Wanderings From Your President

WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT

BY GAYLE STUART

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

When we start a new year, we make all sorts of promises to ourselves about what we are going to do.  We say that we are going to clean closets, cupboards, and file drawers and shred papers.  Then we run across some papers, wonder why they were kept, not filed right.  And then, sometimes, we find things that should have been done last month.

We all have great plans of getting our family histories all put together, so that the histories may be enjoyed by other family members.  Will they be able to understand and enjoy your hard work?

 

The first thing that should be done, if it isn’t, is to sort by families.  A box for each family is a good place to start.  Then it is time to sort into file folders by the way you want things put into notebooks or albums.  Do you have pictures and are they all labeled?  Do you have generations together?  In other words try to have a plan as you start so that you don’t have to do it all over again.

 

What else do you have:  copies of census (The 1940 census will be available in April, 2012.) and church records (baptisms, confirmations and marriages)?  In older church records, the birth and baptism are quite often listed together.  Marriage licenses and death certificates are always interesting.  Do you have land transactions?  Do you know where your ancestors came from?  Do you have immigration or naturalization papers?  What ship did they come over on?  If you need help with any of this, we are more than willing to help in any way that we can.

It is recommended that you only work on one family at a time.  I know from my own experience that, when families intermarry, it is hard to sort down to just one.

 

Let us make this a year that we add to our shelves in the genealogy room with more family histories.  This will help us with research when someone comes in and tells us they think there may be a connection to such and such a family.

 

These are all ideas that we have heard over time, but it needs to be repeated once in awhile.

 

Good Luck in 2012!

gbs