Getting Organized (Part 1)

About two weeks ago, I revisited a project to get my 20+ years of research digitized and organized. Last night, DearMyrtle posted aboutthe same concept, outlining her process, which is a bit different than mine.

Simon Sinek’s TED talk, “Start with Why,” is meant to address leadership topics, but I think it can apply to other areas of life. As much as I hate filing and keeping logs, I definitely need to apply his principles to this project.  My motivation for doing this is that I want to apply to for several state pioneer certificates. Having my research results in writing and documented in my Legacy file will make it easier when I start those applications. 

Actually, listening to that talk again, I guess the above is more of the end result of my process. My motivation is to allow other researchers and cousins to have confidence in my  research. (How can I hope to transition to being a trusted professional if my own family files are a mess?)

My process includes one step that DearMyrt’s does not: writing proof statements for each BMD event and relationships to parents for each of my direct line ancestors. This is something I didn’t know was a thing until a few years ago, so I have a lot of catching up to do!

This is my own process:

1. Gather documents
2. Process documents (Scan, create citation, transcribe, document events in Legacy)
3. Create proof statements in Evernote and copy to Legacy
4. Create research plans for questions that come up during steps 1-3

I like DearMyrt’s suggestion of working with couples. It makes a lot more sense than doing individuals, so that is one change I am making to my methodology.

My mom researches her side of the family. Even though we’ve spent countless hours discussing her research over the years, I’m not ready to tackle documenting someone else’s research! So my focus is on my dad’s side of the family, starting on his mother’s side, so I can get my Florida pioneer certificate application in before the end of the year.

So far, I’ve completed my parents and grandparents (this was as far as I got when I started this project several years ago, but I’ve spent some time reviewing and making sure the documents were transcribed). This week my focus is on Russell and Maude (Sikes) Price, my great-grandparents.