This weeks #52Ancestors blog topic is ‘Easy’. In thinking over my past research, what I thought would be easy turned out to not be easy. When I first started working on my family history, I didn’t do much research on my Hammond line because I had my great-grandmother’s DAR (Daughters of American Revolution) application.

Based on that application, I thought my Hammond line was basically done. Add to that, I found a book, the History and Genealogies of the Hammond Family in America, that made it seem like my line was already ‘done’. However, when I finally gave up finding a revolutionary link on my Crawford line and started filling out my own DAR application based on my Hammond line, the ‘Easy’ button disappeared. Thus, I’ve concluded that there is no ‘Easy’ button when it comes researching my tree.

However, week 5 of Genealogy Do-Over has an ‘easy’ button. This week’s topic is about developing a ‘research tool box’. Thanks to the Thomas MacEntee’s willingness to share the video from his 2015 Roots Tech session on developing a Research Toolbox along with his own toolbox, I was able to quickly create my own toolbox. What I really liked about the video was the discussion about ‘containers’. As I listened, I considered using several of the suggested containers: Excel, Evernot, Website/blog. After considering the various options, I elected to go with Evernote. The second portion of the video discusses the various types of records and the organization of those tools. I elected to follow the same organizational pattern but added the following categories:

• Software / Tools
• My Web Presence
• Webinars
• YouTube
• Facebook Groups / Hangouts

By using the Evernote web clipper, it was fairly simple to add sites to my toolbox.

#Wk5GenealogyDoOver

#52Ancestors