Journaling Timeline
I read a suggestion from Lauren which said, "I am also writing in a ‘blank book' journal about all sorts of things I remember from my growing up years."

If I might, I'd like to make a suggestion about doing this. I am seventy-five and shortly after getting my first computer about a dozen years ago, I started chasing down family names, facts, etc. and was bitten by the genealogy bug. In addition, I found that I craved more personal information about some of these folks. I decided to try to get my own "things" in order.

I have a computer journal in addition to a written one. In the computer journal I wrote down every year starting with 1932 and saved it on my computer. As I found time or as I thought of things I started filling in events that happened in certain years. I'd find photos of me starting school and the house we lived in when we lived in certain towns (my father was an oil field worker, so we moved a great deal). I added historical events--Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-E Day, V-J Day, and many other things. It got to be so much fun.

When I thought I was through, I sent copies to my children and they added events that I had omitted. I also add to it as medical events are occurring these days. It has become so useful for me in remembering when personal things happened in our family. Now I have a great timeline that has become a springboard for my own children to hopefully grow their own timeline from.

Jody

Black Back for Newspaper Copies
It may not be known by most people, but whether copying a newspaper a newspaper article for research or any other reason, insert a piece of black paper on the back side of the article before making the copy. Do not forget to also copy the masthead of the newspaper.

Warren Basore

Sources
I spent eight hours researching at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, for a lady in the town where I live. If she had added sources in her PAF file as to how she discovered her family members I could have been more effective in helping her. Although my efforts were not totally wasted, source information could have saved me lots of time to work on my own lines.

She has now included sources, which allows us to move forward. I will place even more emphasis on entering the "sources" in the PAF file as I teach others. Without the source we have no real way of knowing if these relatives are truly the blood relatives we are searching for. There was confusion as to whether her ancestor was Patrick or Peter. From the film I read it appears Patrick had the three children with the same wife but was called Peter when his son died. Looking at the source cleared up the confusion and showed that Patrick was indeed the true relative and ended the question making it possible to move to the next query.

R. Angela Vause

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: Juliana@Ancestry.com. Thanks to all of this week's contributors!

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