File in style
Anthony Adolph’s February article on common mistakes was very useful. I’m glad to see I am in good company in lacking enthusiasm for online ‘build your own family tree’ facilities. But it occurs to me that I can recall very few articles in the magazine on manual record-keeping, so I thought it might be useful to describe how I am developing my own practice.
I have three types of record, which interact. First is a traditional family tree, on paper, with names and basic birth, marriage and death dates on it. It currently consists of 10 sheets of A4 taped together landscape-wise for my paternal line and five A3 sheets for my maternal line. If I get any further back than my 5x grandparents, I shall have to tape another sheet on top. This is admittedly unwieldy, so I have smaller subset versions.
Secondly, I have datasheets for each ancestor I am researching. These sheets have four columns – life event etc (eg birth, baptism, siblings, marriage, children, address, employment); date, place and details of that event; the source for that information; and comments (such as where else I might look for missing information, and fruitless searches already undertaken).
Thirdly, there are brief biographies for these ancestors, which bring the events recorded to life, raising interesting questions (“Where did Granny and Grandad meet?”, “Why did Great Aunt Florence leave Suffolk?” and so on). These questions often require some investigations into the social history of the times – and assiduous use of Google Maps, street directories etc.
My most interesting example, so far, is locating my paternal grandfather (who came from humble origins, was a pupil-teacher, went to one of the earliest teacher-training colleges, and became an elementary-school teacher), within the 19th-century revolution in teaching. This gave him a career, pulled him out of poverty, and no doubt propelled his son, his grandson (me) and great granddaughter into teaching of one sort or another.
The process is time-consuming, and there is too little information on most individuals. But the results seem at least as important as simply ‘stampcollecting’ ancestors.
I should be glad to hear of ways to improve such recording. Robin M White, Dundee Editor replies: It’s good to hear that manual record-keeping is alive and well among family historians, Robin. Thank you for those great tips on keeping track of your findings. On page 26 of this issue, there’s a feature on springcleaning your family tree, which includes ideas for both manual and digital record-keeping.