Genealogy Hoarding – Page 2 – The Misadventures of a Genealogist

Organizing my Chaos: Part 4

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Kathleen

Alright, I’ve researched my supplies, I’ve made plans, and I’ve used trial and error to go through my chaos of papers. All of this with the help of Elyse Doerflinger‘s book Conquering the Paper Monster. If you feel even a little overwhelmed by the task of organizing your genealogy papers, I definitely recommend this book. I’ve changed my methods a million times in the last 10 years. She explains in very easy to understand terms all the technical terms you may be stuck on. The different types of supplies, the terms you should look for in your supplies. There’s so much information in there and I wouldn’t even dream of trying to reiterate it all here! Just go get the ebook, it’s only a couple of bucks. You’ll spend more on your office supplies then you will the book.

What you’re looking at is my finished crates of documents. It doesn’t look like much, but everything is in sheet protectors and sorted by which line of the family tree they come from. Birth, marriage, and death records are all separated. When I have more documents, I’ll switch to an individual reference number sorting system. Right now, I just don’t have the volume to make that kind of leap. What I realize is I have a bulk of miscellaneous documents for William and Llewellyn, and another bulk for the Taylor line. Most of the Taylor bulk is photocopies or written notes we took during our Eastern Shore trip. Unfortunately, it was before I knew what I was doing. So I don’t have any source information for those things. I’ll have to research that stuff again.

papermonster4-02 — Books, what to do with the books?

The only question I have is what to do with these books. I have a lot of the funeral service guest books, bibles (not family ones, just bibles, like gift bibles), and just general kind of notebooks. How do you go about preserving those? The’re too big to fit into a sheet protector. Right now I have them laid down in the crates for storage but I’m starting to think that a bookcase might have been a better investment, even if I don’t have room for a bookcase at the moment. ha.

Next I’m onto the photos. I’ve already researched the supplies I’m going to need and where I’m going to get them from. I’ve thought about my priorities when it comes to the photos. Since I have so many to begin with, I’m going to focus on the really old ones first. I’m ordering a set of photo archival pages from Light Impressions. I decided on the 6 to a page sheets that are just big enough for all those photos I have from the 1920s-1930s. I am not going to be getting the albums for the pages yet as those are a bit too expensive for my budget right now. I’ll plan on getting those later in the year when I’ve got some extra money again.

Previous Posts

Organizing my Chaos: Part 3 and some lessons

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Kathleen

I’ve learned some more valuable lessons this week. I recently figured out how to “schedule” posts here on the blog. So I wrote up two entries this weekend and “scheduled” them for Monday and Tuesday respectively. Then I went in Monday night and made some changes to yesterdays post to reflect that I was planning on ordering my office supplies yesterday. Have to keep the space-time continuum you know.

Lesson 1: Don’t schedule a post until you’re sure of the outcome you discuss.

The problem comes up when I got up in the morning. The reason I was trying the schedule method is my mornings are often filled with errands. I thought, “Hey, that could be cool! I write the entry the night before and schedule it for the morning while I’m out!” I think it’ll be a great way to pre-write the GeneaBloggers themes and even my Diary of Llewellyn posts. When I’m home though, I think I’ll stick to manually posting.

You see, I had every intention of going into town, depositing my pay and coming home to order the supplies I picked out. Somehow in the trips to a million stores, I figured why not just stop by Staples and see what the in store prices were. I had checked online and they were quite a bit more expensive then Office Depot. I was shocked when I got in the store.

Lesson 2: Check in store prices and not just website prices.

The hanging file folders ended up being on sale for $8.00 a piece. It doesn’t give me 8 different colors but I can make this work. I’m not picky. The sheet protectors were on sale too. I ended up getting a pack of 200 for $10.00. I’m not 100% sure if I got the best deal around, but I spent less then I expected. I even picked up some zippered folders that match my crates from Walmart.

So I sat down on the floor and I started sorting.

Lesson 3: Use a table next time.

The long and short of it is my stuff is officially through the first stage of sorting. The pictures are in their own space and the documents are in theirs. The documents are sorted between my Mom’s side and my Dad’s side. My next step is to start sorting Dad’s side into four sections: Moore, Thorward, Redford, Parkin.

