Free Online Genealogy Course with FutureLearn (Week 2)

[Millmoor]

3 Silly Dogs - that could be me talking. In the little I have looked at so far this week it has really hit home how basically my research strategy has been non existant.

William

[jennywren001]

Wonder what the attrition rate will be after week two...I am a horribly obsessive record keeper who will only work with primary sources (which I eye with great suspicion) but I know I am weird and totally over the top. At the end of week two I feel normal so something must be wrong 
Jen

[Millmoor]

I must confess, Jen, that my record keeping is poor. I enjoy searching so much that - "what happened to them?" - that I get ahead of myself, accumulate lots of scraps of paper and when I actually get round to doing something with those scraps of paper often end up having to retrace my steps. In fact I can get just as involved searching for folks on here as I can for my own family. Hopefully I will be able to put at least some of this weeks ideas into practice to become a bit more efficient.

William

[LizzieL]

I think the availability of records on the internet has made me lazy in producing a structured plan. Now I can dabble when I fell like it or have the time for it. In the olden days when researching meant a trip to the Family History Centre or a County record office, usually putting aside a whole day for a couple of hours research if a long travel time, I would make a detailed list of every record I wanted to search for - - names/places/date range. Usually I drew up forms to record the results of searches, to save myself time and ensure they made sense to me afterwards. Time was precious then, especially in some places where you had to book film or fiche readers by the half hour.

[KGarrad]

I agree LizzieL

These days, when I pop into my local library or museum, or go across to a Record Office, I simply download onto my trusty USB stick!

No need for notes at all!!

As someone whose profession has been in IT, and resolving problems as fast as possible, I have had great success in taking a very unstructured approach?! (It's the way my mind works?)

And I carry this over to my genealogical researches.

The very idea of mind-maps fills me with horror!

[LizzieL]

I found the mind map example on this weeks lesson unnecessarily complicated. All the same information could have been put in a simple linear time line rather than going round in a circle and in my opinion would be clearer that way.
 

[jennywren001]

In fact I can get just as involved searching for folks on here as I can for my own family.
William

William, I'm just looking at Chris's family living in Monifieth (they'd moved from Broughty Ferry) on the 1881 census...(the posh side of Dundee!) wonder which ship the Captain is sailing on?
Jen

[LizzieL]

I'm working on the Isaac / Joseph Spier. Can't find the UK records that are mentioned unless he was going by yet another name. It says he was born in Henley, but don't know if was Henley, Oxon or Henley in Arden

[jennywren001]

We need therapy..
Marriage to Maria Preston in 1859
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XTVH-HXR
Probably....
Maria Preston's birth and parents...
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XBZ2-X41
enough I have chores to do...
Jen