Essential filing keeps control of those ancestors

Published on Tuesday 4 July 2006 12:49

YOUR first steps – jotting down your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles – will soon alert you to one unavoidable fact of family history - you are going to have to cope with enormous quantities of data. Some of you will be used to such challenges from your workplace. Others will find it daunting.

That old Victorian adage – a place for everything and everything in its place – will help get you started.

This first rule of ancestor hunting cannot be emphasised enough. A filing system to keep control of people dates and places is an essential tool of the family historian.Print data sheet

Print off our handy sheet and you can begin to get your ancestors in order. (The file can be opened with Acrobat Reader.)Don't panic, like everything else, once you get into the swing of it, you will find it easy to control. To get you started, print out our individual data sheet and get ready to go.

Now start filling it in for yourself and your immediate family.

With a few sheets completed, or even started, you will realise that handling and storing the material is going to be as important as finding it.

Start as you mean to go on before you get too bogged down.

Two suggestions:

Go to Ancestry.com and download a family group sheet. Get yourself a sheaf of these and a stout ring binder. Make sure that everything you unearth gets put into this system.

Secondly, and better still, why not buy any one of the many fine genealogy software packages that are on offer. This will immediately get your personal computer up and running to receive everything you can throw at it.

Quick tip:

The basic format of the software will underline one vital discipline: you must always add to existing known individuals. Finding some ancient patriarch bearing your name and trying to work forwards is rarely possible.Let's prepare you for what you will find in most of these PC packages.

Generally the screen will offer you two main boxes, "husband" on the left, "wife" on the right. Each has the three key life facts, birth, marriage and death, with boxes for place and date. There will also be a couple of spare boxes to use as you wish. "Occupation" and "Education" are two good examples of how to use these.

Above each "couple" are smaller boxes showing the father and mother and below the pair are boxes showing children.

If you click on one of the pair of parents or any of the children, they will immediately take over as the main boxes. Quick tip:

The basic format of the software will underline one vital discipline: you must always add to existing known individuals. Finding some ancient patriarch bearing your name and trying to work forwards is rarely possible.You can make amendments only to the main boxes. By clicking on the relevant line you can add date of birth, christening etc.Behind these main boxes, hidden from view unless you ask to see them, are two or three "Notes" files. These can swallow up enormous quantities of information. Again you can title these as you wish.Quick tip:

Use one of those "Facts" lines on the husband/wife display to let you know that there are "Notes" files behind.Consider:

"Censuses" where you will file all of the Census data you have concerning that individual.

"Sources" where you can store text of letters, legal, newspaper transcripts etc.

"Miscellaneous" where you can put absolutely anything that you unearth and want to keep with that individual ancestor.