Everything works out in the end. It usually does, even if I have a few misadventures in the process! I told you before my blog title is there for a reason. My crates are ready and waiting for me to get started but I think I might skip a few days and start seeing what records I’m ordering with the savings I made yesterday!

Previous Posts:

I am not affiliated with Staples, Office Depot, or any other company. I just fumble around town shopping with no particular bias. I was not compensated to switch my shopping to Staples. It just worked out that way. Always shop around for better pricing!

Organizing my Chaos: Part 2

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Kathleen

Okay, I’ve made my decision. I was dogsitting again this weekend, so I have some extra money. This extra money is going to be the start of my genealogy organization fund.

I’m going to have two sections of organization. My mother’s side and my father’s side. Then I’m going to split each section into my 4 great grandparents. So on my father’s side, that would be Moore, Thorward, Redford, and Parkin. On my mother’s side it would be Mays, Moyer, Taylor, and Applegate.

For now I’m going to stick with my Walmart Hanging Folder crates. My hope is that once I’m actually organized, they’ll be more efficient for me.

I’ve ordered my supplies from Office Depot and now I wait for them to get here. Then it’s time to work! These hanging folders come with five of each color and I’m using one color for each of the eight surnames. My current setup has two hanging folders (Moore and Mays) and all the documents are in acid-free sheet protectors. Everything else is just hanging around in no particular order. Everytime I need to find something I have to pour through everything.

My plan is to use one hanging folder for each type of document. I’ll have a red folder for all Moore birth certificates, a red folder for all Moore death certificates and so on. As I get more types of records, I’ll probably have to get more folders of a specific color. OfficeDepot.com does sell the individual colors, so hopefully that won’t be a problem. Really I’ll just have to roll with that as it comes at me.

While I wait for my order to come in, I plan to start organizing. Here’s how I’m going to go about this:

My first step will be to separate all photos from documents. So I’ll have all the photos in one spot and documents in another. I thought I had already done this, but I’m not 100% positive. So this will either be very time consuming, or very easy. 🙂
The second step will be sorting Moore documents from Mays documents. Again, I have two folders of documents already separated but I need to go through the mess of the crates and put everything in one pile.
The most time consuming third step will be to separate the Moore documents into four piles (Moore, Thorward, Redford, Parkin). This is the most time consuming because the Moore side of my family is the side where the treasure trove of boxes came from. So I have ALOT of stuff that I haven’t been through yet. In fact, I don’t even have all my stuff, some is still in New York. I might have to take extra time in July after the reunion to locate all my stuff at my Aunt’s house but for now, it’s in the best place. When it comes back, it’ll be coming back with a system in place.
The last thing I want to have done before I start color coding is separating the Mays documents into their four piles (Mays, Moyer, Taylor, Applegate). This one isn’t going to be as hard because most of my Mays documents are already in acid-free page protectors. Most of my documents are in digital form from Ancestry.com (Kentucky Death Records) or FamilySearch (Ohio Death Records).

This should be enough to keep me busy for awhile right?! Baby steps folks! Doing this huge task in stages is what is going to be my saving grace! To read Part 1 of Organizing my Chaos: click here.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Office Depot. In fact, this is the first time I’m ever ordering/buying anything from Office Depot. I am not being compensated by Office Depot. The only real reason I’m ordering from Office Depot is because they were the best deal online and the only office supply store in my town was $20 more expensive.

Organizing my Chaos: Part 1

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Kathleen

So here we go, I’m starting to actually get serious about this genealogy thing. I recently purchased a copy of Elyse Doerflinger‘s ebook, Organizing the Paper Monster Once and For All. Since I’m the queen of oversharing, I decided why not chronicle my attempts on this here blog. Obviously I can’t keep talking about what a mess the Mays family makes me (At least not everyday). So now that I’ve got the holidays behind me and a new outlook on my life, why not just plunge in!

One of the first things Elyse tells us is to admit we have a problem. No matter how big or small our paper monster is. Trust me that’s not going to be a problem. I HAVE A PROBLEM. A BIG ONE!

