Tag: Saving Records

Lighting A Fire

A former client informed me today that she thought about me all night long.  I could be flattered by that but the reason why was unsettling.  It’s summer in Florida and during this time we experience torrential storms.  Last evening was over the top with lightning and thunder and subsequently, one of my client’s neighbors home was hit and caught fire.  Thankfully, the fire department was able to extinguish the flames but the home sustained much damage.

Why my client thought of me at that time was due to my insistence a few months ago that her family documents be scanned and saved in several places.  She never got around to it.  Typical excuses – work, family, vacation, and it’s not fun to scan.  I’m not saying that those excuses aren’t valid but last evening she realized how quickly everything can be instantly destroyed.

First thing this morning she contacted me asking for help in cataloguing and scanning her documents and photos.

Please, readers, no more excuses!  Make the time now to save these valuable heirlooms today.

Your Tree Posthumously

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 18 Oct 2015.

Being that it’s Geneanet’s A Cemetery for Posterity Weekend, I’ve been thinking about ways to have me tree live on after I do.  Geneanet had an interesting blog on the 5 October 1915 by Jean-Yves regarding your genealogical tree after you’ve died.  I don’t have a tree on Geneanet but I may want to investigate doing so.  You can read the blog here:  What Happens To Your Data…

And then there was this interesting post in Myrt’s blog about ancestry’s disappearing records.  It happened to me trying to retrieve my husband’s 3 times great grandfather’s obit info.  I recently blogged about John and Mary “Mollie” O’Brien Cooke (A New Genealogy Society – What Fun! 11 October 2015).  When I was checking my saved sources on ancestry.com for the couple I couldn’t retrieve the info for John’s obit.  On the bottom right hand corner on the old ancestry version I could see the link under Source Info but when I clicked nothing appeared.  I tried to do a search through the card catalog for Historical Newspapers, Birth, Marriage, & Death Announcements, 1851-2003 using John Cooke but there were no hits.  I had a hard copy so I dug through my records and found it.

I’m not sure if ancestry reactivated all the records they had blocked a few weeks ago because I tried it again yesterday and I was able to access it.  Very weird!  Having records here one day and gone the next is frustrating.  That makes me want to save what I find in multiple locations to insure that the data isn’t lost.

If you’re a member of the National Genealogical Society one of the new benefits is obtaining access to the United States and Canada records FREE on Find My Past.  I tried last week to upload my tree as a gedcom to the site but I kept receiving an error message.  Although my tree is large it’s well within the limits of the Find My Past site.  Going to try it again today. If you’re interested in getting Find My Past, the first crack at registering for the upcoming Family History Conference to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida the first week of May, 2016, and very useful periodicals, you can join here,

Another though I had was the idea of creating ebooks on my lines once I’ve obtained genealogical certification.  I could then download the ebook and print a hardcopy.  I would include snips of the pertinent records in the text so if the original disappears there would still be a picture available.

So many ideas – so little time!