I've been going back and forth about whether or not to write a post about the most recent work I've been doing on my family tree. I've hesitated because unlike my other posts, this really isn't about people, but about process. Ultimately, I decided to write about it as it's a learning experience for genealogy and aspiring family historians. I hope by sharing my experience here, I can help others avoid some of the mistakes I made early in my research.
After having spent much of 2017 wading through the Mullane branch of the tree trying to sort out Martin Mullane and his connection to my great grandfather T.J. Mullane, I happened to stumble upon an article from the US National Archives about the best practices for file naming digital files. I found the article very useful and decided to follow some of their guidelines. This required doing a global update to all of the digital files I had on my computer that were associated with my family tree. That part was relatively easy and once I figured out how to do it, I ran the process in about five minutes. Simple, right?
Well, not so fast. By making such a quick and global change, I managed to disconnect all of my media files from Family Tree Maker (FTM) which is the program I use to keep track of my tree. Oops. So clearly I needed to fix that right away. Again, it was a fairly straightforward process. Family Tree Maker has a "find missing media" option that I was able to run to reconnect everything. This worked fairly well, but there were still some files missing largely due to previous renaming I had done over the years. That's when the challenge started. In an earlier version of FTM, which synchs with Ancestry.com, files were automatically given a numerical file name. Great for database linking, not so great for finding a specific file outside of FTM. I had renamed those files outside of FTM and now had no idea what file 12020112482292.jpg was now called.
This started a methodical process that has had me doing a complete review of my files and making sure they are all linked to a specific source and/or person and/or place. First it was finding the missing files in FTM. Next it was discovering that the Windows folder that contained the media files for FTM had about 150 more files than were associated with FTM. That didn't include the 100 or so files I have stored in a folder titled "Pending Media" which are things I've found from sources outside of Ancestry.com (e.g. newspaper clippings, records from other genealogical sites.) Oh. This is going to be a bigger project than I anticipated.
Since I was going to have to go through all my files fairly slowly, I decided to take the opportunity to make sure I had captured all the data from the files I possibly could. One of the great features of FTM is that it is linked to Ancestry.com and can pull records from there and store them on your computer. The problem lies in what data is featured on the record from Ancestry.com. The record will almost always contain a name since that is what is used to locate the record, but it may miss a birth date or (more commonly) another relative on the record. It is very easy to amass records with out really knowing what is in the record, especially when you first start out with family history and genealogy. Your first response is often "Yeah! I found my great-great-grandmother! Merge now! Woo hoo! What's next?" and you don't look too closely at the record beyond the immediate information you need to identify your great-great-grandmother. Luckily, I slowed down on this massive record collecting after the first year or so and started paying closer attention to what was actually in the records, but even then I still missed things.
So, by having to go back through all my records, I began to double check everything and while I had gotten pretty good at capturing most of the information, I didn't always get everything. This was especially true as it relates to my Dwyer/Kenny side of the family. A lot of the information I have entered in my tree is based on information my mother's older brother has passed along over the years and idly clicking on the "hints" button that appears with those names in FTM. My main focus since 2012 has been on the Murray/Coleman side of the family because so little information was known, anything on the Dwyer/Kenny side was treated as "Oh, I should grab that and I'll get back to the details later." Sure, I'll pick up records here and there for the Muckles when I'm looking into the Mullanes and Murrays, but I tend to put them aside for later.
Well, now IS later. Since October, I've been working my way through my files and making sure everything is matched up properly and that I've gotten every useful piece of information from them. The only ones I've left unchecked so far are the records from city directories that I've collected. This is mostly due to this being the single largest collection of information I have and wanting to do about six things simultaneously with the information. With about 400 files the city directories (from several different sources) they are about a quarter of all my files. I've made sure they're all attached to at least one person, but will need to do my deepest dive into them another time. Or, more practically, go through them more slowly over time to gather everything I want to do with them, including mapping the locations out for my San Francisco relations.
As you can imagine, this process is slow and tedious and doesn't have the "wow" factor of a new discovery, but every once and a while I find some interesting nugget that will help me later on down the road. As of this writing, I still have about 60 more files to sort through and associate with a source and person in FTM (most being city directories of course) before I head over to the Pending Media folder to sort through those items. Some are "pending" because I'm not sure they are actually related to my family, but most are ones I gathered from sites outside of FTM/Ancestry that I've been meaning to add over the years and haven't gotten around to it yet.
While working on all of this, I decided now was the time to fix any other errors that might be in my tree. Call it a big spring cleaning. I've discovered some tools in FTM that I think will make things easier for me in the long run, but getting them set up properly will take some time. At the rate I've been going, it may take up a good chunk of 2018 to get everything cleaned up the way I want it to be. It's definitely not as fun as searching and finding new records, but it's valuable because once I'm finished I will have a better picture of what information I have and what I still need.
I won't stop searching altogether either -- I need to have SOME fun while working on this project. I've already done a few jaunts off here and there to sort out some people while cleaning up the records and I expect that will continue if only to break up the tedium of database maintenance. And now that I have a better method of organizing my files, those searches will help me gather more information all at once and help me avoid having to do a major clean up like this again.
So I wanted to share all of this because it really is important to make sure you slow down when gathering information for your family tree. By reviewing records more methodically you can gather all the information you want and need in one shot rather than having to go back and review it a year or two later when you stumble on some related information.