The photo boxes are under my desk. BIG PROBLEM. The new file crates are my paper problems. ANOTHER BIG PROBLEM. I think I’ve decided I don’t like having the hanging file folders, though they are easy access. Luckily I filched them from my family’s office supply stash. Now I won’t feel bad about wasting money on a ton of file folders. The only loss of money would be the crates I got at WalMart during Back to School sales, so really I didn’t lose much on the deal because I’ll find another use for those.

Another step is to establish how you think of your ancestors. That is easy for me. Everything I have is divided into two sections, my father’s Moore side and my mother’s Mays side. So I would like my records to be divided in that way also.

The next step is to start sorting. That’ll have to wait for now. I’m going to have to do some more planning. Like where these organized papers are going to go. In the meantime, I have a confession to make. On September 26th, I posted about a replica Ellis Island that I got at a clearance sale. It was my hope that having a little inspiration would keep me concentrated and keep the clutter off that part of my desk.

I’m sorry to say that I failed. Oops!

Veterans Day: Ralph Leonard

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Kathleen

Do you guys remember when I started this blog nine months (!) ago, and I said I was imposing a full disclosure policy. Here’s where it comes into play again. My original plan was to make a list of my military ancestors for Veterans Day. I hoped to have a list of people that served. I have a ton of Draft cards but a lot of those guys didn’t serve from what I can tell. So I was hoping to have a nice list of servicemen and women to eventually gather records for. That didn’t exactly happen.

I got distracted, like I often do. I opened PhotoShop to edit the above picture for this very blog post. I was going to use it to anchor the post. Make it pop. Then I got distracted, again. Yesterday I posted about my Marine family history so I had Marines on the brain. That’s when I noticed the emblem on Ralph’s hat. Could he be a Marine? How cool would that be?

So naturally I went to my first stop for all things military. I emailed my Dad. While I was waiting to see if he had any ideas, I had a thought. I was just at Prospect Hill Cemetery. Maybe he was one of the graves I photographed and I didn’t put two and two together. Since I was on my laptop, I just went to Find a Grave where I had uploaded all my graveyard photos anyway. Bingo! I was thinking that he was in the Marines because of the emblem but his gravestone clearly said WWI USNRF which translates to Navy Reserve Force. Right about the time I figured this out I got a response from my father:

It looks to me to be an early 1900’s naval officer probably ww1 time frame. By the insignia on his cap I would think he would have been attached a Marine outfit.

Oh dear, he’s going to be so proud of himself for this! Now you know why I go to him for all things military! So now I know that Ralph was in the Navy and served in WWI. The only problem is I don’t have a WWI Draft Card for Ralph. I have one for his older brother but not him. So I’m going to have to assume he was already in the service when WWI came around. I do know that Ralph was trained in Aviation by 1930, so maybe he got military aviation training? I don’t know.

This is the part of genealogy I love. Just when you think you’ve found out everything about someone, you find a little nugget that opens it all up again.

Ralph Leonard Links:

It Suckered Us All In

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Kathleen

As I was writing up yesterday’s Mystery Monday post, I was reminded of the single, most consuming mystery I’ve ever had. It started when I first started going through the boxes of treasures/photographs/papers. When I first started scanning the photographs into my computer, I just labeled them UnknownMooreThorward-01 and so on. Funny enough, years after solving this mystery and they’re still named that.

This is the photo that launched the hours, months, years of frustration. Okay, so I’m exaggerating a tiny bit. It did take me years to solve this though. I would pick it up every few months and try again. I don’t know why I was so struck by this picture. I was just so curious about this building.

At one of our reunions, I brought the picture up on my laptop and asked around. Many members of my family chimed in. No one really knew where it was though. We dissected it many times. We were analyzing the routes that the cars were taking. My father thought he saw a crane in the back and chimed in that it was probably a temporary structure. I scoffed at that! Who would tear that kind of building down! That was nonsense!

A few months later I stumbled upon this photograph among the others. This one doesn’t show the structure very well, but it gives a bit more detail among the pillars. This one was taken on a different day I think. Here you can see something draped between the pillars and you can see what looks like balloons!

