The monumental task of reviewing, downsizing family binders and slowly going digital can take so much non-creative time.
I started to write family stories in detail about a year ago.
The task of scanning and adding photos, scanning and adding documents, citing my sources takes much longer than anticipated.
Research is fun for me. But having those ah ha moments and connecting some dots then the information needs to be filed in the appropriate file was becoming double work.
So with the new information, I go to the filed stories and add as I go. If I scan one photo I add it to the various stories where it belongs. For example, my inlaws and my husband can have the same photo.
So back tracking. I mentioned several posts ago that I wanted to give my grandchildren the information that they would want.
Starting with me and my husband.Their great-grandparents.- our parents. Then their great-great-grandparents who are my grandparents.
Those stories actually take them back several generations.
What occurred in writing these stories was the gaps? I knew information but no documentation for it.
So going back to the new census. Accessing the directories. I tried to answer the questions the grandchildren make like. So to the Internet and finding pictures of homes from Google Streetview of houses where I lived and of course where my parents lived. Adding those pictures to the stories.
For example, the Might's Toronto Directory from 1900 to 1966 gave so much valuable information on where the families lived. Tedious but enlightening.
I discovered on two couples how they must have met. They lived beside each other, same neighbourhood. So the address, the job and who was living there. Little tidbits.
So added the tidbit to that family member story. Discovering it could be added to another story.
The whole keeping organized becomes a task. So a one time deal of inputting where it belonged with the thought process of the moment. I still keep those notes.
We are told to cite sources. But also our thoughts of what was found and not found.
For example, one family lived in Toronto. But I could not find them on the 1921 Canadian Census. Even with trying wrong spellings. The Directory to the rescue. There they were in 1920, 1921 and 1922. Why they are not in the 1921 Census in Toronto needs to be resolved?
I still look at the paperwork piles and am slowing discarding the duplicates, uploading to Evernote the original document, deciding what I want to keep as hard copies. Keeping a draft family tree at my side as it is so easy to forget people. I have one each drafted for my daughters as I get little tidbits from their inlaws and I can add as I find out information for them.
Short articles not about living people have been posted to my blog and several Facebook sites. I need to revise some to submit to the various genealogical branches for those newsletters. They do not want all the photos and raw documentation I have been putting in the family stories.
Yes I have donated irrelevant cemetery records, sources, pamphlets and some genealogical books to my local family history library. That task is ongoing and appreciated by the Librarian. Anytime I think I should keep everything I have a future vision of my girls chucking the stuff into a dumpster and so quickly make good use of the information. Add to the story. Upload. Get it on a Facebook group.
I try to share as much as possible with those groups. Again photos, documents, any tidbits of information.
So some family stories are now 30-40 pages. Photos sometimes will take a whole page so I am trying to find ways to write in the blank spaces that the photo page gives me.
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