Many people spend decades or a lifetime doing genealogy/family history research.
If you are one of those, what are your goals for your end product? Many times, genealogists just never think about it.
Are you aiming to publish a book? Or a set of documented memos for each branch to share with family members? Maybe a goal would be to enshrine your research by joining various linage societies that require expert documentation.
Starting a family reunion that will help keep all members of a certain family in touch could be a goal.
You could put your research into a good genealogy computer program to share with others, and place some of it on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. A website or something similar could be created to incorporate your information to share and be continued.
You should at least get all your research organized either online or in hard copies, files or notebooks, so that whomever keeps it after you can appreciate your work. Or you could just leave them a pile of papers that will be pretty useless going forward and probably be tossed out. It’s up to you.
Lunch and Learn June 14
W. Wright Mitchell, president and CEO of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, will deliver the Lunch and Learn lecture on June 14 at the Georgia Archives in Morrow. It begins at noon and it’s free. Bring your own lunch.
Mitchell will speak on various programs of the Georgia Trust with emphasis on its annual “Places in Peril” listing of historic properties in Georgia that need further attention and rescuing. See georgiatrust.org for more information.
For information on this and other Lunch and Learns scheduled, see GeorgiaArchives.org or call 678-364-3710.
Is it all on the Internet?
Sometimes we have to realize not everything we expect to find online is actually out there. Some recently deceased people never had an obituary published recording their deaths.
If you think a website like Find A Grave (findagrave.com) contains all the marked graves in a cemetery, note the date the initial information was recorded. The kind people who recorded the graves have not necessarily kept that cemetery up to date. Sometimes a visit is necessary.
Contact Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., P. O. Box 901, Decatur, GA 30031 or kenthomasongenealogy.com.
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