Overwhelmed with Names

I was in my early 20's when I started looking into doing family history work for my family. I got real excited about it. I was able to do about 4 generations pretty quickly, then life happened. I got married, started having children, etc. So of course family history got put on hold for awhile. I did do a little bit of work now and then but not much. The excitement was always there.

Once I hit my 40's I found a little more freedom to do some work so I did, but not much, because I was working on my education. However, I was blessed with good people who were sharing the information they had on family history.

I remember one day one of my aunt's called to see how I was doing and before the conversation was over she committed to sending me some family history that she just got for her paternal line. I was so excited once I received it. I entered it in on my family tree. This got me excited again to start looking and confirming this new information.

Once I started looking into things again, I realized that new technology made it possible to see more names and I was able to find two family lines of genealogy that others had submitted online. Now, I was getting a fever for family history. With a little more research I was able to find more and more information, I did hit a few roadblocks from time to time but I would just take a detour to find something else.

So I sat back looking at all this stuff and realized that it needed some organization. That in itself has created a roadblock for me. I really struggled with how best to put this stuff in order so someone else could make sense of it, and so I know that I wasn't duplicating work.

I still find myself overwhelmed at times with the overload of information but I have found a couple of ways that work for me. I have created a blog that only my family has access to, but I am only listing info for those how have died already. I add pictures, documents and links to where others can find the documents. Family Search and Ancestry are my main tools and they have places where documents can be saved with the name of your ancestors. That's pretty cool too. So I can save the documents instead of printing them to file away.

I am also trying to create books of my family history that can be shared with family as well. Lots of fun ideas but you have to find the one that works best for you. It can get frustrating with all the overflow of research that you have found so its time to get organized and have it make some sense.

 I thought maybe others could be having the same issue so I decided to blog about it and add some links showing how others have organized their family history work in hopes of helping you. There are lots of helpful ideas online. Good luck!!!

Organize your Genealogy

About.com: Organize your Genealogy

U Tube on How to Organize your Records

Organize your Family History