Being Organized Can Prevent Headaches
Odds are your genealogy papers, charts, forms and notes are not in totally shipshape order.
I’d also lay odds that you wish they were, that you plan to get to working on the problem, and that you hope you aren’t hit by a train anytime soon before you get all that stuff in order for your kids and grandkids.
Perhaps you just haven’t been pricked (or punched) by the right motivation. Well, folks, help is on the way. Excuses begone!
Lynne Farmer, owner of the Skeleton Closet System of Record Keeping, is coming all the way from Louisville, Ky., to present a terrific and 100-percent thorough method of keeping all our genealogical data.
She offers a complete system of keeping track of the notes, copies, photos and charts that comprise our family genealogies.
A good record-keeping system should be just as important to every genealogist as the gathering of all those wonderful records. How disappointing to spend hours looking for a certain piece of information that you know you filed somewhere, but you just can’t find it.
The Skeleton Closet System of Record Keeping will help you properly store your records in such a way so you can find the information you’re looking for at a moment’s touch.
Basis of the system is the pedigree charts and family group sheets. All Skeleton Closet forms are printed (printed, not Xeroxed) on acid-free paper, and come three-hole punched. Numbered forms are offered, as well as un-numbered ones used to extend the lines. (Why would you want Person No. 16 on Chart No. 1 to become Person No. 1 on Chart No. 2? He should be Person No. 32, right?)
Group sheets come plain or with space for photos. These family forms are organized into surname files, with small binders used to keep together one family’s forms along with all that family’s documentation.
They are so easy to pick up and take to the library when you want to work on that particular family - everything you already know about that family is in that one binder.
The Skeleton Closet offers specialized forms to abstract information from census records, military records (service and pension), land records and several others.
The cemetery record form has space for a picture of the tombstone and suggests that you include a map of the cemetery on the reverse side of the form.
Other special forms include a Person Possession form - do you have Grandma’s doll? Or Grandpa’s tool? Or piece of jewelry or crystal? Why not take a photo of the item and attach it to a form describing what it is, who owned it and how you came to have it - all of this to hopefully forestall the kids chucking your mementos to the dump because they did not realize what they are.
Other helpful organizers developed by the Skeleton Closet include Surname Directory, Genie Organizer and Personal Library. These are small binders for 5-1/2-x-8-1/2 specialized sheets.
In the Surname Directory, you list a summary of all you know about a family on one page - and then you can easily take your whole genealogy to the library with you.
The Genie Organizer is a genealogist’s address book. With this binder you keep track of all your genealogy correspondents, plus library addresses, reunion addresses, and addresses for organizations, publications and newspapers columns.
The Personal Library directory helps you keep track of your reference books, the geographical and surname books on your shelves, the periodicals you subscribe to and a Wish Book list.
To show that Lynne Farmer has thought of everything, each binder comes with a bookplate inside the front cover for your name, address and phone - in case you leave it at the library.
You can request a complete catalog from the Skeleton Closet by sending $2.50 to P.O. Box 91392, Louisville, KY 40291-1606. Don’t be wasting any more time - start today to really get organized.
The Sept. 9 meeting of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society will present Farmer at 1 p.m. in the main-floor auditorium of the downtown Spokane Public Library. She will demonstrate and display her system. All interested genealogists are invited to attend.
Ann Hemmert of Ancestors Plus (formerly La Decor) at the Shadle Shopping Center carries Skeleton Closet materials along with a wide variety of other genealogy books and forms. Call her at 328-6558 to see if she has what you need. I’m betting she has.
Recently Hemmert came upon a new and exciting local genealogy-related resource - postcards. What would you give for an old postcard showing the church where your grandfather was baptized? Or the town where your mom grew up? Hemmert cheerfully paid $3 for a postcard of the old Chewelah high school she attended, but was torn down years ago.
Check with Mike and Kathy McLean of Vintage Post Cards and Stamps, 1908 N. Hamilton in Spokane, 487-5677, to see what they might have to augment your genealogy stories.
Today’s tips
Some helpful ideas from the readers:
Betty Driscoll Ratzman of Spokane wrote to heap praise on Al and Betty Shane of the Kootenai County (Idaho) Genealogical Society. The Shanes have spent more than 10 years compiling almost all available records of Kootenai County and gladly share that information. Their books may be used in the genealogy section of the Hayden Lake Public Library (on North Government Way), or write them at 2315 Hastings Ave., Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814, 208-667-7818.
Reader Marie Larson of Liberty Lake warns of a new genealogy scam. Her mail brought a postcard, postmarked Australia, announcing by “royal proclamation issued by Prince Kevin of Hutt” that a book on her family surname is available for only $5. We checked with an Australian research specialist at the Family History Library, who says it’s “bunk.”
Today’s laugh
A tombstone inscription reads, “On the twenty-second of June, Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review