What Am I Up to When I’m Not Posting About My Family History?

Sometimes I go weeks or even months without putting a new post up on this blog. Sometimes that’s because I’m just very busy at work and/or with my other responsibilities and don’t have the time or mental energy to write and illustrate a new entry. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing genealogy! So what are some of the things I might be up to? Here’s a list, along with some hopefully helpful suggestions if you want to do the same or learn more: 

 

• Organizing My Genealogy Database – While I’ve been using some version of RootsMagic to store my family tree for years now, I haven’t always used the system in the same way, and I transitioned my family file through several other systems before getting to RootsMagic. That means that my entries aren’t always as clean and well organized as I want them to be. For example, RootsMagic allows you to enter a Note about a person, place, or life event, but also allows you to enter a Source Citation for the same things. Sometimes, when I’m moving fast or don’t feel like figuring out or building the appropriate Source template, I just drop my source info into the Notes section. But that means that if I want to share a Family Group Sheet from my files with a family member, the sources that back up my assertions are jumbled and all over the place. And I like things in their place. So, sometimes, I just spend some time watching tv, listening to music, or putting on an ambience video on YouTube and sort out my sources for a person or family. It’s soothing. 
• Helpful Hint: RootsMagic has a bunch of templates for Sources to get you going. But when I have questions, I’ve found that Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, by Elizabeth Shown Mills, is very helpful. I stumbled upon mine – the Third Edition - at a library book sale and got it for cheap, but you can find it via a variety of sellers online and can find lots of useful examples for free at her website, here: https://evidenceexplained.com/. 

  

• Cleaning Up My Files – I’ve been collecting documents, images, and other information about my family history for over two decades at this point. But I haven't always been strategic about how I named or sorted my files. Sometimes, I spend my downtime renaming files, sorting pictures, or adding data like source information to file Properties to make things easier to find or use in the future. This is great for when I want to make progress, but just don’t have the brainpower for telling a story. 

• Helpful Hint: You can find blog posts, videos, podcasts, and more where genealogists describe how the organize their files, or attend meetings where this is the topic of instruction. A Google search with the terms “genealogy,” “files,” and “organization” will get you going. 
  

 

• Attending A Genealogy Conference, In Person or Online – You may know that the largest genealogy conference in the world took place last week in Utah: Roots Tech, hosted by FamilySearch.org. I didn’t go to Salt Lake City, but I did take 2 days off of work to watch the conference sessions online and visit the virtual Expo Hall. Opportunities like this allow me to more fully focus on becoming a better genealogist and sometimes when my brain doesn’t want to write, it absolutely wants to listen and learn. 

• Helpful Hint: RootsTech’s online sessions are still accessible online and it’s FREE to register to view them. Click here: https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/. There are other conferences as well, hosted by both local and national organizations, like the National Genealogical Society, and some, like the National Archives and Records Administration, have put their past sessions online. Here’s the link to NARA’s past Genealogy Fair recordings: https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series.

 

• Reading or Re-reading Genealogy and History Books, Articles, and Other People’s Blog Posts – I buy a lot of books about the historical context of my ancestors’ lives, and I also love getting my hands on how-to, problem-solving, and resource guides, plus general genealogy magazines, articles, and the like. Sometimes when I don’t feel like writing or trying to find the right images to illustrate a post, I’m quite happy to read or re-read something from my genealogy bookshelves or my Favorites folder in my internet browser. 

• Helpful Hint: It’s not all about reading - there are also a ton of podcasts and vlogs out there! Everything from the Family Tree Magazine podcast, Maureen Taylor’s The Photo Detective podcast, and Shamele Jordon’s Genealogy Quick Start vlog, to Bernice Bennett’s Research at the National Archives and Beyond podcast, Speak On It! History and Genealogy Conversations with Janice Gilyard and Cherekana Feliciano, and Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems - they're all useful. A Google or YouTube search containing your interests and “vlog,” “videos,” or “podcast” will get you far.

 

• Working on Other Genealogical Projects – In addition to working on my own family history research, I am also the Programming Chair and Volunteer Coordinator for Philadelphia’s African American Genealogy Group. This means that each month, I or my committee members need to arrange for a guest speaker or design an internal program for our members to learn, grow, and share. We are also excited to have been partnering for several years with Philadelphia’s historic Eden Cemetery, located just outside the city in Collingdale, PA, photographing grave markers and creating records of their interments on FindAGrave.com, and to be working with both Cliveden of the National Trust and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to begin to uncover family groupings within the communities of people enslaved by the Chew family in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. While the Eden project has been in hibernation for the past couple of years – we were at our most productive when we could gather together in the cemetery offices – there are lots of emails, meetings, and/or and document reading to get through for the other efforts. 

