New Year's resolutions can be a very good thing for us. The beginning of a new year provides a milepost we can use to measure the end of one activity and the beginning of another one. I also know what you're thinking: "It's a real problem keeping those resolutions!" That can be the case but we all know that the commitment to perseverance really lies within ourselves.

One of the regular listeners to weekly "The Genealogy Guys" podcast that I do with Drew Smith just wrote to tell us how much she enjoyed these online broadcasts. She also said that it was her commitment to "get serious" about her genealogy when she retired. Well, the first year of retirement didn't go as expected and she wanted some advice about how to pick up the pieces and get started again in earnest. I want to make some suggestions for getting organized and re-started on your research in Along Those Lines . . . this week.

"Cold Case"
I'm a fan of the American television program, "Cold Case," on the CBS network. In case you haven't seen it, the show is a police drama in which detectives work on "cold cases" - crimes that have never been solved. I can draw a parallel between these police investigations and genealogy. Strange, you think? Not really. The cold case detectives start with a box of evidence from the original police investigation. The box has been stored and contains evidence and notes from the first investigation. The contemporary detectives have to review all the evidence and start investigating the leads again. The investigative process is fascinating; the evaluations the detectives do and the hypotheses they form and follow up are much like what we as genealogists do. The cold case detectives ultimately solve the old crime -- just as we'd like to do with our genealogical research.

Starting Over Again: Getting Organized
The first step in renewing your research, whether on your genealogy in general or on a person or line you have set aside for a while, is to gather all the evidence you have into one place. I like to pull all the documents together and organize them in some way. I maintain binders by surname and then, within surname, in forename order by person. Each document I have found is then filed in chronological sequence by the date it was created and/or the fact that it documents. This makes for an evidentiary timeline.

Am I up-to-date with all my filing? Get serious! This is an ongoing process, sometimes getting done by individual or family as needed or in spurts. I probably have six-eight hours filing work and can do much of this by sorting, separating, inserting into polypropylene sheet protectors while I watch television. (Perhaps even watching "Cold Case"!) It's then easy to file in the binders.

Become Reacquainted With Your Ancestors
You must bring yourself to really focus on the persons and family groups you want to research. That means literally reading everything you have about them. When I restart my research for someone, I tend to open my genealogy database program and generate certain reports to use in this process. I find the following reports very useful.

• Family Group Sheets - I generate these for the person I am researching and for his or her parents so that I have visual and textual information about the parents, the siblings, the spouse, and children that might have lived.
• Individual Summary Report - This report lists everything I have in the database for this person, including birth, marriage and death dates, marriages, children, facts, sources, and notes. This is great for comparing with the documents and other evidence you have collected, filed, and prepared to review.
• Pedigree Chart - This chart can be of any format that is useful for the research you plan to do: ancestors, descendants, or a combination of both (typically displayed in an hourglass format).

Your database program may not automatically produce all of these reports but it will certainly allow you to create and print customized reports.

Now that you have your documentary evidence and the report(s) from your database, it is time to start reading. You should re-read absolutely everything you have about each person. That means examining the dates, the notes, the comments, the sources, and re-reading every single document as if you have never seen them before. Examine and evaluate the evidence you have using your critical thinking skills. Have a pad of lined paper at hand and make notes of missing information, questionable data and/or sources, and make a list of "to-do" facts and clues you wish to investigate further.

You can also become better acquainted with your ancestors and their families by studying local and regional histories, geography, and social histories. These can provide the information to help you place the people into perspective and add context to their lives. You are now bringing these people into focus and you now know everything about them so far.

Goals and Lists
Now that you have assessed the evidence you have accumulated so far, you should now be able to develop some hypotheses about the people. You must ask yourself what it is that you want to further learn. What kind of information is it? When and where did the person or family live at the time? What records were likely created that might include the information you're seeking? Do those records still exist and, if so, where are they located? You also need to determine if there are other living relatives who could possibly provide information, insights, and/or documents to help you along. Don't procrastinate about making contact with these people!

You are now prepared to define your research goals for each individual and make a "to-do" or task list. My lists usually include a mix of items such as reading and studying, reviewing online databases, checking online catalogs of libraries and archives, ordering documents, calling a relative or two, planning a research trip, and ... filing more documents.

Ready! Set! Go!
Now that you have gone through this organization and preparation process, you are ready to renew your research, either in general or on a long put-aside person or line. You will have to develop the self-discipline to evaluate the data you find, enter information into your database -- and don't forget those source citations! Try to keep up with your filing.

Genealogical research isn't as finite as one of the cold cases we see presented on "Cold Case." Our research involves much the same type of investigating methodology and evidentiary evaluation, but one person (or case) flows together with other people's lives and events. It's really a large puzzle. We are searching for the pieces and reconstructing lives and events to gain a better understanding of who our ancestors were and, by extension, who we are.

Happy Hunting!
George

Visit George's website for information about speaking engagements.

Listen to "The Genealogy Guys" podcast each week at http://genealogyguys.com, download it, or subscribe to it. It's easy and fun!

Join George and eleven other genealogical speakers on Genealogy Cruise 2006, hosted by Fly Away Travel. The seven-night Caribbean cruise departs on 29 October 2006 on Royal Caribbean Line's luxurious new Mariner of the Seas from Port Canaveral, Florida, for stops in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. The at-sea days will be filled with more than seventy genealogy presentations. For more details on this great cruise, please visit the website.

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