Categories
Unique Visitors
50,719
Total Page Views
525,051

 
"View Teri Hjelmstad's profile on LinkedIn">
 
Archives

A Genealogy New Year’s Resolution

A new year beckons. With it comes the opportunity to begin a new genealogy project.

Since I left my day job, each year I have focused on researching the life and lineage of a set of my great-grandparents. At Christmas time, I have written a biographical sketch of the chosen person and distributed it to the family. I completed that project this year, and I would like to begin to move back in time to work on my great-great grandparents. I may do one of them in 2013.

But I have another project in mind that will take most of my time. Over the years I have collected many family photos, and they are out of control. I have my own family photos stored in boxes and many portraits of previous generations filed in archival albums. I have digital copies of numerous cemetery markers. I also have paper bags full of pictures I salvaged from my parents’ house.

I need to sort and file everything. I want to take the time to digitize the portraits I have collected and to post them on my website. I want to add the cemetery marker photos to the website and to FindAGrave.com. Organizing, scanning, and uploading everything will take a lot of time, but I cannot stand the mess any longer.

I do not particularly enjoy working with electronic gadgets, so I know I will stop working on photos periodically to do some research on a great-great grandparent. I have gathered quite a bit of information already on some of them. I can flesh out one of their stories for a biographical sketch next Christmas. This way, I can enjoy doing a little research and move ahead with my writing project while preserving some family history all in the same year.

Now, how do you run that scanner again?

2 Responses to “A Genealogy New Year’s Resolution”

  • Teri, Don’t worry. Just pull out the scanner & you will remember. Happy scanning. Do you have a particular method for labeling your photos? I am torn between starting with the year {if known] or the Surname. What do you use?

  • Teri:

    At this point I have my genealogy photos in archival albums, arranged by surname. It works out for me because I do not have a large collection. I have not decided what to do as I tackle everything that belonged to my parents.

Leave a Reply