Monday, April 14, 2014

All Those Records...


As you begin to sort through all the documents and items you have collected, it can be difficult to know what to do with each one and yet each item is important to the recording of your family's history and genealogy.

Take for instance a simple Birth Certificate, the time period determines the amount of information on the document itself. There is usually less information on the older documents than there are today.

Often, older records are listed in registers with a one line entry, if one is lucky both parents are listed.
While Marriage Records today list a lot of information, again, older records can be just a one line entry or a whole document with only the names of the bride and groom. It just depends on who was keeping the records at the time and each location throughout the world is different.

Copying down each bit of information is important but just what do you copy and where does it go?

It is at this point that you must decide where to keep this information, what program to use or will it be recorded and kept in a simple record book for your family?

Let's look at a sample of a birth certificate I discovered in a box of documents from my mother's home after she had passed away in 1998.



Notice that it provides all the important information concerning the birth of my father including who his father and mother were, their occupations and ages at the time of birth along with his position in the family.

While this entry from a family bible provides the bare minimum of information, but can lead to locating the rest of the information.



As you can see, it is just a hand written entry with a name and a date, however, it can be just a valuable as one can follow the name and date and locate an original record.

Gathering the clues for the current and next couple of generations is just the beginning of growing your own family tree!

Next we tackle some of the software on the market to help you save the valuable information you are collecting.

Comments are always encouraged and welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com

 (c) 2005-2014, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved





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