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Getting Organized - Part 1 - Knowing What You Know

© Mark W. Swarthout

You've been thinking about it for years. Sometime in the past, you recognized a desire, or perhaps a need, to delve into your family's roots. There is a drawer in your desk that contains a folder full of paper scraps, paper plates, pictures and newspaper clippings. Someplace is the shoebox you inherited from your mother with some stuff in it and you think the family Bible is still on the shelf in the back bedroom.

So where do you begin? Organization! Find out what you have and catalogue it. Sounds simple, but it certainly isn't! The first step in charting a family tree is to start with what you know and how you know it.

Documentation is important. A family tree created fifty years ago is likely to include things that one created last week won't. There are lots of ways to organize a family tree and over the next several articles, we're going to look at lots of ways of doing it. And while you certainly have access to the internet since you are reading this, you may be using a machine at the local library or school. So we will start with the straight forward method of doing things, keeping it on paper.

Worksheets

We have all seen the family tree diagrams that have been put together by others. You probably did one in Third Grade, it was even shaped like a tree! Somewhere in your papers there probably is one done by some ancestor that covers a few generations. And while they are a quick visual map, they don't have the space to adequately reflect and document the full range of information you have acquired, or hope to acquire.

Family group sheets are a good way to start. You will find examples of these in just about every genealogical reference and are designed to capture all the appropriate information on a family unit. Individual sheets are useful for documenting a single individual, containing more detail than a family group sheet. There is lots of space for recording sources and other bits of information such as schools, military service, and other associated knowledge. You can find examples to print out at Ancestry Family Group Sheet and Heritage Quest Family Group Sheet Or look at these and make your own!

What do you already know?

Okay, now that you have a method for recording things in a logical and consistent format, what do you fill in? The simple answer is everything. Try to look at this from the viewpoint of a descendant fifty years from now. As you move through the materials you have, you will find yourself saying, "If only she had written down the city, or the name or the XXXX." Make sure that you DO write down those things.