If you use DNA to investigate your family tree, you know how valuable shared matches are. I think perhaps if we knew that we "shared a match" a to historical document such as a will, probate court case, pension file, or a piece of land, siblings living with only one parent and many other pieces of information we use to create a story of a life, think of how much richer our collaboration with fellow researchers would be! In some ways, Ancestry hints can be used this way, if someone has uploaded a photo, story, transcription, etc. Contacting these researcher relatives can be fruitful! I sometimes contact those who connect my relatives to historical documents or do other work on a profile where I'm working. Again, these researchers are often relatives. Learning the " Boncella Method " this past weekend, in advance of our Genetic Genealogy group meeting, I was pleased to see a new way to look at shared DNA matches. Lately all the talk from genealogy companies are ...

By Dorothy Pretare In my prior post, “What Will Happen to Your Family History Stuff”, we identified 1) the types of family history stuff and their possible locations, 2) your hopes and possible options, and 3) some steps to help ensure your hopes/wishes will be honored. One of those steps was to “Organize Your Stuff”.  This step will help you in your research and make it easier to share information with others.  First, each of us may approach tasks in different ways -- think about handing an unorganized grocery list to a few people and watch them shop in an unfamiliar store.  Since there are many ways to organize items, I suggest you check “The Organized Genealogist” on Facebook or “Organize Your Family History” ( https://organizeyourfamilyhistory.com/ ) or Cyndi’s List ( https://www.cyndislist.com/organizing/ ) for her list of links to various methods.  Just select a method you think will work for you and remember you can always change your method of organizin...