The Medway Discussion Group talked about how we keep our family history research. It was a lovely afternoon with tea, biscuits and much sharing of ideas.
There were numerous methods used to record family history. Most people had some form of pedigree sheet or family tree chart. These were variously on an online site, on an excel spreadsheet, on a template, on wallpaper or other large pieces of paper. One was on a wall in the hallway of a home, which was then wallpapered over for someone else to find at some point in the future! Another was beautifully neat and had been handwritten onto a piece of ‘tree paper’ purchased from My History.
When it came to BMD certificates and other records, these were often in folders, some colour coded, numbered or coded in some other way to aid being able to locate the required document at any one time. Many people had filing cabinets, crates, folders and files organised (or disorganised!) to various degrees.
There were various amounts of technology being used, from those who barely use it, to those who use it to type up their research before printing, to another who keeps everything in e-folders on an external hard drive, backed up to cloud storage.
One idea combined a numbered pedigree chart with a series of numbered cards, one for each husband and wife pair. The cards held BMD and other information about that couple on one side with their children listed on the back. The cards were then held together with treasury tags, enabling more to be added at any time.
One member had started a new file for research and evidence that was emerging from DNA results. It contained her work to link her tree to family matches that had been identified via DNA.
Another member had his family story, which he had managed to trace back hundreds of years, typed up and bound into a book.
A final mention to a member who, using her other hobby of scrapbooking, had created a beautiful book detailing one part of her family.
In summary, we realised that we differed greatly, from those who confessed to being disorganised, to those with 30 files of documents, all perfectly indexed. I think we all came away from the meeting with an idea or two, I know I certainly did.
Report by Helen Stenhouse