Let's do a happy dance. You just found a piece of evidence or a document or a source that talks
about your ancestor. Now before you do anything else, I want you to do these three things.
Much like when you were a child, you may have heard about stop, drop, and roll. In genealogy,
I want you to get in the habit of Stop, Save, and Write. Whenever you find a genealogy source such
as a city directory, a census record, land record, tax records, probate records, all of these have
I've talked about here on this channel. If you haven't found those videos, be sure to check the
playlist in the description box. But anytime you find one of those documents or something like it,
I want you to practice Stop, Save, and Write. It is super fun to find a record for our ancestors.
And then we want to go find the next record and the next record and the next record. But we need
to stop. We're going to look at that record. And we're going to look at it again. I want
you to answer the question, did you really find a record about your ancestor, or is it somebody else
with the same name? Make sure that you're finding records that definitely talk about your ancestor.
Now I didn't say the record had to be 100 accurate it just needs to talk about your ancestor.
And if you need some more help discovering how to evaluate your ancestors, make sure you check
out this video. There will be a pop-up screen here in a moment, and it will also be linked in
the description box. Once you are confident that the record indeed does talk about your ancestor,
then the next thing to do is to transcribe that document. Amy Johnson Crow, one of my colleagues,
says that transcribing forces you to slow down and read the whole thing. And you will find
so many more details. And I have to agree there is a video and a blog post that are going to tell
you how to transcribe a document using the program notepad on my computer. And I'm sure
you can find something similar if you don't have that app on your computer. So make sure you go,
and you transcribe the document find out pull out every detail that is on that document
because you might find some things that you've overlooked. Now that's the stop, evaluate,
and transcribe. The next step is to save. How many of us have lost crucial wonderful
information because we forgot to save it? We're not going to do that anymore. We're going to save
the information to whatever tree that we're using. We're going to save it to whatever
genealogy software we may or may not be using. It's not critical to use genealogy software.
But go ahead and save it into a program and then also add it to your research reports. By doing so,
chances are you're not going to lose that record again. As part of saving that document to a tree
a program or to your research plan, you're also going to make sure you have a citation. So if
you have to go back to that record, you know exactly where to look. Make sure you check out
this video about source citations. Especially if you're not a big fan of source citation,
this video tells you how to make it a little easier. So we've stopped, and we've evaluated,
and transcribed. We've saved both the document in the citation. The third step is to write.
Many of you know how important writing is for me. I've written several books about my
ancestors over here. Both scrapbooks and then actually text-based books.
But you've got to write. And you're thinking, 'I don't like to write!'
Well, the first thing you can do is just write a conclusion that tells others and yourself why
you made a decision about that record or about that family relationship. And I have
a blog post and a video all about that. The other thing you can do is leave reason statements. Now,
this is particularly useful over on FamilySearch. And all of those boxes that say reason to change,
reason you merge, to reason you deleted. So you can also just write a reason statement.
And then finally you can also write a family history. And if you use that transcription in
step one. It makes it a whole lot easier to write a family story because record by record sentence
by sentence. You can write a family history. And if you're uncertain how to get started writing
your family history, then please check out our website familyhistoryfanatics.com. And go to blog,
and then writing family histories. And you will find a lot of articles about how to write your
family histories from someone who's done it. And from someone who believes anybody can write a
family story if they just know how to start. And I hope you do that. So what do you need to do
anytime you find a record about your ancestors? You need to Stop, Save, and Write. For more
tips and tricks on how to do genealogy research, make sure you check the playlist at the top. And
if you're ready for the latest video from Family History Fanatics, check out this video right here.