Secrets of The Green Box

Sharon, Vermont, 2010
This is one of the most beautiful, peaceful
places we have ever been.

Today I am sharing a lesson I learned this past week.  Jim has been gone for 6 days and I had a date with my genealogy.  It was amazing.  35 years ago when I started my family history work I had a green plastic box that accompanied me on trips to the Family History Library to do research.

 I would store all my family group sheets in that little box and the documents as I would order them would be filed in the few surname files I had made.  I had my research logs, my pedigree chart, and family group sheets. After the 4 generation request from the First Presidency I had my Book of Remembrance with all my typed pages which did not fit in my box, but I did have memorabilia stashed in there too.  Oh and letters, I have lots of correspondence from relatives and places that supplied vital records, etc.  I even had carbon paper, regular paper and whatever else I needed to do my research.  And there was a ton of extra space.

As the years went by I added more and more files.  It was a mess really.  Too many odd shaped pieces of paper, notes, etc.  That box is finally completely sorted through and is empty as of Saturday for the first time in nearly four decades.  Spending time with Elijah the whole week that Jim has been gone helping our kids has been profitable.  In fact it is been heavenly. When I came back to genealogy three years ago I was like a fish out of water.  I have had to relearn everything.  I also had to learn all of the electronic things as well.

I made a decision early when I returned to the work to do some electronic filling and get rid of a lot of paper.  So about three years ago I took most of the things from the first four generations out of the box and got those in new paper surname files after paring down a lot of the unnecessary stuff. Then I scanned and filed a bunch of things electronically.  That really seems to be better streamlined now and easier to find.  The scanning pile kept getting bigger and bigger..you know how that goes.  Then I'd put the memorabilia type things back in the box "for now."  The fact is that didn't work well.  It just gets away from you.  That is one of the most annoying things about all of this...too much stuff to keep track of, right?

Someday it will be just how I want it to be.  For now I have to just keep going in baby steps until it is right.  The most valuable lesson I learned from this Green Treasure Box is that the answers to some of the big things I had been working on and thinking about were right there in my possession...just forgotten after decades.  I under estimated how much information I had acquired the old much harder way.  It was phenomenal how many things I discovered I already had.  You have to keep the most articulate records, you simply will not ever remember where you have been, what you have found and where you put it without a fabulous system.  I am working on it.  The one upside to the whole thing is that I had a positively enlightening day going through the box.  It was my best research day I had had in a long time!  Who knew but Woohoo!  So maybe organizing what you have before you add more as you move forward is worth considering.  What do you think?

Organizing your Paper Files

This blog has now begun to serve two purposes. One, I am journaling my path from carbon paper to the digital age. I have found my time and season to give Family History and Genealogy a new place in my life and my heart and I want to record the process.

I am also now trying to use it to help others learn how to go about doing this based on my own experiences and what is working for me. So there is a mixture of narrative and "how to" sections in the blog.

So if you are interested in the narrative about the organizing, etc. you can read these past two posts and I think they will also contain some important tips and aspects of organizing your genealogical material.

http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com/2011/09/phd-in-genealogy.html

http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com/2011/10/5-things-i-have-learned-about.html

If you want to just jump right to the nitty gritty start here with your reading.

Organizing what you already have:

Once I got back to Family History in earnest again, the first thing I needed to do was actually open my green treasure chest from 30-something years ago.

This was a box I used to carry back and forth to the Oakland Genealogical Library back in the day of carbon paper, actual paper card catalogs, and lots of microfilm that needed to be ordered for records we can now often find online. My treasure chest was dusty, musty and contained lot of various things in manilla folders, organized by surnames. What I found when I opened the box were these tired files crammed with all manner of stuff with dried, cracking, often detached labels in various places.

I also had a Book Of Remembrance that looked like this. All these records were painstakingly, sought and found in the library, hand-printed and then typed by our ward typist, for all the record submissions to Salt Lake City. They had to be checked and rechecked for accuracy, as every time you would recopy the chance for making mistakes, transposing numbers of dates, etc. increased. They made their way to Salt Lake to meet the deadline imposed by the people in charge.

They would eventually become The Ancestral File. Hopefully, if you have a similar story, your ward genealogy teacher stressed the importance of documenting your work by citing your sources, or all your hard work would be nothing more than a nice road map for those that followed you, only to research the same information again. Even though the sources were not included in the Ancestral file, if you still have your pedigree and group sheets you submitted the sources should be on there in your Book of Remembrance.

