Getting Organized .....

So ......  I have a binder that I have some stuff in, I had a ton of loose papers .... this and that.   So I decided to get a file system going.

So ........  this may not be the case in everyone's searching because I realize that I am extremely lucky to be able to trace my family back to the 1300's and later.  I'm lucky where I can trace mine to British (and other nationality) Royalty ... who kept really good track of their heritage.

So not all of my ancestors have last names.  For example.....  the label of Plantagenet was attached as a last name when infact it was the HOUSE name.  So a lot of the House names, Clan names, Nobility issues were used as a "last name" to keep things more organized.  But it wasn't actually their last name.

Also, say in Norway ....  the family name was not always the same with in the same family.   For example, a man, Hans, has children with his wife.  Their children are given the surnames of .... "Hansson" if its a boy or "Hansdotter" if it's a girl.  So you can have a brother and sister without identical surnames.  So it can get confusing.

So while I have been researching to make sure my facts are straight.... when I put them in Ancestry, ESPECIALLY a husband and wife's children.  Because it seems that people on Ancestry connect a lot of children, the same children multiple times, one of them has multiple wives or husbands - and people are confused on the true father or true mother - so I try to get that corrected as much as possible.

So I staple the husband and wife together.   So I started a notebook to keep track of those I have printed off so I'm not duplicating information AND refer back if needed.

So sometimes people are filed under their first names, sometimes the surnames.  It depends on the time period.

There is also the issue of women not being important and not a lot of women's trees can be traced because it was the man's lineage that's important, not the mother's.   So if you can trace a woman back - you are lucky!!   I have pinned some things on Pinterest - some suggestions on how to help continue the searches for the women brink walls you hit.

Anyway ......

So I got to thinking about it and realized, I need an external way of knowing those I filed.  So I started a notebook.

The cover:

I thought it was appropriate!  And I hadn't used it for anything else yet.

On the first couple of pages I left open for my log in information for the sites I frequent (not a complete list) and yes I realize you can read my info - but my passwords are coded ....

So I had some large scrapbooking letters and used those for pages ...... and this is what I started doing...

So I list their name (names) .. the years they were alive if known (or about the time - like I will put 1600s if that's the era) ...  and if they are stapled to someone .....  if it's the cover page, I put stapled with meaning there is someone else behind them.  So (husband name-info) stapled with (wife's name) ...   If it's the wife... I use stapled to because it's the person on the front page.  So (wife's name-info) stapled to (husband's name).

And since there are some of the same people intertwined in the different sections of my trees (Me, Dennis, ex-husband for my older two kids, even Dennis' ex for his daughter, etc) ...  I am putting which person representing what main section of the tree that person belongs to - and if they belong to more than one, it'll be noted on there.   Also - if I copy things over to Word (like the 1st pic below) ... I am putting where I got the information ....  Also, if there is more than one person on a page, for example below....  John North is married to Dorothy Dale, once John died, Dorothy married James.   There are some pages where top man is linked to his father below his wife.  So I am learning you can't have too many notes on the paper to make things clear.

If it's informational papers - like the one below - I have who's side, attached to what family, and make sure the website is on there (in this case I printed it from the site I got it so it's on the bottom of the page) ....  

So ........ I'm getting organized on the cheap...  LOL... and it's still a work in progress.

If there is a story that I want to share on here, I'm going to make sure there is a star by it or something where I know to share the story if I'm not sharing the story right away.

I'm also taking a lot of screen captions and cropping it to the information I want.... (like the news articles I have found) ... and all that.