After 30 years of doing genealogy research, I have
learned that there are five things that every genealogist
should be doing. My question for you today is are you doing
these five things or which areas do you need to improve
in? Category 1 is preserving the perishable. Unfortunately,
many genealogists wait until it's too late to begin
preserving the documents, the photos, and the forget the
possessions in their homes that have and contain genealogy
information and those deeper family stories. For instance, I
started doing genealogy as a teenager and I did capture some
stories from some family members but I didn't realize
how important it was to take pictures of my home that I
lived in. And I remember my mom had all of these salt and
pepper shakers and she also had the family china- that we could never
eat off of! But we never took pictures of any of those things.
And my mom passed away in 2012 and I can't get those memories
back. The other thing that we failed to do is my mom kept our
family history in boxes in the garage. And as many of you know,
keeping your family history in the garage is probably the
worst possible thing that you could do. She had researched
the Geiszler Family Bible. And she had a lot of documentation
and notes from some interviews she had had when she began
doing genealogy in the 1970s and talked with ancestors that
were no longer alive in 2012. Unfortunately, those records
didn't survive out there in the [garage]. So, I'm going to invite
you to make sure that you're putting in an action plan to
preserve the perishable. So, with your papers, you need to be
scanning them and sharing those digital images online and with
your extended family members. And as some of you know, I love
scrapbooks. So, putting those into a family scrapbook or a
family history book so that these stories and the facts
stay together. But also take pictures of the artifacts
around your home. There are so many stories about our
ancestors just in the things that they wore, they used, and
they owned. So, make sure that you're preserving the
perishable. So, in the comments, let me know. Are you
doing number one? Type in number one and then good, bad,
or could be better. Number two, leverage the living. As I
alluded to before, I did get some family stories while some
of my ancestors were living. Unfortunately, I failed to ask
all the questions that I needed. To this day I don't
know who my father's buddies were, who went to Vietnam with
him to enlist- to serve in the war. He and three of the
buddies, three other buddies they were rejected. Those were
the ones that really wanted to go. Unfortunately the one guy
in that band of brothers who didn't really want to go to
war. Yeah he got called up. But the also lots of stories that I
wish I could have asked my grandma Helen. She had a
ship. A picture of a ship in her living room. My brother
remembers the ship and remembers Grandma Helen talking
about it. I was always outside playing croquet or playing with
the birds at the bird feeder. Okay, I really wasn't playing.
I was chasing them but I was really little. In any case,
what was that ship? Who road on the ship? What was the name of
the ship? And could you tell us anything about the Geisler
German immigrant ancestor Joseph Geisler and Caroline
Mock- the one who outlived her husband? Yeah, it would be great
if we will take time to leverage the living. Make sure
you're asking them not only fact-based questions but
story-based questions as well. And if you need to learn how to
do that I have a blog post or on our website that
can tell you how to do good story-based and facts-based
interviewing. Now, while we're talking about living relatives,
let's also try to capture their spit! Or their cheek swab. But
let's make sure that we are testing the oldest living
relatives. And you want to test them bare minimum at AncestryDNA.
And then if you can swing it also at 23andme. You can
transfer that DNA from them to MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA,
GEDmatch, and Living DNA for a nominal fee on some of those
platforms. But test all of your living relatives, the oldest
ones the better. Because this helps you create a cluster of
known relatives, on multiple sides of your family tree. And
even if your parents aren't alive, like mine are, having the
DNA of my dad's first cousins, the last two living, his
distant second cousin, and also having some of his third
cousins take the DNA test. I can separate many of my DNA
matches into my paternal line at my maternal line. So test as
many of the oldest living relatives as possible. So
that's step one, two, and three. In the chat, let me know
how are you doing on number two and number three? We're about
to go to number four. And number four is to build a sourced
tree. Experienced genealogists will tell you how important it
is to cite your sources. Just like you would cite a book or
reference material in an English paper or a science
research project. You need to build a family tree that is
based on records. This is when we're going to combine step
one, preserve the perishable with step four, build your
family tree based on those perishable sources that you
preserved. You want to build your family tree starting with
yourself. Document yourself. Don't leave it to the next
generation to document yourself because you want to make sure
the story is told correctly. Then, work on documenting your
parents. And I know some of you don't know who your biological
parents are. But you do know who your step-parents are? or your
adopted parents? or your foster parents? Document them. Get
into records. Document your family tree. And never accept something
into your family tree that doesn't have a source to back
it up. Now step 5! This is the one most genealogist fail to do.
They don't take time to share their research. Now part of
sharing your family tree is making sure that your research
is public- either on a free one world tree platform or on a
public tree on a subscription based platform. Whichever
program you use, make sure you're sharing your research.
Don't die having hoarded all of that information. The other
thing is develop projects that share your family tree. Not
everybody wants to look at a chart on a website. A lot of
people love to see videos or listen to audio clips or even
read a novel-sized book or look at a scrapbook. So, as part of
sharing your research, make sure you check out our show
notes that talk about sharing your family tree in multiple
different formats so that your legacy can outlast you. So,
four and five, how are you doing with those? Let me know
in the comments below. And if you have questions on any of
those five steps, be sure to let me know those as well. If
you like this video, be sure to share it with others and ask
them, how are they doing on the five tasks that every
genealogist should be doing? Check out our website,
FamilyHistoryFanatics.com with support blogs to help you
master these five tasks. The five the five task challenge.