No matter how much I would love to do nothing but my genealogy, life seems to have it’s own thoughts for me.
I am however back to working on my genealogy again!
Good news is… thanks to my organizing that was done a while back, I can come right in and it only takes me a small amount of time to get back on the track I was on…
My tidbit for today…
After getting me and my family through the flu, I am back and ready to start more digitizing! I have a little less than 3 binders of family group sheets to do on my main line and it will be complete. Then to add the rest of the documentation to the OneNote binders and that portion of my digitizing will be done! YAY!!
I will try to post some screenshots during the next few weeks as more of this gets done. Hopefully, it will spark some ideas for others. If you have some ideas, let me know and I will take a look at em.
I have one hour of peace and quiet now that the kiddos are sleeping, so I am going to do some data input tonight. I’m hoping to get more time to work on this during the weekend.
Off to work I go….
With this comes much excitement! Along with the knowledge that compared to this task, the 3 binders from my father’s side of the family will seem relatively easy… haha no pun intended.
Now the next question is…
I’m sure I can come up with something 😉
After taking some time away from my family hisotry, I am back and almost done going digital! I have gone from 9 binders full of family group sheets, documents, notes and all the other fun stuff I have collected, I have 3 1/2 remaining!
I have spent the last while entering my family group sheet information into my OneNote “Notebooks”. Watching it all come together is fantastic! About half way through this process I began to wonder if it was really worth it… then I was talking to my mom and she had a question about our family history. I pulled out my iPad and showed her the family group sheet and all the documents I had on that particular family. At that moment I realized… it was worth it. If I still had all of my information in binders, the information I needed would have been on the shelf at my house. I was able to go over what we had so far and what we still needed without any prior preparation. I was ecstatic!
It energized me to finish digitizing, so for the next couple weeks, that’s what I will be doing. Although, I must admit, I get tired of entering data I already have and linking it to the photos of documents I already have, so I do give in to the urge and do some research. I just can’t help myself…
Well back to data entry for me, I will post photos of the finished product when I am done!
First, let me say I cannot take credit for the outlines of these. I did a ton of research on timelines and based mine around Ancestry Anne’s livestream presentation. She does a fantastic job of explaining how they work. I would recommend you watch this to get a better explanation of Timelines. I also add ideas that come to me while entering information from the death certificate.
When creating the research plan I will refer to this page as well. This saved me from switching back and forth between the research page and the timeline. As ideas come to me I make a note here on the timeline. Then later when making a research plan I refer to this page of collective thoughts and ideas.
Now for the research plan, I searched all over the internet and found another livestream presentation, this one done by Krista Cowen. I love listening to her presentations, she is such a smart woman! I also watched a great YouTube video done by Caroline Pointer, and I combined things from these two amazing ladies. After some tweaking a redoing, this is what I came up with.
These are what is working for me right now and helping me get organized one paper at a time. Going digital isn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be. Time consuming… yes. Worth it… we shall see!
I have had a few people ask me how I use OneNote so I figured I would share how I do it. This may not be the best way to do it, but it is working for me.
I started by creating a notebook for each of my grandparents, using their surname as the name of the notebook.
Then I created a notebook for my census records and another for my documents (certificates, etc)
Screenshot of my family main sheet.
There are tutorials all over the place that can help you with creating table and pages etc., but this is how mine look. Each piece of information is a link to it’s own page.
For example, if I click on the death date by Mary E. Hartel it will take me to her death page. Here is a look at how that looks.
This is Mary Hartel death information page.
After clicking on Mary E. Hartel death date I am taken to her death page. On this page I have added her death certificate and it’s source information. I take the information off of this certificate and create a timeline for the family on their timeline page, and a personal one for her on her page. This sounds more difficult than it is… love the copy/paste buttons! 🙂
My Documents Binder
Finally, a sneak peak at my documents notebook. I have my documents notebook divided by state. Then under each state I have different event tabs, (birth, marriage, death etc). Each document is then given a number and put onto the next page in it’s category. This is my Minnesota death records section of my documents notebook. Hope you can get a general idea of what I am talking about by the picture.  This has helped me get organized. Also, I have an iPhone and an iPad and can access these notebooks where ever I am. I am looking forward to having all my documents and family information on my computer and not in binder, folders and all over my desk.OneNote is also fabulous for creating timelines and research plans. I will work on blogging a couple screenshots of my timelines and a research plan I have made. If you have any suggestions, ideas or comments, please feel free to contact me.
I am loving Microsoft OneNote for going paperless in my genealogy!
I have input 5 two-inch binders into my OneNote and cleared off a big portion of my desk. Now I am putting copies of the certificates, notes, pictures etc into the families notebooks. This means when I open a “Family” notebook and go to a person’s page, I see all the information I have for that person. I see a picture of the certificate, not just words. I can look and relook at the information I have.
As I stated yesterday, I have been inputting the Minnesota death certificates I have and I am almost done with that! I have 7 left. I am learning to transcribe the information from each document into my genealogy database program and into OneNote. This is helping me create a timeline of their lives. I am quite surprised at all the information I was not reading before I started doing this. It forces me to look at all the details, and sheds a whole new light on each document.
If you do not transcribe your documents into writing and record it somewhere I definately recommend that you do that…
Well, off to finish my last 7 Minnesota death certificates. Learning new things everyday…
Hello!
After taking quite a hiatus, I am back. I have been doing some beta testing for a couple different genealogy programs and have really enjoyed doing this.
I have also been working on digitizing all my files into my Microsoft OneNote and getting rid of all the paper piles I have accrued. This is a very long process, but it will be worth it in the long run… right?
I will continue today to enter the rest of my Minnesota death certificates into OneNote and put them with the correct people. With that… it’s time to get busy…
I have just recently taken on a big project to identify all the descendants of my great-grandfather. Until this point, I have never really focused my research to a specific branch of my tree. I have also never noticed how much “unsourced” information I have. A large portion of my family history was not done by me, but given to me by other family members. So this information needs to be proven for me to feel comfortable with it.
In looking over this particular branch of my tree, I noticed I have a lot of siblings to my “direct line” that I have not researched at all. So I started to do what I always do and jump right in. Well, it didn’t take long for me to notice that somehow, I really have no idea how, I had ended up adding information to a totally different branch of my tree. Ugh!
Instead of getting frustrated with my lack of attention span, I decided to find a way to focus my research. I spent quite some time today researching “research plans”. I think I have come up with a way to make my focus a bit more streamlined and hopefully keep me at least in the right “branch” of my family tree.
I will be using a trial version of Microsoft OneNote and creating this research plan. If this works like I think it will, I will be purchasing OneNote. I am very excited to get this started. Wish me luck!
If you have any research plan ideas please contact me, I would love to get other opinions on what works for you!
