After a hiatus from actively working on my genealogy, I’m playing catch up. As part of that ‘catch-up’ process, I’ve participated in the Genealogy Do-Over and am now participating in ‘Finally Get Organized‘. I am learning a lot thru these activities and actually making lots of progress on my goal to digitize my files.

Since I started doing genealogy over 35 years ago, I have a lot of paper. Fortunately, almost all of that paper has been sourced! Unfortunately, it hasn’t been scanned or in most cases transcribed.

So, tackling the weekly checklists for ‘Finally Get Organized’ is helping me stay focused as I wade thru all of that paper. I can truthfully say I’ve accomplished the following:

• Verified that my files are being backed up to the cloud and to USB drives
• Cleaned my desk — including opening my computer and blowing out all of the dust
• Have data for myself and my Crawford line in Roots Magic (my dad, granddad, great-granddad and great-great grandad)
• Printed family group sheets — I did this, but am not happy with the format. Because I have lots of events for each person in Roots Magic, these are not the ‘traditional’ style of reports with just birth, marriage, death, but much longer.
• Create a binder for my dad’s line and put the family group sheets in the binders with documents behind each family. Well, instead of ONE binder, I have FIVE thick (3″ or 4″) binders full. Since my binders already had family group sheets in them, I left the old ones and did not use the ones I printed out. I’ll replace them when I figure out how to do that in Roots Magic or find another way.
• Scanned all of the documents for my male ancestors in my dad’s line thru my great-great grandfather
• Put the documents in chronological order — while making sure they were in archival safe sheet protectors
• Indexed records on Family Search (Iowa Delayed Birth Certificates)
• Made sure info on my brothers is in RootsMagic (was completed over the summer when I scanned their binders)
• Create a binder for my mother’s line — already done but again multiple binders (and not yet scanned)

Where I’ve failed is with the task to TRANSCRIBE ALL DOCUMENTS in the binder. I have transcribed SOME of the documents but am nowhere close to transcribing all or even all of the handwritten documents. Since this task is going to take a while, I’ve marked my place and left it for later.

Thus, I can’t claim that I’ve completed the January tasks. However, I am thankful for the opportunity and will continue accepting the weekly challenges!

Transcribing – Failed (for now)

Binders – Success!