Genealogy without sources and citations
is nothing more than a possibility.

Please repeat many times and internalize this idea. It is gospel in the world of genealogy, I promise you. If you want your name to be held in high esteem by generations past, present and future. Do it and the document it!

Check out the discoloration of the pages in my
Book of Remembrance already.
It's probably a combination of acid from the plastic
and the paper itself, oil from my hands, moisture and dust.

I am happy that I started our family history work years ago. I am even happy that I had the experience of doing this work the old-fashioned way. I am really happy I was the pioneer in our family. Starting from scratch had some definite advantages, that virgin, fertile ground for our family history and research was wonderful. I was blessed to have a teacher that drilled accuracy and documenting into my head from day one. Now I do not have to go back and reprove everything I found because I gathered it myself.

I have begun the work of verifying a lot of things by saving and adding new documents that are now available online and that is a joy. What once took years can now often be found, with a little know how, in a few minutes. Seriously, I find great joy in being a pioneer in this and to more fully appreciate where the Lord has brought this work in just a few decades. The technology, the generation that has been born with the technology gene already installed, this is nothing short of a Major Miracle. It is staggering really.

What a privilege to be a part of it. Just as the pioneers made the long and arduous trek from Nauvoo to Salt Lake facing many obstacles along the way, we are now making our pioneer trek into the digital age. Just as the first pioneers walked and walked and walked and struggled and learned and grew along the way...we too are doing the same. This is pure joy to witness! From an eternal perspective one day I think we will understand even more fully why being reserved for this day and being called "a chosen generation" is applicable.

How I Organized my Paper Files

We do not have file cabinet space so for now I just have two portable boxes for my files. They have hanging file folders that I purchased in variety packs with different colors. I also purchases colored manilla files to go inside and some labels. I also bought some acid free sleeves to preserve the old documents a little better. You might also want some circle dots in a variety of colors. That is really all you will need.

I think these red boxes will be sufficient for all the paper files I plan to keep during my life time.

Jim's family files are yellow, mine are blue.

These are some of the kinds of documents and of the things you will need to find and keep but a lot of them can be gathered and filed electronically cutting way down on your paper filing and using so much space.

There are also artifacts and heirlooms that must be considered. One thing is to be sure and take pictures of them and include in your electronic files. If you have a family bible that has genealogical information you might want to scan the pages and also file the electronically at some point. Bibles are considered a primary source for genealogical information. This is very important to remember. Many of your posterity might like to see a digitized version of the Bible.

For me these are the main reasons for having paper files:

To keep the original documents you have received and paid for or have been given by relatives. BUT you also need to scan them and save electronically.

The paper files are perfect and necessary for your original documents and copies of your family group sheets and pedigree charts, etc. Family Group Sheets and pedigrees are a very important aspect of keeping your records. What would happened if for some reason we lost our electronic files? Keep a paper copy for your sanity.

Remember we are pioneers of the digital age. We need to keeps more than one copy. In some cases with our flash drives and computer hard drives and public trees or what have you, we have lots of copies. Better than way than to lose the one.

What I have done is separated Jim's ancestors from mine by color in one box. My red boxes are not that different from my green moldy treasure box but the files are being cleaned up and restored and preserved more carefully and scanned for electronic filing. It is a process and is no where near done. The important thing is that I have a simple and logical system that works for me. It is small enough to be portable and easy to grab in case of a fire, or whatever. Someone else could figure it out pretty quickly when I am gone.

Doing family history is a bit like running a relay race. You have to be able to pass the baton to the next person in a simple efficient manner. If they cannot grasp what you are giving them it become hard to carry on. Make it simple. I have used the labels and written surnames on them and the head of the household on my direct lines. If you have quite a few lines it is wise to add the birth date of the father of the family and even a place of birth if you desire. This gets helpful when you have a lot of fathers passing on the same name to their sons, a very common practice.

You can color code the family if you wish...here is an example.


Some people do a number system 00001, 00002 or a system of tracking the descendancy with a code for paternal and maternal like pmpmpmpmmp indicating father, father, father, mother, father, etc. You start with yourself and work back, ie; mppp would be my paternal great grandfather. This is a nice and easy way to trace the line through the males and females back through the generations. For now I use it but I can always revise this at a later date if I find I need numbers or whatever. The important things is to get a system set up you think will work now and start using it. You can always tweak it as you go.

