May 2011 Small steps

Small steps

I have to get my Peapell in order. I mean the one name study. This means mainly documents, photographs, videos and notes. But I also have a few modern artefacts – my grandfathers school sewing when he was seven –that is from just in the nineteenth century – and a few other bits and pieces.  To do this I also have to get the rest of my family sorted out ….and Eileen’s family.

As I started documenting and indexing I realised that I need to

• Have a decent filing system
• Learn to read old documents – There are lots of photocopies of wills and other records back to the sixteenth century that my mother collected. On some I cannot even make out the name.
• Document “Sources” better – RootsMagic will allow me to do more than I have so far
• Scan images of documents etc and both reference and where possible link them
• Make sure I have captured places in a way I can map later
• Capture the relationship on RootsMagic between the various family branches as they are difficult to get to grips with on paper records.

In addition I need to make contact with many of the people that I have found on Mums files

While I was trying to understand a will from 1650-ish, I helpfully came across a transcription by my mother. Unfortunately I could not easily read her writing either! She would have laughed at that.

How long will it take to sort it out – A long time but one step at a time.  I am off to take a look at some of the RootsMagic Webinars to see if they help with sources and recording. Following that its any tutorials I can find on the internet

 

Apart from all this I have followed up “Fanny Richards” Cousin’s family from Devon and Newport. I have found another branch moving to Bath and then Bristol when Fanny’s Cousin was there.

 

Kevin Hurley

May 2011