Genealogy Chat

How do you all keep your paper copies of your family trees - do you keep folders for individual family names? Starting a new tree every time a new name arrives? Easy on the computer but all the paperwork with the different sides of the families gets very mixed up at times. Any good tips???

Hi As you say, filing on the pc is easy but paperwork is a .............. During the last 12 months, from starting with one file and one pad of paper, I must have changed my filing system 6 or 7 times due to the piles of paper getting larger and larger. I have now found that the best system for me is: A lever arch file for main families and an ordinary A4 file for surnames that I may research sometime in the future. Each file has a divider for each generation. I am generation 0, my son generation -1 and my dad +1. Each person within that generation has a name sheet with details of birth, marriage, death, parents and children etc, these are in acid free plastic covers. At the front of each file is an index sheet with generation no. name, dates etc for easier look ups. I also have a notebook for website addresses and passwords, another for my daily tasks and lastly one for notes as I go along that maybe useful in the future. You will find that everyones system is different and you will adapt as time goes by. I hope this helps. Little Lil

At the moment I've got 3 lever arch files, one each for my side and wife's side, with alphabetical index separators, so each surname goes in it's place. The third file just has general information, record office addresses; tips leaflets; catalogues, etc. There is a fourth file for one family I am researching jointly with several other members. Certificates are separate, once again mine and hers.

You have to do what's easiest for you. I personally have a fan family tree chart at the front of both my male line/female line in large binders and go in strict generation order using a numbered index sheet on which I've entered the names of each couple. This also helps as I have many with the same name. I put couples together with all the information about them and their other children in plastic pockets in the file in strict order birth/marriage/death census plus any bdm's of other children of the couple. Male child (1st generation) His parents (2nd generation) Grandparents (3rd generation) Great grandparents(4th generation) Great Great grandparents (5th generation) all strictly in order of the fan chart ie father/mother of male then father/mother of female. When I have the birth, marriage and death's confirmed I highlight the name on the Fan Family Tree chart and add the dates so can see at a glance what's missing. In order to have a consolidated file to refer to - I have an A4 file which holds only Family History Sheets and Fan Family Tree chart. This is where every snippet of information is condensed to. The Family History Sheets I downloaded from the Family Tree magazine downloadable forms webpage and are very clear and plenty of room. For each couple I have their bdm information - also their parents names - children and any other marriages. On the back I've put all the addresses they've lived at and year and occasion ie census - birth - marriage - death and occupations even witnesses at their wedding and it helps not having to lug big files around. The rest of the paperwork is put into surname cardboard folders as often bits of paper relate to several generations of the same name and its easier to have a look through occasionally in case you've missed some snippet or other.

I have 2 files....one for Mum's side and one for Dad's Each file is divided into sections for each surname. Each surname is then again divided into; Tree layout for that name General info on the family (includes any photos) Census reports Birth info Marriage info Death info i'm in the process of doing Index sheets so that I can see the info straight away without hunting thru my file c x

I have box files and in each box a folder for each different surname/ Plus ones for different info eg. newspaper article cert. etc. Mark on each folder the name inside. Found it quite good to search through. Germaine x

I'm doing mine and my husbands, so I have FOUR folders one for each of our parents. In the front I have a sheet with the family tree for that person ( the one with numbers and space for 31 ancestors names so includes our 3x great grandparents and enough space for date of birth and marriage #downloaded from the site that must NOT be named which I don't own) Then I splashed out in Asda for packets of coloured file dividers (37p for 20)!!!!! One for each of the potential 124 ancestors. Each is numbered 1-31 and corresponds to the chart at the front. On the front of the file divider I have written the birth, marriage and death information for each person as I find it or age? if just found on census. I keep a note on the females card of children they had, dob and marriage if enough room. On the back, the census, marriage or birth year and where they are and professionat those times. At the back of each file I keep certificates for people in that file, useful maps like London parishes. Census records are divided into 4 sections (our parents grandparents) with a list of the census years and whether I have traced each ancestor back to the year after their birth (kept downloading things I'd already got!!!!!) Mind you this all went to pot with my mums Irish grandmother whose got two files of her own with transcripts I made of 1901 and 1911 Irish census, 1851 fragments, griffiths valuations and townland maps in the hope of one day being able to trace her family back. I try and fail to work on the rule of 'file and add information to my folders from census etc' BEFORE i download the next!!!! Not easy when 1851 is now online. And you can easily present mother-in-law with her folder showing her what you have been up to! When the houseworks not done. Teresa

Oh I find this really difficult and have tried a few different ways. At first it seemed easy, but the more I got the more mixed up it became. My problem seems to be when marriages occur and the two families become one. I then follow the new couple, the two parent families on the census's, and that is when I don't seem to have a continuation. Do I keep them religiously in date order or keep them as seperate families. The fan idea was given to me when I posed a similar question on this board and it really does work, it is very easy to look at. Gloria xx

Got a free nice fan family tree chart from this couples website They are happy to share their forms which is very nice of them and the best one I've found for printing off on A4 http://www*cs*williams*edu/~bailey/genealogy/

I've got files for each generation with certificates and parish register printouts filed The rest of it is just in a big pile or in a drawer in the kitchen so if anyone comes up with any fantastic suggestions for getting organised then I'm all ears!

Thanks everyone for all your tips....glad that I am not the only one confused as to the best way ..... easy at first but as they generate outwards and you get further down one line and the others get left behind.....

