As well as selling tents and engaging in acts of violence against my friends (otherwise known as LARP), I do the odd bit of family history research. When I said ‘odd bit’ I mean, as you probably guessed, quite a lot. The problem however isn’t the cost (how much per certificate these days? talk about daylight robbery!) or even the time it takes to sift through thousands and thousands of records, it’s in knowing where you are with each person. In other words, how to organise yourself properly so you don’t waste more time than you have to every time you pick it up again. I am not a slow and steady researcher, I’m a bursts of enthusiasm followed by a few months break kind of researcher so knowing where I’d gotten to is quite important as, with age, my memory is not what it used to be. I have read quite a few articles and even some books on genealogy all with their own methods and means of recording and organising your family data but none of them sat comfortably with my IT-like brain and it took me a while to realise why; from a completely logical point of view i.e a computer view, none of them are right. Well, at least not for me.

So I came up with my own.

It’s not designed to to be the solution to everyone’s genealogy problems and, indeed, it doesn’t even record all the information that a real ‘expert’ would demand but it does have the benefit of making it very easy for me to keep track of what I’ve done and where I am. And it’s simple. Really simple. Like me.

So, some background. I predominantly use 3 tools in my research; Ancestry.co.uk, FreeBMD and Reuinion on my trusty Macbook (can’t believe they’ve ditched the Macbook and claim an Air is just as good – sometimes Apple are total muppets! Got to prostitute myself to afford a Pro now..) I used to use GenesReunited but let that subscription slip for now.

So:

Step 1. No printed information should exist in more than 1 place. This means that ANY information that refers to more than one person must be indexed and held separately: census forms, marriage certificates – No duplication is allowed.

Step 2 – Every item of shared information must be given a unique identification code.

Step 3 – Record these against the relevant people (otherwise what’s the point)

Step 4 – All personal information should be filed in alphabetical/year of birth order

Step 5 – Keep a simple index of what information has been found for which person.

Steps 1-4 are pretty normal and, I expect, even step 5 is carried out by most people in one way or another. In which case, congratulations, you are ahead of me and I bow down and worship at your feet (your toenails need clipping btw and that lime green varnish does your feet no favours at all; go for cherry red next time)

I started by creating a new folder for Census Forms and adding dividers for each year from 1841 to 1911 (as I don’t have any forms for earlier years yet). This folder is called CF (for Census Forms – I’m not a believer in having to work at anything too hard). There will be one for Marriage certificates soon (called MC no doubt) but as I’m not buying many at the moment it can wait. Every entry in the folder will have the same index format – CF/xx/yyyy where xx is the year in two digits (yes I know I’ll be in trouble in 1941 but that’s a long way away) and yyyy is the form number including the zeroes (0001,0002 etc). I generally scrawl this on the bottom right of each form (CF/01/0023 for example). Next I took the information off each form and entered it into my software creating a new source for each form and assigning it to the entry under the relevant person – See the pic for further details. I can now look at the entry in Reunion and instantly see that I have found Charles Dunk in the census and printed off the form and done the filing. Everyone else on the form is assigned the same source for that entry on their record.

Once this had been completed for every form I had (and there were several hundred so it took a while) I suddenly had alot less paper to deal with.

Next I created people folders: one for each of my main names (Royal & Dunk) and one for everyone else A-Z and filed everyone in chronological birth order. Some of my entries consist of a divider with the name and year of birth and just one person sheet so it gets a bit heavy on dividers but I’ve found it’s worth it just for the ease of quickly finding someone when you do want to file or find paperwork.

Once everything was organised I discovered that, while I felt better and it was alot neater and even took up less space, I was still unable to recall what I had discovered. I played around with flags and fields and searches in Reunion (being an IT child I wanted an IT solution) and managed to create even more work for myself so instead went back to the drawing board – in this case literally – and came up with an indexing system that is simple, quick and, most importantly, based on a piece of paper so is software independent.

To the right is the top section of the index for the Dunk family (as well as an example of how bad my writing is!).

The index consists of a simple chart with all the information I consider relevant marked along the top – as I have family who emigrated and who were in the armed forces in both wars and after I have columns for these. This is version 2 of the index and I will probably produce version 3 shortly with an additional column on the end for the married family name as I’ve taken to writing that on anyway.

It works very simply. You pick a person to start with; in this case John Dunk b 1829 (as far back as this branch goes so far). Underneath is his wife with her surname in brackets to indicate it is her maiden name and under her is all the children – usually in birth order but there’s no guarantee you have them all to start with. You then start filling out the index:

X – no record to be found i.e. born after that census date or not in armed forces or emigrated or died before the next census etc.

Highlighted – record found (and hopefully recorded/indexed/filed)

Horizontal arrow – This indicates that a daughter has gotten married and her record continues on another page. This must be accompanied by a page reference at the end and her new surname. In the example you can see that Annie Jane Dunk got married after the 1881 census to someone called Cock and her record continues on Dunk page 6 (I currently have Dunk pages and Royal pages but you could just have one massive index if you prefer)

Vertical arrow (usually down the left side) – This indicates that a son has gotten married and the family name continues further down the page. Here you can see that Charles Dunk married Mabel (Bingham). Under her are listed their children. The vertical line from Lilian May is a mistake but I couldn’t be bothered to rewrite the entire page and still haven’t found my tipex to correct it!

At a glance I can see what information has been found or not e.g. James Dunk b 1854 has no census entry for 1871 or 1911 and I still have to find his marriage (unlikely as he was still single in 1901 age 47) or his death. If I now look at his record in Reunion I can see, in the notes section, that I have looked for him in the 1911 census and found no entry nor have I found a death record for him between 1901 & 1911. It takes me only a few minutes to ascertain exactly where I had gotten to with my Dunk research and to pick it up again.

If the family looks like it is going off the bottom of the page then you can simply put a contd and a page reference number – it doesn’t have to be sequential either. This is Dunk page 1 and Dunk page 2 is for Arnold (married name of Emma Dunk b 1861). Further down the page – where you can’t see it – is the entry for my mother which has a page reference of Royal 2.4 indicating that she continues elsewhere in the family.

I have found these indexes to be incredibly useful in keeping track of where I am and what I have/have not found out so far about the family. By starting a new sheet for each different married name you can also avoid getting confused over who is who and which line is which. Finally, as they’re on paper they are easily corrected (you can see where I have corrected birth years above) which avoids having to constantly reprint information so you’re saving the lives of twigs everywhere.

Attached to this blog entry is hopefully the blank index sheet in both pdf and ods format so you can use/modify to your hearts content without fear of recrimination or sulking unless of course you try and pass it off as your own in which case I reserve the right to be horrible and mean to you. But it won’t come to that cos, so far, I’ve only ever met nice people doing family history research.

Enjoy and I hope you find it useful. Any comments or suggestions gratefully received.

Mark

Family Index Sheet   Family Check list