First thing is to get organized the best way to keep family records is in folders I personally like to use legal folders that way if you get over sized documents you don’t have to fold them in the future if you need to recopy any of them they copy a lot nicer with no fold sometimes the fold will interfere with important information. Also color code family members you can buy colored folders in both regular and legal or you can use colored paper clips or colored post it paper.
Also the best way to add family information into a program is to put the dates in properly the rule is always use the date first then the month followed by the year E.g. 17 Apr 1958 if you use all numbers it can be confusing like if you were born on the 5 of April 1896 and you use 05/04/96 that could be read as May 5 1996 that way you will have the wrong information always use the four digits for the year also.
The way that you add the name of your family member is very important too, use the full legal name with all capital letters for the surname E.g. Louise Rita JONES when adding females always use their maiden name if they go by another name the best way is to use ( ) brackets around AKA all known as or nick names E.g. my husband goes by his middle name Eugene legally his name is Raymond Eugene RANDE AKA Eugene RANDE or he also goes by (Gene)
Some important questions to ask when getting
information from your family.
This
would be the head of the family
1)
Full name some people have two to three middle names, AKA nick names maiden if
female.
2)
Date of birth. D/M/Y
3)
Where? City/Town, County, Provence, State, Country, also the name of the
Hospital.
4)
Date of Baptism/Christening and Where?
5)
Date of Death Where? Burial Date and Where? sometimes it is also nice to put
what they died of I know that this does not sound good but down the road if
there is a disease that can be inherited or carried on to your children or
grand children they will have that information.
6)
Religion. Being a Christian myself I like to see what my family members were I
am Lutheran but my ancestors were Mennonites also my mother was Roman Catholic.
Sometimes this is important to others even if it has no interest to you.
7)
Marriage Date and Where? And the Church if they were married in a Church.
Next
start with his Parents. Then his wife’s Parents.
8)
All the same questions as you have asked for the Head of the family.
And
don’t forget the Children’s all same questions.
9) Children’s information.
Remember to start a new folded for each Child. They will have husbands and children of their own.
Also you can ask your mother/father, grandmother/grandfather stories of their childhood or something that made them laugh, sad, cry, happy, in their life and maybe they can remember things that their parents/ grandparents told them write it all down and submit it as stories of their lives. This is what we are losing in our generation.
I know that this is a lot of questions but in the future all these question help the next generations carry on. And the more that they know it will help them and they can better understand where they have came from.
There may be some more Questions that you would like to ask don’t be afraid to ask because one day they will be gone and what you have not asked will be lost forever. Believe me I know I wished that I would have asked more questions.
These are some of the questions that I like to ask but everyone is different and you may have more questions that you would like to add. Let me know, I like to improve my genealogy skills also.
One more thing I should mention is while writing out reports use a black ink pen because if you ever photo copy the document black ink shows up better.
