I’ll just make a note of that

My digital record-keeping on my family history  is a bit slapdash. Notes are a prime example of this.

I’ve never used anything except a local note.  All my notes about a person are piled onto their individual record.  Noting a source in correct format depends on how logical I was feeling the day I made the note.  They range from Birth: found on 13 June 2009 at scotlandspeople online, GROS numbers incl (pat on the back there) to the cryptic J 09 online (worse than useless). I’ve also got what might be called personality notes such as Aunty Betty used to throw humbugs at her sister when they were 98 and 93 respectively.

Then there’s what I’ll grandly call research notes. Some of these are aide-memoires so that I don’t forget I’ve already tried a particular search route – don’t search 1750 Pettinain again – he’s not there, you idiot. That’s as bad as getting  to page 152 of a book and realising you’ve read it before.  Some are me playing Sherlock Holmes if John wasn’t her real father, the censuses show Fred the butcher visiting – does this mean that Mabel is Fred’s lovechild? Yet others are pure rants I’ve looked everywhere for this bloody family – how can seven children, two parents and a grandma vanish into thin air?

The problem with research notes is that it’s like being on a cruise ship – the view’s always changing. Out of superstition (in my head I say I’m just being careful) I keep the note from 2005 complaining about Aunty Mamie’s marriage not being in the records after 1854 but I also keep the one  (2008) that proclaims enthusiastically today found Auntie Mamie’s marriage in 1845 – who’d have thought it – her husband was Lionel Higginbottom & they had nine little Higginbottoms!

I don’t think there’s a cure for my slapdash ways.  If anyone ever reads my gedcom file now or in the future, they’ll have to put up with my eccentricities. And maybe, in the individual record that is RIP RC, there will be a note written by the descendent Rachel made this file, but what a £*&$%)($(* mess it is!

Photo by net efekt