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Monday 20 July 2015

Genealogy Do Over

You might well wonder what that is all about; to be honest, so do I.  I am slowly and methodically entering my data into Family Tree Maker and also trying to sort my paper files which are a jumble of jotted notes, copies of emails and online trees that might be useful at some point, odd jottings down from various parish registers at the East Sussex Record Office, old postcards or relevant places and so much more.

I found a blog that was encouraging people to do a "Do Over" with different topics each week for 13 weeks.  Aha....that sounds like a good plan because somehow I get started on the same one file and never get to the others.  That file is my Weston line as my mother, who is in her 90's, is still alive and she remembers more about her father as they lived in the same village.  Perhaps the Do Over will help me divide my time between my four ancestor lines and come up with a suitable paperwork system.

 It is already onto week 3 and I haven't finished week 1.  I think I will be joining quite a number of people in being a permanent student of Do Over.  They are very useful topics but it can take a long time to do them.  I am hoping to get a few gems throughout the cycle and put them into practice but the rest I will discard and maybe do another time or even not do at all.  At the moment I am trying to sort my paperwork in a logical order and also making sure that the information for every person in my Family Tree Maker file is correct but I think that is too big a goal and so am fine tuning the FTM work to do it generation by generation over all four ancestor lines.

There is a very help Do Over group on Facebook and people are coming up with great ideas and I have learned many things, including how to make custom facts....now I can mark up each individual that I have checked the correctness for data.

Yes, I have started with my grandfather, Frank Horace Weston.  I remember quite a bit about him and have family resource material as well as my mother's memories so it seemed the logical place to start.  I don't have anywhere near as much for my grandmother, Rose Ellen Clark, but that is to be expected as she didn't work after marriage and never served in the First World War.  I have yet to look for newspaper cuttings which I find very interesting for filling in details of the social history side of research.  Once I have done these two I will start on my father's parents.

Of prime importance at the moment is to find the elusive system for storing paper records of my closest family lines.  Whilst it is interesting to find more twigs and leaves on far flung branches I want to make sure I have paper copies of the closest family because nothing beats looking at paper and it is yet another back up method.

I am currently toying with the idea of having folders divided up into grandparent, great grandparents, g great grandparents etc and that means that each generation will double the number of family names inside the divider...hmmmmm will it work.  My great grandfather, Albert Weston married Annie Elizabeth Gadd so in the generation earlier I will have dividers for the Westons and the Gadds.  That generation of Westons married a Newick and Gadd married a Keeley.  In the next earlier gneration I will have dividers for Westons, Newicks, Gadds and Keeleys and so on down the generations.  The easiest way of thinking about it is as filing like a pedigree chart shows.  Unless, of course, I come up with a different system  LOL




Saturday 18 July 2015

July swap parcels

Gutted!!!!  My friend's daughter kindly....or not so kindly, shared her chickenpox and so I have not been able to go over and craft with her this month.  I had to tackle the parcels all on my own with no little tweaks that I often do when meeting with Terri.  Get well soon Terri.

This is the card that I made from Pat's parcel using embossing.  I embossed the tag that I added to the paper from Pat's parcel and I used some of the included glitter strip to add to it.



This is the card that I made from Terri's parcel using a digital image.  I used ribbon and a paper from Terri's parcel; it is a really fresh light colour which I love.  I used a digital image from a previus swap parcel and then coloured some card candi to add to the corners.



And finally the card that I made from both parcels using all three techniques.  I paper pieced the owl with papers from both parcels and the striped paper was mine.  I embossed the backing paper which had come from Pat's parcel and then added a digital image of Happy Birthday to it.  I'm really quite pleased the result.