Each week I feature a book from my library that may help you in your genealogy research. This Friday I’ve selected a wonderful little book by Valerie Hughes, Genealogy: Your Family History, Doing It Right The First Time.
Finding out about your family’s history can be an exciting endeavor. Keeping track of all the information and placing it all into some kind of organized fashion, however, can be quite a task. There are so many Genealogy websites, software programs and ways to store your findings that it can become overwhelming. It is sometimes hard to determine what should be included in your Family Tree and what isn’t necessary.
Whether you are just beginning your Genealogy journey or already have a Family Tree, this book will help you with answering those important questions: How do I start? How do I organize it easily? Where can I find more information and sources? What documents do I need to prove my findings? In this book, you will find the answers to these questions and more. Learning how to organize your documents and photos in an easy to follow way will help you to be organized. Being organized will ensure that the information you are imputing into your Tree is correct. Doing it right the first time will eventually not only save you time but a lot of frustration. You will end up with Family History that is readable, accurate and a source of pride. It can become something you can pass on to future generations.
If you have already started a Family Tree but it has become a chore, this book can help you get it right the second time around. This is the position Valerie found herself in and the reason she decided to write this book. She began her Genealogy quest over 15 years ago. At that time she did not have a computer and did not know where to begin. Once she did get online and found the wonders of the internet and all the places she could find information about her family she just haphazardly saved it all, both in hard copy and on hard drive. Valerie grew her tree in so many directions she got lost as to who was who and what document actually belonged to which family member. She just accepted other people’s research without comparing their facts with hers and she ended up with a mess. She had to basically start over again. Putting her current Tree together with the correct way, the organized way has made her enjoy this journey of discovery again.
Doing it right the first time!