Posts Tagged ‘Adobe Acrobat’

A Method to My Madness ~ Organizing My Genealogy

Posted: June 5, 2012 in Files, genealogy forms, organization
Tags: , , , , ,
0

So you have started searching your ancestral roots and you have accumulated documents, papers, genealogy forms, birth and death records from one or multiple surnames. How do you stay organized? How do you know what documents belong to which ancestor? Do you just throw everything into one file folder labeled “Family Tree Stuff”? Haha I did that! But I’m trying to change that right now! 


Some ideas that may help are:


In your filing cabinet, you have all these folders where some are labeled and some are not. Okay! So it’s time to sort through all that mess. Because the more involved you become in the subject of genealogy, the more paperwork and photos you are going to accumulate. Believe me, it’s not pretty! So first off, you are going to want to gather all your files together, separate each document by surname and put in a folder. This is where you want to start labeling each file folder- you can even color code each surname if it makes it any easier for you to distinguish one folder from the next. I love this idea! You don’t necessarily have to label the folder by surname; you can label by couple, maternal or fraternal grandparents and so on. I just think it’s much easier to label by surname to limit any confusion. As you probably already know, there are hundreds of names in one person’s family tree. In my own research, I have come across names in my Cornett ancestry that include but are not limited to Carrico, Sutherland, Delp, Canute, Canutt, Anderson, Livesay and so on. There are plenty of others, so this can get confusing if you don’t organize what you have already.


Organize your hard drive on your computer! Recently, I have scanned two separate sets of paperwork on my family’s tree- mind you, each set was approximately 30 pages! Create a hierarchy of folders that are easy to find on your hard drive. Adobe Acrobat is a Godsend as it creates one PDF file of multiple files. Saves you space! 



This is what my files look like, with everything labeled and in its’ respective folder. So easy to do! 


Do you have hand written notes in notebooks? I did! I think I had two notebooks at one time with names, dates and events all written down with no general sequence. They were just randomly written and sporadic and just a bunch of clutter! Well pull out your shredder and get rid of all that. Create a word document of all your notes so you aren’t throwing away any vital information and all that clutter. 


You could create an ancestral timeline that shows when your ancestors lived and for how long. 


Prepare and fill out the pedigree chart of all your known ancestors. 


I hope these ideas help you in some way. There’s nothing like a messy, unorganized work space! 




Links to Genealogy Forms- Free To Download


Free Forms To Organize Your Research


Free Genealogy Forms


Free!




Image Source: Stack Of Files



























My Experience With the Family History Quick Start Mini-Course (Series) Lessons 6-8*

Posted: June 25, 2011 in experience, Family History Quick Start, Famous Relatives Book, genealogy courses, mini-course, preserving documents
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0
Continuing on with the mini-course (Family History Quick Start), in lesson 6, I learned that some programs aren’t   the best for creating a family tree, such as Word Perfect. If you remember Word Perfect, you may recall that Microsoft Word couldn’t open Word Perfect files, and if you had a disc with a document created with the program you didn’t have, you were out of luck trying to read the document. How frustrating was that? The best program I think works for me the most is Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, because I can create multiple word documents and import them into Acrobat to make one PDF file. The PDF will preserve pictures, formatting and the text. You don’t have to buy software to open this type of document, and it is accepted by the community as a standard for preserving documents.


The Rich Text Format  is a good alternative to the PDF. It can be opened by almost all word processors and is compatible across platforms. This format will preserve pictures and text. You can easily go back and edit text in this format, whereas a PDF is generally used for final, finished editions. 

Image Source
Geo Monkey/ PDF







In lesson 7, the problem most people have are saving their files with descriptive names that are related to the content of the file itself. It is much easier to save the file with a descriptive name, maybe add a note inside the document that has the date that the research was done or the date that the picture or video was taken. When writing your own documents, be sure to include:

1. The date
2. Your Full Name (and full name of the person it’s about if different)
3. A title for your document
4. Add some information that could be cross referenced either in your documents content or description such as your birth date, spouse’s name, references to your children’s names, etc.
5. Number your pages and/or put a footer at the bottom of each page just in case a page gets lost.

Remember to cite your sources so you know where the information came from- very important when trying to back up your research efforts with the facts!



Lesson 8 involves finding ancestors in your family tree that may be famous. Not everyone will have a famous person in their ancestral lines, but it’s worth checking it out, in any case! As you research your family tree, the number of ancestors you have increases exponentially? That means by just going back a few generations, you’re descended from millions of ancestors. Which, in turn, would actually increase your odds of being related to someone famous. You do the math! Your parents each have their own sets of parents and grandparents, and those parents and grandparents have their own set, and so on down the line.  

Steps for finding famous relatives:
1. Research your family tree as much as possible
2. Connect your family tree into one of the large ancestor databases made available online
3. Do a famous ancestor search for a common ancestor to someone famous.
It may sound complicated, but it isn’t too hard if you have the right tools. 

Here is a book link from an email I received from the instructor of this course.