• Helpful Hint: If you want to learn more about the Cliveden/HSP Project, check out the Illuminating Hidden Lives page on Cliveden’s site, here: https://cliveden.org/illuminating-hidden-lives/. And consider registering for our April hybrid program, Reconstructing Black Families: Stories From the Chew Papers, here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reconstructing-black-families-stories-from-the-chew-papers-tickets-577663877207?aff=aagg 

 

• Prepping to Teach Others About Genealogical Research and Resources – I love doing my own research and learning how to be a better genealogist, but I also love teaching other folks about Black genealogical researching, and especially, proving that it can be done – we can find our people! I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to present on a variety of related topics, for my own genealogy group, as a part of partnership projects like those mentioned above, and for other organizations as well. Shoutout to Kinseekers and the Leesburg Public Library down in Florida, in particular! So if I’m not posting here, it might be because I’m preparing a presentation for someone else. 

• Helpful Hint: I’ve been making an effort to say “No” to more requests as of the past few years, to make more room in my life for my own research. If I’ve declined your invitation, it’s not personal – I just need more hours in my days, weeks, and months, to be centered on my own family history!

 

• Researching! – I might not be writing every weekend or evening, but you can find me doing at least a little research on my family tree every week. Maybe it’s analyzing hints and adding new records to my Ancestry.com tree (which I keep private as it is my “experimental” tree and I don’t want to lead others astray). Or perhaps I’m trying to figure out how a DNA match is related to me. I might be pulling info from a source I previously found but didn’t have time to dissect and add to my RootsMagic database. Or I might be searching, searching, searching for an elusive ancestor or document.

 

• Building a Research Plan – Y’all, sometimes research is really tedious. Page after page after page of names and dates, or text that doesn’t seem to relate to you to you at all, dry legalese, or contextual info you’re hoping will eventually click – it’s not always fun. But you know what I love to do? Build a good research plan! What do I want to find? What do I already know? What sources might get me the info I need, and where can I find those sources? Sign me up to work on that document!

• Helpful Hint: There are lots of useful discussions of how to build an effective research plan online. Google is your friend here! The best tip, and one you’ll find essentially everywhere, is Be specific about what you are trying to discover! It’s not enough to say “I want to know everything I can about Great-Grandma’s life” as you’ll just stumble upon things, miss out on resources, and likely miss opportunities to analyze and reconcile conflicting sources. Be specific: “I want to know when, where, and to whom Great-Grandma was born.” Then build your plan from there.

 

• Drafting, and Redrafting, Blog Posts In My Head and Thinking About the Missing Info and Resources I Need to Write It – Some blog posts are mostly written in my head well before I put them down “on paper.” But I might be missing a specific piece of the story, or a source, or permission to use a source online. And sometimes I just can’t find the right flow for the post. What am I actually trying to convey? Is this a listicle or a story? How much is too much information? Sometimes it just takes a while for what’s in my head to end up on the blog – I’m just working it out. 
• Helpful Hint: Sometimes I find that reading The Armchair Genealogist gives me useful inspiration: https://www.thearmchairgenealogist.com/. The genealogy prompts at GeneaBloggers can spark something useful: https://geneabloggers.com/genealogy-prompts/. And genealogy challenges like Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks are motivating!

 

• Communicating With Relatives and Research Associates – It might be a text here or there, picking up on an email chain one of us had let go dormant, or picking up the phone, but sometimes on those quite weeks I’m learning more from other members of the family who are in the research themselves or who are valuable conveyors of information past and present. (You know who you are, and THANK YOU!) And sometimes I’m reaching out to archivists, historians, librarians, and others who are connected to the places and stories of my ancestors, asking for resources, recommendations, or permission to use an image on the blog. (You also know who you are, and THANK YOU!)

 

• Watching Genealogy Shows – If I'm at home on a Tuesday evening at 8, and it’s not a genealogy meeting night, do you know what I’m doing? Watching Henry Louis Gates’ Finding Your Roots on PBS. I find it so motivating!! I love watching other people discover their family history and seeing the ways in which tv shows explore the context that created the documents their researchers used to build the story. It makes me want to find and tell my stories, even when I’ve been feeling tapped out. 

• Helpful Hint: You can view Finding Your Roots on PBS.com. Recent episodes are free just after they’ve aired, and if you are a PBS member, you can watch old episodes via their Passport streaming service. BBC Two’s A House Through Time with David Olusoga is also great for combining family and social history. And depending on how you search, you can find full or partial episodes of both the US and UK versions of Who Do You Think You Are? on YouTube, as well as other shows. Here’s the official channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WhoDoYouThinkYouAre.

 

And there you go – a list of some of the things I’m up to when I’m not actively posting about my family history here on Kinterested. My genealogy work might not be obvious when it’s quiet over here, but more likely than not, I am still very actively engaged in the work. Or, I’m at my day job, spending quality time with family and friends, or asleep! But stay tuned, more is coming!