Best Reason to Throw a Party The best excuse to clean your house , I once read, is to ready it for a party . While cleaning house, I thought, is the same true about "writing it up"? Writing the stories of our ancestors and relatives is the culmination of our work. When we know that our place is welcoming to guests, we feel free to celebrate; telling stories of the past unlocks the lives of our families to all who hear them. Writing the stories is t he best excuse to research. Write while researching so that that your thoughts have somewhere to go‒directly into the notes, before they evaporate. Writing soothes the itch in the brain instead of sending us down rabbit holes. Now is a great time to get started writing, in preparation for Family History Month in October . Courtesy of the National Genealogical Society Writing tests our research and thinking It is while writing that holes in the story are exposed, inconsistencies glare, and leaps of logic fall flat. If our analysis...

Why?  Google Drive is free, and available on all of your devices. And you probably already have a Drive and don't know it! I use mine constantly. Why should you use it? For saving from anywhere, and sharing with anyone. Share source images you've found with cousins, share your own documents with others for feedback, and share things with yourself on other devices. You can do this no matter where images or documents come from or what software created them. If you prefer Word to Google Docs but want to be able to get inline comments, just import them to your Drive. Do the same for Excel, or any other software. You can even save to and share from your Drive from your phone or tablet. Don't worry, you can edit and then download in Word or Excel format. Where's My Google Drive? First, how do you find your Drive? Go to Google.com and look up to the right. If you are logged in and have uploaded an image you will see it right next to the matrix of stacked dots. Top right of th...

Experienced researchers often urge us to use timelines but why are they worth the time and labor? Lisa Lisson says :  from https://lisalisson.com/organize-your-genealogy-using-a-timeline/ This post is based on my own experience and advice from more experienced researchers such as Lisa Lisson, Kimberly Powell, Diane Haddad, Gena Philibert-Ortega, Melissa Corn Finlay, Caleb Lee and the authors of the FamilySearch Wiki.  Timeline: Chronological Time and Place A basic timeline for your person will often yield insights before you add any extra information. You can also use maps old and new to find out about how they got from one place to another, and why they might have left the home place and moved elsewhere. Sometimes thinking about the travel will yield more clues, such as immigration documents, train or bus routes, or historic trails. Sometimes you will realize that the records you have found cannot possibly be for *your* person, but most be for another person wi...