Putting method to your madness

It is madness, isn't it, this genealogy bug that bites with an addictive sting?

It starts so innocently with a mild curiosity about one branch of your family tree (usually your paternal line) and, before you know it, you are hooked and swept up into a new community of friends and relatives you never knew existed. Whether you are going it on foot or seated for hours at your computer, there is something about this hobby that is pure madness.

Before you know it, you are researching about 50 surnames at once and it becomes more and more difficult to keep your ancestors straight ... much less the contacts you've made. It's time to employ some method to keep your madness from getting out of hand.

All your new relatives send you a family file which usually merges with your own and you often refer to the material when you answer queries about your own ancestors. These files can range from 10 to over 100 pages (the latest one I received on Beardens was more than 300 pages). But if you keep collateral lines as I do, these files and piles of paper can overwhelm you after a while. You need them (all of them) at your fingertips. So how do you accomplish this?

I think I've found a solution, at least one that suits my needs. I've been through the spiral notebook, large three-ring-binder and manila-folder stages, and now I've started keeping families in small, one-inch, three-ring binders that are inexpensive and easy to manipulate. They don't take up much room and I can keep them right beside my computer within easy reach for answering queries quickly.

You can buy them for only 99 cents at an office supply store (Office Max loves to see me coming). I write the surname of the family on the spine with a marker and put the binders in a file-holder, bookshelf-style, right beside my computer. In the binder I put my own current family file and any others that have been sent to me. Some of their information has, of course, been added to my genealogy program, but sometimes I need to refer to other branches of their tree. The notebooks are a perfect solution.

To keep the "people" contacts straight, I also keep a spiral notebook beside my computer with names, addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and the surnames they're connected to. It was getting so bad I almost sent a letter to the wrong person once. The first names were the same but the surname was different. Luckily, I caught the error before I sent the letter.

Another time-saver I've found is to make a list of the things you're looking for before you take off for the library or research facility. The last time I went to Grantville, I wrote down all the surnames I wanted to copy marriages for (out of the Carroll County marriages book), and it took me less than an hour to get the job done. After I got home, I punched holes in the pages and added them to my growing "marriages" notebook. Using subject dividers, I've divided the book by states and counties and have started a respectable reference source of my own.

Notebooks are also perfect for keeping census pages you have copied, historical material pertaining to a specific area, maps, cemetery records, snippets from newspapers, and family files you've downloaded off the Internet. To keep from having to punch holes in copies of originals, such as microfilm copies of census pages, wills, marriages, etc., I slip them inside clear plastic page protectors, then put them into a notebook.

Organization benefits not only yourself, but others too. When you begin to amass a respectable amount of research material, you can help others (this really makes you feel good).

Just last week, I received an e-mail from "Teresa" in Texas who was looking for her Hand ancestors in Cleburne County, Ala. I had left a message on Genforum many months before when I was looking for my connection to this family.

Now, I'm only remotely connected to the Hands, but because of my keeping collateral material, I had quite a bit of information on this family. My grandfather's sister, Cecil Mary Fowler, married Joseph Mercer Hand in Cleburne County and I had information on Joseph's family as well as the Fowlers. Teresa's great-grandfather, John William Hand, married Eula Mae Kight/Kite in Cleburne County and she had nothing behind him.

Using my handy-dandy notebooks (1900 Cleburne County census, 1880 Carroll County census) and two research books I had purchased (The People of LaGrange and Troup County and The Heritage of Cleburne County), I was able to give her information on two generations behind John William Hand, including his brothers and sisters and some of their spouses ... even a collateral family of Smiths who turned up in the censuses as neighbors! In fact, it turned out that her John William Hand and my Joseph Mercer Hand were brothers, both sons of Edward Solomon Hand and Eliza Babb. I also found information on Eula Mae Kight's family and forwarded that to her too.

The excited "Thanks" with a bezillion exclamation points after it in her reply was enough to put me on a high for two days. And it was well worth the time (about four hours) it took to put it all together. But I never could have done it without my new notebook filing system.

These are only a few of the things I've done to help make my research a little more manageable. I'm sure you have methods of your own and I hope you'll share them with me.

Looking for your Georgia ancestors? Got a genealogy tip? Got a local family history to share? Write to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!

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