This set our family on all new tangents. My Aunt even showed the picture to some of her customers and got their input. We researched everything from European architecture to the Sesqui-centennial celebration of 1926 in Philadelphia. I went so far as to order a program on eBay from the event and even emailed the Boston Historic Society! No stone was unturned. Then one day I found a genealogy community online. I decided why not see what happens and I posted the first picture. In a twist of fate that is very common to me, someone posted back within a few hours!

This may sound silly and redundant, but have you checked out Victory Arches?

Oh.

Silly me, I didn’t even know what a victory arch was! So I quickly put my Google-fu to the test! Here’s a simple Google Image search of Victory Arches. Holy canoli, I was back on track!

I was eventually led to an expired eBay auction for this item. In fact, if you search for it today, there are even more images now! It turns out my structure was an Arch of Victory that was erected to welcome the troops home from WWI.

Arch of Victory at Madison Square, New York City, with men of the Twenty-seventh (New York) Division marching in a victory parade that was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators. The city turned out in masse to do them honor, and they received a tremendous ovation along the line of march. The avenue was packed from buildings to curbs.

This is why I love the internet. It took two years, and many hours of research for this huge family mystery to be solved by one poster on an internet message board. We spent many a hour at reunions discussing what this structure could be. My Dad always maintained that it was probably temporary. Well, you can bet he had bragging rights for a long time on this one!

It’s funny how different the street looks today, yet it still looks the same. I don’t know if you can tell from the size of the images but the buildings from the original photograph seem to all still be standing and look almost exactly the same!

I love to torture myself now. Sure one mystery was solved but that leads to more questions! Was my family in the hundreds of thousands of people welcoming the troops home? Were any of my relatives one of the troops being welcomed home? Gosh I love a good story!

William’s Letter #2

Posted on September 18, 2010 by Kathleen

After much debate with myself, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a second letter, but the second page of the first letter. I say that because of the context and because there wasn’t an address at the top of this one. So there ya go! Please note that I’m transcribing this as it is written. So spelling and grammar aren’t my fault! 🙂

Dear Jean, We have our troubles hear as well as you have in America all our troubles seems to come at once. I am very sorry to inform you, that Sister Ellen lost one of her little Boys last Saturday afternoon he died of Dropsey brought on by Scarlet Fever. Sister Ellen is in a sore way about him. There was no person at home but herself. Charles is in Alexandra Egypt and expects to stop there if he can get work he will be very much put about when he receives the news of the loss of his son. I would have gone down to Liverpool if I could off been spared Ellen was to bury him last Tuesday. I want her to come and spend a few weeks with me has soon as the wether gets warmer. I hope she will it will do her good I have forgotten to state in Alex letter that I shall be most happy to receive poor George. Lickeness, God Bless him I sincerely hope he is alive I will make Brothers Jamesh ?? as soon as I have time tell him to write a few lines to me when he as time you will please give mine and my wifes & childrens love to my mother and all my brothers and sisters and receive the same yourself. I will send you and mother a nice present before long you will excuse this short letter has I am afraid of its being over weight. Write soon again and believe me to remain your ever affectionate and loving Brother

W Menzies

William’s Letter #1

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Kathleen

I was writing up a post about William Menzies. When I tried to find the entry where I transcribed his letter, I couldn’t find it! It’s here somewhere, but for some reason it’s disappeared and it’s not tagged with the Menzies surname. Don’t worry, I’m going to fix issues like these when I redo the site (which is still ongoing, code is so consuming but I love learning it). In the meantime, I’m going to devote this entry to William’s letter so it’s easy to find. Then I’m going next door to play with the dogs because I think I need a dose of cute.

