Reflections From the Fence: to do lists

Monday, May 10, 2010

Spur of the Moment, Relatively Speaking

Karen, over at Genealogy Frame of Mind had a great post last week about Research Notebooks. I do research notebooks too, however, Karen’s put me to shame. She spends weeks preparing for research trips. I sometimes have 1 day to prepare for a research stop or trip. Man and I kinda do things on the “spur of the moment” plan. Which means, I discover we are traveling through an area where I want to do some research, I say to Man, hey, how bout a stop at XYZ County, Kansas. He says, ya or nah, and if it is a ya, I am into spur of the moment “to do list” building.

Karen is TOTALLY organized, her to do lists are a thing of beauty. (By the way, Anne’s to do lists are great too, and, yes, put me to shame as well.) I have been picking up hints from both of them, and I am better than I was years back, but, to do lists are still a weak point for me.

Hopefully Karen will be sharing with all of us soon her great cemetery “need” lists. In the meantime, I am going to share one of my spur of the moment hints, which has worked pretty well for me.

Simply, print from your genie program, a place list. RootsMagic allows you to print all events that took place in a specific place. I print that list, and then review. Do I have a certificate or document to establish the birth, marriage or death listed for that place?

So, say, Man and I agree to stop in XYZ County Kansas. I print the place list report for XYZ County, and find there are 3 marriages, and 2 deaths that I have recorded in my data base that took place in XYZ County. Of those 3 marriages, I have a document for one, so, I will mark that off the printed list and I will go looking for the other 2. Of the 2 deaths, I have nothing, so, I will go looking for documentation and obituaries for them. Ya, I will probably go hunt up a cemetery too, IF by the research I have done I can verify they are buried in XYZ County. If my spur of the moment research fails to locate documentation I will make note of that in my data base.

Here is a sample from one of my old books, apologies for the quality of the graphic, try clicking to see in a larger view. You can see where I marked off in heavy black marker items which required no attention, the smaller thin lines and some brief notes were done as I worked in the repository. Large X mark indicated I had transferred all data and findings to my data base, and there is even a small note at the bottom indicating the date said transfer was done.

So, there ya go, spur of the moment to do lists for a specific locale. Stay tuned over at Genealogy Frame of Mind for Karen to show you her great cemetery lists. SIGHHH, she is SOOOO organized.