My filing system has just sort of evolved. My direct ancestors have a wallet style folder each - Green for men, pink for women. (Not blue for men, cos its difficult to see any writing on a blue folder, I find).After several attempts at giving each person a unique reference number and getting hopelessly confused, I now use G1 = Great Grandparents G2 = Great Great Grandparents and so on. I always remember that G = Great! Each wallet has on the front (example) Joseph Bloggs 1824 - 1898 married Mary Jones (1823-1868) Inside the folder I have a Quickref Sheet, which gives this couples details, i.e. their parents and their children. The child who is my direct ancestor goes forward at marriage and gets a folder of their own! But the other children of Joe Bloggs and Mary Jones stay in their parents file, divided off, a section for each name. All the 'bits' of paper go in these wallets. This works very well for me. I also have another thing on the go, and that is my trawling box. This occurs when I am researching a 'new' family. For instance, the most recent one has been the Greens. Every Green I find gets a sheet of scrap paper to themselves, be it a birth,marriage, deatrh, census, will, etc etc. This is useful for when I find an unrelated bit of information, such as a death for an Ann Green, but I don't immediately know who she is, or where she fits. All these individual bits of paper go in strict alphabetical first name order into a shoe box! or a file, if I have a vacant one. As the relationships become clear, I remove these bits of paper into a 'proven' file or box,and each person in this proven box has their parents, gps etc listed down the page, furthest back at the bottom of the page.Hope that makes sense. This again works well for me - you can throw all these seemingly unrelated bits of paper all over the floor and play with them, suddenly making a connection which had escaped you till then. A big mistake I made when I first started, was to throw away the shorthand notebooks I use for extracting Parish Registers etc. Although I religiously transferred the information before I threw the search books away, I didnt know that I would want to know if I had specifically covered a particular year, and it is tedious to search through everything just to make sure that I had covered 1824 and that it wasnt missing or something. And, seeing a search in its entirety helps jog my memory too. I now use cheap, thin, shorthand notebooks (£1 for 4, Tescos) for searches, one book per Parish, and keep them. I think the best systems are those which evolve, rather than trying to adapt someone else's system. Happy filing, everyone! Olde Crone

I think you have to do what works for you, and sometimes that means a bit of trial and error. I now have huge 4-hole ring binders with plastic sleeves front and back covers. I have one for each set of grandparents and their ancestors. The front cover sleeve has a map (sometimes printed off the net, sometimes taken from a book etc) with the towns my ancestors lived in marked in highlighter pen. This is very useful as you can see at a glance that gt gt grandpa would have taken the main road from Blinkton to Bloggville, where he married gt gt grannie. Inside front cover has loose bits & bobs I can't find a home for yet. Then I have dividers for each surname. At the front of each surname section I have a pedigree chart and family charts. Then I have individual sheets for each direct ancestor, and sometimes others if I've found out a lot about them. [all these forms are photocopied from template forms from Family History Starter Pack £9.99 from National Archives - its also onsale at the FRC and at Past Times, as well as some bookshops] Then I have acid-free hole-punched wallets[bought in job lot when on sale in WHSmith] in which I have relevant certs, photos, documents, forms, letters etc, often with a loose slip of paper explaining what's what. Finally I have an A5 hardback A-Z book with ALL direct ancestors listed with major details - birth, baptism, census entries etc, which I take with me to records offices etc. Then if I find that although I was looking for my dad's dad's aunt, the archive also has info which might help with my mum's mum's uncle, etc I have the facts at my fingertips. THIS ALL SOUNDS VERY IMPRESSIVE - but I must also say that it is only after years of having everything on loose scraps of paper and finding when I got to the census room at the FRC that I had no idea whether Eliza was born 1862 or 1852 that I set all this up. I must also stress that it means constant updating. I have also got all the tree on PAF which you can download free from www.familysearch.org and I would strongly recommend this or something similar. It's easy to keep up to date, and you can view the info by family group, pedigree or individual. There's also plenty of space to add any notes you wish. nell

Some wonderful ideas ...... I am going to read all of these over the weekend and start getting my stuff into a better system as it has been driving me crazy.....a trip to Office Works is definately in order and get some colour coding happening..... Thanks everyone.... S x

I have mine all in a one huge bag sitting by my desk. Some of the certs are separated according to surname and which side of the family.... but I really need to go through it all again and organise!

Julie.... I have just found that site, thank you, good forms and will use those, like the fan one! Nell.. Like the A - Z hardback book with all the names, will do that! S x

nudge for len

Keep files out of the reach of small children. Mine were all tidy, but my son got hold of them-was packing them away to move and I still haven't found the time to sort them out again.

Weeeeellllllllllll.....I have bought loads of files, loads of dividers and photocopied loads of fan charts and history forms!!!!!!! Now it is just to do it!!!!!!!!!!!! I have 3 huge files to sort through and get into a better system.... I am so glad that I am not the only one confused as to how is best to set it all out.... Definately takes some thinking about, hey... Thanks to all that have helped me...some brilliant ideas there. Sal x

To save all those little scraps of paper with all those interesting little facts we gather about individuals I sat on the computer for awhile and typed an 'Interesting facts about the ...... family' for each family. Eventually they will be added to the main folders for each family. I don't throw away the scraps of paper until they have been cross-checked with the typed sheet. I don't have to worry then about losing the bits and pieces and a quick look will tell me what I want to know. Susan