Fall Cleaning

Speaking of squirrels - Years ago I used to bring newspapers and magazines into my house.  I don't know why.  They just looked interesting, I guess.  First I had to make space for them, and that's not easy here so I was constantly moving the ever-growing pile.  Then I found myself distressed with the pressure of having to read them and never having enough time.  But I kept bringing home more.  It took me forever to realize the simple solution - STOP bringing them home.  So I stopped.  

Well, we know where this is going.  I just transferred the same behavior to collecting cousins.  You know how interesting distant cousins can be.  A couple years ago I came across a drawing of a plantation that was in the possession of one of my 3rd cousins 5 times removed 200 years ago ...  I can't even remember the person's name without looking it up but somewhere along the road I misplaced that drawing and it's still bothering me.

I don't know how I get so much junk in my database.  All I can think is that a younger and dumber me keeps putting it in there. 

Right now I'm trying to clean it up again.  So, I'll tell you how I do that.

Things that are questionable or confused but may straighten out someday I put under Research Notes in the meantime.  If they don't fit in there they've already gone into a Windows folder called Queries which I may get back to at some future date.  Or not.  i.e. It's the long winding road on the way to the Trash.

At the core of cleaning up the database is Legacy's indispensable Search function.  When the clutter is screaming at me and I have time, ( a tricky convergence) I do a Search on Research Notes containing 'e'.  In other words, any Research Notes that contain anything.  Then I click through them in the Name List tidying up as I go.  If nothing else, it refreshes my view of just how far behind I am.


Here's something that will give you an idea how organized or disorganized you are with your Sources.  Go to Master Sources and highlight the whole list.  Then click Show List.  This will give you a list of everyone with a source. Then tag that entire list.  Say you Tag on '1'.  Then go to Search and search for Individuals untagged on '1'.  That will tell you how many people in your database have no Sources whatsoever.  This will make you feel encouraged or totally overwhelmed.  


This will not tell you un-sourced events for people who have some of their events sourced, only people who have no sources at all.  Either way it doesn't tell you anything about the quality of your sources.  That's another day.

Sometimes I like to break it down into bite-size pieces.  I keep my census records listed individually by year and place.  Rather than just saying US Federal Census, it will say '1880 US Federal Census - Sandusky, Erie Co., OH' for instance, and the same for each different place.  So, it's possible to highlight all the 1880 censuses and do similar as above to find out who is not sourced by the 1880 census.  For the search I'll also use two other search boxes, 'Individual born before 1880' and 'Individual died after 1880'.  In other words, people who should be in the 1880 census.  And then repeat for all the other years.  At the rate I'm going I'll still be working on this next Spring when my Ancestry subscription expires. (And they're counting on it.)

Under 'Miscellaneous Searches' you can choose a focus group, in other words, a particular family line to focus on.  It can be more satisfying to just work on one line at a time, rather than skipping around and diluting your efforts.