5 Things I Have Learned About Organizing!

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Getting My Ducks in a Row!

Over the past months I have really struggled trying to get organized! This organization had to take place within my mind as much as within my papers Piled Higher and Deeper (my PhD in Genealogy and Family History.) It has been like running backwards in a corn maze in the autumn of my life.

I do envy people that are starting afresh right now. No ancient history, no past piles yet unfinished, no thirty-three years worth of questions lying dusty and unresolved. No old papers, yellowing in ancient places, searching for their spot in time and eternity. No documents or photos being devoured in plastic file boxes or plastic sleeves, unprotected from acidic chemicals. No issues with boxes and boxes of photos vexing them and yet to be sorted, categorized, scanned and filed electronically, as well as tangibly.

If you are one of these people, starting now, be happy! You have every possible advantage right in front of you. If you are one of these people languishing now with all of the above concerns~take heart! You can and you will get organized if you stick with it. There are so many helps now and people willing to guide you either forward or backward as needed. You will find the end of that maze eventually.


Here are some things I have learned in the last few weeks that have made a big difference for me.

1. Know your style of learning. Are you an auditory learner, a visual learner, a hands-on type of learner or some combination of the above? Does taking and analyzing your notes help you to remember? Does teaching, writing, etc. help you retain information? More than one teacher is one chapter ahead of their students, right?

I have always known that taking notes helps me to learn and remember but I have just recently learned that is only half of it. After I learn something I need to carry it with me awhile by actually analyzing my notes and transcribing them into a narrative form. That really helps me. Then I need to file that in a place I can lay my hands on it in 30 seconds. Taking notes and then putting them in a pile or losing them folded in a book or notebook some place almost guarantees a short term kind of learning. Time marches on relentlessly, but learning for me needs to be savored.

As an example, my genealogy mentor and I exchange copious amounts of email. (God bless him!) One day he was helping me figure out our scanner and telling me a lot about the inner workings of the machine and how to scan and save documents and photos. The thread of emails on this subject had about six detailed entries for me from him. Tuesday I took all those emails from my electronic email that I have organized into folders right in my email program, printed them out and analyzed them. I then created a narrative analysis of what he taught me so that I could understand it. I don't need to know everything about scanning right now. When I felt confident that I understood it well enough to do what I need to do as a scanner, I filed it in my How-To Genealogy/Scanning folder. Now if I forget at some point I know exactly where it is.

2. Devise a plan of filing and organization that works for you. There is no perfect way that suits everyone. You have to come up with your own method of how to do it so that you can find your own things. Take lots of advice from others but adapt what they tell you to a style that works with your brain, not theirs. I will share exactly what I do next time.

3. Change some of your paradigms. When I first came back to genealogy I thought that now that we have computers, everything needs to be stored electronically. I got on that and also thinking, 'Ah, no more papers to deal with, hooray!'

Wrong. You still will have a plethora of paper; you still need to have paper files in addition to filing electronically. As an example, you will scan your documents electronically and file in your computer folders but what about your original documents? You are not going to throw them away, right? So you will have various methods, not just one for saving your information.

That was something I had to wrap my head around and catch a vision of it that worked for me. In addition to my mentor/teacher, I asked a few other people how they do it. What I gleamed from all of them has now become something that works for me...so far. I am sure I will tweak it as I go along but I feel I have a good starting point now. Stress, gone in that department, whew!

4. Ask the Right Question. We all have holes in our understanding and comprehension of anything we are trying to learn. With genealogy and family history I have had to overcome lots obstacles and still do everyday in the realms of hardware, software, technology in general, how and where to research and capture my information, wading through lots of source options, my time management, etc.

I have just discovered recently that it is important that I analyze where my issues are and learn to ask the exact question for which I need an answer. That I am sure sounds a little obvious but what I am saying is that I have to do my homework first and then ask for clarification or guidance. My question needs to be narrow in scope so that I can fill in those holes. As an example, "Can you tell me how to create a folder on a PC?" as opposed to "How do I store my information electronically?" One step and concept at a time it starts to make sense.

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5. Be Patient. An acorn does not become a mighty oak for a long time. As an acorn, when you have sprouted and begin to grow, nurture the acorns that are struggling around you. Share your light, your space, your water. Look up! Where you are looking is where you will end up.

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In my next post I'll share what is working for me specifically
in the organization department.