A way to start your genealogy research over.
At the same time, you will learn how to build a solid
family tree with good, strong roots.
At the same time, you will learn how to build a solid
family tree with good, strong roots.
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With my weekends freed up a bit more now that football season is over, I'm up to the task of continuing on with this Genealogy Do-Over. With my work schedule, only the weekends provide me with big blocks to time to do this correctly. Sure, I can try and spend an hour or two each night during the week working on this, but with leaving the house at 5am and getting home between 8pm and 9pm, I just don't think I'd have enough juice in my brain to work on it with a clear head.
The topics for the second week were 1) Setting Research Goals, 2) Conducting a Self Interview, and 3) Conducting Family Interviews.
Now that I'm finished with the Week 1 topic, I'm now ready to continue with Week 2. The topics for the second week were 1) Setting Research Goals, 2) Conducting a Self Interview, and 3) Conducting Family Interviews. I worked on these three topics out of order. Below is how I tackled these topics.
Conducting Family Interviews
Besides my parents and a cousin, along with his family, all of my other relatives are on the East Coast. My sister, brother-in-law, and niece are in Colorado. With my relatives spread out, doing a face-to-face interview is just about impossible. So I did some research on what types of questions to ask when conducting this interview, and I made up a document that I will be emailing out to them. When, and if, I get them back completed, I'll then compile their answers and record them.
Conducting a Self Interview
I did a self interview one night on the ferry going home last week. Seemed like the perfect times and I did have 35 minutes to get a good start on it. I pulled out my notebook and starting writing down everything I remembered from my life so far. I included places I lived, places of employment, trips and vacations, and schools attended and graduated from. I'm going to organize this information into chronological order and add it to my record in my genealogy database.
Setting Research Goals
I am starting with my grandparents. Unfortunately, none of them are around any longer, so I missed out on the chance to interview them directly. I'll have to rely on records and the memories of their children and grandchildren.
I plan on taking one grandparent at a time, and perform an exhaustive search on their life. I won't move on to the next grandparent until I feel that I have gone as far as I can with what is currently available.
The first grandparent up is my paternal grandfather Clarence Wesley Lusby. Then I'll move onto my paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Armistead Hennings. Then it will be time for my maternal grandfather and grandmother, Carl Sporie and Isabella Sharp Tanton.
That is it for this second week. Up next for Week 3 is 1) Tracking Research, and 2) Conducting Research.
Betsy, You're ahead of me. I'm still on Week - er, Step - 1. Deciding which paper and digital filing systems will be easy enough for me to follow through on, rather than downloading a record with a name like 455681112_1557899932 and never looking at it. But I'm down to one box of documents, so I am making progress! Remember, this Do Over can be used to help us reach our individual genealogy goals. We can set our own timer.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much what I'm doing. Luckily, before I started this Do-Over I had my system for naming all my documents/files in place. That did save me a lot of time. Now it's just how I want to organize the files and organize my actual research processes, as I'm all over the place with those.
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