Clean and Organized - Mostly - Jumping In Nonetheless.

After a few days of cleaning, finishing up Christmas project (yes, in the new year and wasn't even ready for New Year's day) and organizing (somewhat) I am ready to tackle the stuff on my desk and get it into my genealogy program. For those of you who may be interested, I am using RootsMagic. That in itself is a story.

I started off with my very first genealogy program, which was a DOS program by the name of Genealogy on Display. A friend used to call it GOD. It was an apt acronym, because you had to get the information in right the first time. Editing it was not easy.

Then I found out about Brother's Keeper. It too was a DOS program. By the time it got to BK v 6, it had limited Windows capabilities, but it was the first program I ever worked with that allowed you to add photos.

By the time v 6 of BK came out, we had moved to a Windows computer. And I moved to Family Origins. I think I started out with version 2 or 3. That was the first program I remember that allowed you to add more than one photo per person. And it got better and better as the years went by.

Eventually, Family Origins morphed into RootsMagic. I continued with that program through version 6 and being unhappy with some of the features tried Legacy, starting with the Deluxe version of 7.5. I used that through version 8, and still have it on my PC, but switched back to RootsMagic and bought version 7. There are just some things I kept trying to do in Legacy that were RootsMagic keystrokes. I am a very heavy keyboard user. I would much rather use the keyboard than the mouse. And for most things in RM, it works for me.

All in all, I've used genealogy programs since about 1987. But, I digress.

I find if I have a pile of stuff to add to my genealogy - and I always have piles - It's best just to dig in. My problems start when I go to prove information someone else has supplied. Mostly it's because they haven't included the source material. I spent hours the other day when sorting through, just trying to find census records, marriage records, etc., for one family. Since I was told they were married in New York City in 1853, and their children mostly appear to have been born in Buffalo, New York, I guess I have to dive into the LDS films for Buffalo. Right now as I think about it, I neglected to add the rest of the children. But before I do that I will add a to-do list item reminding me to work on the verification of facts. If I add the children now with that family to-do list item, I will know that there is work to do on the family and by adding info now I won't have to go to my "problem folder" to check names and dates.

The message here? Jump in. Get started. Research, verify, add.

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