Depot St Rosehill (? Could be wrong)

Derby Jan 15 /63

My Dear Sister Jean,

I now avail myself of the present opportunity of answering your very affectionate and ever welcome letter, and at the same time thanking your for sending me the lock of poor Margrets hair which I intend having put in a broch. I am very sorry to hear such bad news from my Dear Friends in America and feel very much for my poor Mother. I wish I was there to comfort her in all her trouble. I expect to come and see you all some day has I am quite sure I will never stay in England all my life as I am quite tired of it, I want to come and see you, and I will never be satisfied until I do come if it is only for a visit for a few weeks. I am happy to learn that Brother John has been doing so very well has to aquire property and will be most happy to hear of his arrival amoungst you all in New York. I supose he is not married yet, let me know if your next if soon is the case

That’s where the letter ends. There’s possibly another page to the letter. This is just a photocopy given to me by my Aunt Diane. There are several more letters also. Possibly more than I have. I’ll post the second letter tomorrow!

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Original

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Kathleen

The last week, I’ve been slowly entering my mother’s side of the family into my new family file. It’s a little slower going because there are more of them than Dad’s side. I also had a master list of birthdays I made at the family reunion last year for Dad’s side. So I was able to put them in quickly and use the source I titled, “2009 Family Reunion Master List”. I’m new to citing Personal Family sources, so I was a bit baffled at first on how to really cite it. Then I realized I was once again over-analyzing something. So I gave the title as stated above, I’m listed as the other, and in the description I wrote that I compiled the list by going around to everyone at the family reunion and getting their birth dates and marriage dates where needed. It turned out to be a big project for me that year!

On my Mom’s side I now have the original copy of the Family Tree. This is the one my Grandma brought when I was in the eighth grade. I ended up photocopying it at my Mom’s work, and I later reproduced it in Excel and re-printed it. In that time though, I think I might have tried to “fix” it. I think things got a little turned around. I’ve decided to no longer use my photocopy version. I am lucky that my Aunt sent Grandma’s copy to Maryland for me.

original-00 — Taylor-Webb Family Tree. This has been missing the letters for as long as I can remember!

This has the most complete list I’ve ever seen of the current Taylor family. I don’t communicate much with this side of the family so I don’t know if I would ever had completed this much of it without Grandma’s tree.

original-01 — Taylor-Webb Family Tree. Page 2A.

It’s a great resource for quite a few generations back. If you can see, Reuben Vincent Webb is listed as Family Member 2-1 in this tree. This tree counts forward from the earliest known Webb relative. So Reuben is actually my 2nd Great Grand Uncle. It’s his sister Mollie Jane Webb who marries into the Taylor family. My index number in this tree is listed as 6-54. Just to show you how it counts forward in time.

What my photocopy version was missing is what you see above. I was in 8th grade around 1997. My Grandmother didn’t pass away until January 2005. So in that time, not only had I been making changes to the family tree, so had my Grandmother! I found little handwritten notes all over the tree. Notes that weren’t there in 1997 when we photocopied it.

original-03 — Taylor-Webb Family Tree. Living person information blurred for privacy.

Not only did I find notes in my Grandma’s handwriting, there were notes from another person too! This could have been from my Aunt. It could have been from someone who was just visiting and they were discussing the tree. It doesn’t really matter, what I do know is that even though this tree has some errors in it, it’s a wealth of information in other ways.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marriage Records

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Kathleen

tct-01 — Marriage Certificate of Clifford and Jane Redford

In my eyes, marriage records are a beautiful thing. I could say it’s beautiful to know a couple started their life together. That’s very true. However, my favorite part of marriage records is that they have maiden names and parent names for the women. One of my oldest and most often gripes is trying to figure out where the girls in the family disappeared to, or where they came from. It’s a common one among all genealogists.

This particular marriage record really opened up doors in my research. The biggest one being Jane’s last name. We knew it was Parkins/Perkins something. This verified for me that it was in fact Parkin. The great thing about this is it even went a step further and gave me her parents names. I’m not always so lucky to get all these facts. In fact, I was hesitant about this record when I got it because my Aunt had told me she always understood that Jane led a hard life and was orphaned young. That is all true. So I was worried that the information on her parents wouldn’t be known at the time of her wedding. From this record, I was even able to find that Jane and her siblings may have been orphaned and they did bounce around a lot, but it was always to other family members. I can’t speak for what happened in those households, but at least the family names were kept in memory so that I could find them today.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers that I occasionally participate in.