I don’t know which one to use or where to start.)

This, then, is where I begin again. With you as my accountability partners, I will look at what I have and where I need to go from here.

Along the way, I’ll introduce you to some of my relatives – on one line or another.

Sandi