Understand our ancestors; Possibly understand ourselves

Understanding our ancestors may help us understand who we are.  To gain this understanding, our genealogy research should go beyond the names, dates, family trees, and documents that are standard talking points in genealogy discussions. Review the facts and events that you find about your ancestors and ask Why? How? Where? When? You may not find the answers, but exploring their options may give you a better insight into the character of your ancestors. Review carefully the challenges that your ancestors faced and how it may have affected them.  Remember that some points of their character may have filtered down to you through the generations.

For my grandmother, I tried to envision her early days in Poland. I sought accounts of what happened around her village during World War I. What fears and challenges did she face during her immigration to America. What did she find after she arrived to live with her brother? How did she react and overcome the challenge of an arranged marriage and making a new life in America in a town where she knew no one.

My grandmother had a significant influence on me. When I was able to relate the challenges in her life to the points of character that I saw in her, I was able to understand how her accomplishments had silently influenced my character.

Try this process for one of your ancestors and you may be amazed by what happens.

Get your Genealogy Organized

The focus of organizing your genealogy research should be to make it easy to find your information when you need it. Most people interpret this to mean you need a fantastic filing system for your papers. I have a different viewpoint and believe my system makes my research more efficient.

My system is based on compiling the information found on documents into summaries for individual direct ancestors which require one summary per direct ancestor. I generally try to download electronic copies of documents and scans of the paper documents that I find.  These electronic images are then embedded into my summaries in order to have them available if I need to double check the information at a later time.  This places all the information for each individual in one place and makes it faster to look up the information that I need for  the next search.

All of my information and images of documents are saved on my laptop. I only print copies for ring-binders when they are needed for family gatherings to allow family members to read. The ring binders are not part of my research efforts and their only purpose is to share my results with the family.

There are more details for my system but you will find that creating electronic summaries and saving electronic images of the documents will make your research more successful.  I strongly recommend that you create a summary for a few of your ancestors to see how simple and easy this system is.

Insure the accuracy of your information

Compiling your family history is very important to you. It should also be important that the information should be accurate for your children and grandchildren to read. Following a process to ensure accuracy should not be ominous and  it should not detract from the fun of finding your family history.

Analyze and evaluate your documents for accuracy and relevance. Determine if your sources are original or derivative documents. Do they contain primary or secondary information?  Always try to obtain a copy of the original document. Document your sources to ensure you can properly analyze your information.

The credibility of each piece of information needs to be determined because some records may contain confusing and misleading information. Resolve any conflicts in the information. The conclusions you use in your family history should represent the best possible scenario based on the evidence you have after a thorough and exhaustive search. If your conclusion does not give a definitive answer, you should state in some way that more research is needed. Someone reviewing your work in the future should be able to benefit from your work if you clearly state the information that you find and accurately state your sources.

FTM Users: Move your files now or later?

Family TreeMaker (FTM) will no longer be sold after December 2015.  Support for FTM will end on December 31, 2016.

What does this mean for users of FTM?

In 2016, FTM users will see no change when they open up their FTM files.

In 2017, the FTM software will continue to function, but support for the product will cease. However, I believe the link to Ancestry.com will be turned off, and users will lose their ability to download and merge information, documents and source citations automatically.

At some point in the future, updates to user’s computer operating systems will degrade the functionality of FTM and force the user to buy new software from another manufacturer. The timing of the switch to a different lineage software should be considered carefully because of what the user may lose in the transfer of their files. FTM saves its files in a format that will not be compatible with most lineage software, and the transfer of family data has to be done using the GED format.  Users of FTM 2012 and FTM 2014 will be able to export their media files along with their tree information to the GEDCOM file, and the transfer will be relatively painless if all goes well. However users of older FTM versions will not be able to export the media data, and the most important part of your research has to be added manually to your new software.

Waiting may help this problem if apps can be developed to extract the media files from FTM 2011 (and older) versions. However, waiting too long may cause you to lose your work because your operating system updates may cause FTM to turn off and not allow you to save you files in a transferable format.

What did our immigrant ancestors experience?

I have started to expand my family history by questioning what did my immigrant ancestors experienced when they immigrated. How did they suffer? what were their fears? They immigrated not knowing what awaited them. How did they handle this?

We do not know the answers but pondering what the answers could be will give us some insights into what they felt. Ask general questions but try to give specifics as answers. Try it. It blew my mind when I tried to get inside my grandmother’s mind during some of the critical points of her immigration and life.

Save Your Family Stories

We all have family stories that give insights into the lives our ancestors. Some are entertaining, others are celebrations of our cultural heritage and others are more historical in nature. They all should be saved for future generations.

Don’t be afraid to begin. Concentrate on finding one story and then another by doing the research. Finding the small pieces will make the task easier and will be fun. Eventually the small pieces will begin to fit together and the overall story that is your family history will appear.

Who will write your family history?

We all have family stories that give insights into the lives our ancestors. Some are entertaining and others are more historical in nature. Many others are celebrations of our ethnic and cultural heritage. Pieces of these stories are lost as families pass them down from generation to generation. Writing a family history will save them for many generations.

You may hesitate writing down these stories because you do not consider yourself a writer or you cannot see how your family history is important to save. However, it is important for you to understand that someone in your family should capture and save the oral histories, do the research to try to confirm what the accurate story is and do the research to increase the knowledge of your ancestor’s lives. All of our immigrant ancestors contributed to America’s history and their stories should be saved for our grandchildren. Our family histories should give clues of their roles and this will help us understand our roots.