10 things to do for Genealogy Day
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It’s Genealogy Day!
Genealogy Day is part of Celebrate Your Name Week, created in 1997. The celebration happens the first week in March, with a different holiday each day of the week.
How to Celebrate Genealogy Day
1. Transcribe a document. We all have a document that we painstakingly researched and got a copy of, but never transcribed. Life happens, even when we’re excited about a new source! Take the time to transcribe it ASAP. You never know what new clues you’ll find.
2. Pick an ancestor and make a timeline. Making a timeline is one of the best ways to spot gaps in your information and any mistakes by laying out all the key points in your ancestors’ lives. Use Word, a spreadsheet, or another method to help you step back and see where you need to do more research.
3. Write down a family story. Pick a family story and write it down. Then make a plan to find documents to back up the points from the story to verify or clarify it!
4. Review the records for one of your brick wall ancestors. Sometimes we need to take a break from our brick wall research. Refresh your memory on one of your brick walls by going through all your records. See if you can pick up on any new clues you may have missed or forgotten about.
5. Join or visit your local historical or genealogy society. Check out what’s available for research and what other resources they have.
6. Watch a tutorial or webinar. One of the things I love most about genealogy is that there is always more to learn. Brush up on your skills for a specific ethnicity, on DNA, finding female ancestors, or anything else that strikes your fancy. YouTube is a great place for free genealogy tutorials. Legacy Family Tree Webinars offers many webinars each month. They’re free to register for and watch for about a week after the airdate. Subscribers get access to the entire webinar archives and instructor handouts, and all new webinars as they are added.
7. Call or email (or visit, if you can) a relative and ask them for information on the family. Gather a list of questions and see what new information or stories you can learn.
8. Review your records and add citations where needed. I know, I know. This is boring and you’d probably rather be doing genealogy research. But I promise you won’t regret it later.
9. Help with a transcription project. FamilySearch and the Smithsonian are two institutions looking for help transcribing records. Try your hand at Freedmen’s Bureau documents, cemetery bounty land records, and more.
10. Listen to a genealogy podcast. A great one for instant gratification is Ancestral Findings. Each episode is less than 10 minutes, so you can quickly learn new tips.
How will you celebrate National Genealogy Day? Please share in the comments!
Sources used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrate_Your_Name_Week
