Day 10: Organize Your RSS Feeds

When the World Wide Web was first created, one of its advantages over the information sources that had come before was that a web page could be changed, adding new content, removing outdated content, and fixing errors. But this advantage was also a bit of a curse, because it meant that you might have to check a web page on a regular basis to see if it had changed, and of course, some web pages might not change for months or years, if ever. What if there was a tool that would keep track of online content, notifying "subscribers" if the content had changed in any way.

This became especially important when the first blogs were created, as people would want to follow a particular blog and be notified when there were new posts. In 1999, a solution was created: a special kind of web page in a particular format whose primary purpose was to keep track of changes to some other page or site. This new file format was called RSS, also referred to as a web feed or news feed. But even with the new file format, it was still necessary to have special software that could track the RSS feeds for dozens or even hundreds of different sites (again, especially blogs), so that one could be notified when there was new content to read. This special software was called a news aggregator or feed reader.

Google jumped into the arena with its own feed reader in 2005. Google Reader became perhaps the best known and most popular reader software, and it remained so until Google decided to withdraw it in 2013. The software that filled the gap and that became the most popular alternative is Feedly, and it's the one that I personally use to keep track of hundreds of blogs, many of which are about genealogy.

Genealogy blogs remain a great way to keep up with the latest genealogy news and to learn new tips and techniques. Feedly allows me to check all of those blogs in a matter of a few minutes, showing me only those with new content. I can scan the titles of each blog post in Feedly, seeing if it interests me enough to open the item and read it. Once I have passed through my entire Feedly list, I can mark all the items as read, so that I won't be shown them again. (I can always search through Feedly later if I want to go back to something I read earlier or that I might have skipped over.)

The free version of Feedly lets you follow up to 100 different sources and organize them in up to 3 different categories. 6.5 years ago I opted for a paid lifetime plan ($99.99) that gives me unlimited sources and categories, no advertising, faster updates of the feeds, and options to save blog postings directly into Evernote or OneNote. (If that amount seems steep, you can go for the $5/month plan, to see if Feedly is doing what you need.)

How do you organize your RSS feeds? You may be using your feed reader for more than just genealogy, although even with just genealogy, you could end up with a large number of different sources. In that case, you might want to group together those sources into feeds such as Companies (many have their own blogs), DNA, and Other. I also use Feedly for blogs that are about things other than genealogy, so I have feeds for Education, Libraries, Tech, Science, and Podcasting.

Once you've subscribed to your blogs of interest and grouped them into feeds, you're all set. You can start Feedly as often as you like. I'm usually in it myself a few times a day, just so that I don't get too overwhelmed, and I'm able to scan across all the blogs I follow in a 15-minute session. You can also use Feedly to see which blogs you're not really reading, and then unsubscribe from those.

Rather than my waiting for weekly or monthly email newsletters to see what's new in genealogy, I find that using Feedly keeps me on top of what's new. If you're not reading genealogy blogs, consider starting, and if you're trying to keep up with lots of them, try a tool like Feedly to save time.

Sample Ancestor Profile

Those of you who subscribe to Genealogy Guys Learn may already have viewed the video, "Bring ‘Em Back to Life: Creating an Ancestor Profile." It explains a methodology for taking every piece of evidence you have acquired, arranging it in chronological sequence, rereading it as if you have never seen it before, and creating a profile of your ancestor. The profile makes you think of everything and to identify gaps and inconsistencies. You can then develop additional research goals and plans. It is one of my favorite ways of attacking brick walls!

Here is an abbreviated example of one ancestor profile for my paternal great-grandmother just to illustrate the format.

Lydia Lenora PATTERSON

(13 November 1833 - 28 August 1914)

YEAR                                                   EVENT

1833 -    Born 13 November 1833 in NC.

            Source: Obituary, Charlotte [NC] Observer, 29 August 1914.

            Source: Baptismal record at the Davidson Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

            Source: Membership record at the Davidson Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

1835 -    Brother, John Newell Williamson Patterson, was born 5 December 1835.

            Source: Tombstone, Davidson Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

1840 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of William PATTERSON and his

wife, nee Elizabeth McCuen Caroline POTTS.)

Source: NARA Microfilm publication M704, Roll 365, Page 319.

1840 -   Sister, Elizabeth Patterson, was born ca. 1840.

            Source: 1850 Census. Microfilm publication M432, Roll 637, Pages 33-34,

Dwelling # 545, Family # 548.

1846 -    Brother, James Patterson, was born ca. 1846.

            Source: 1850 Census. Microfilm publication M432, Roll 637, Pages 33-34,

            Dwelling # 545, Family # 548.

1849 -    Snow on 15 April 1849 killed wheat, corn and cotton crops and badly damaged fruit crops.  Harvest that year was miniscule.  Patterson family donated money for relief of the

poor in the area.

Source: Alexander, J.B. History of Mecklenburg County from 1740 to 1900. Charlotte:

Observer Printing House, 1902.

Source: Letter from Lydia Lenora Patterson to Joseph McKnitt Wilson dated 27 December 1855.

1849 -   Sister, Alice Patterson, was born in 1849.

            Source: 1850 Census. Microfilm publication M432, Roll 637, Pages 33-34,

            Dwelling # 545, Family # 548.

1850 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of William PATTERSON and

            wife.) Microfilm publication M432, Roll 637, Pages 33-34, Dwelling # 545, Family # 548.

1850 - Attended Salem Female Academy - Receipt for $50.00 advance fee and for 1850-51

school year in my possession.

1856 -    Married to Joseph McKnitt WILSON, 8 April 1856, Mecklenburg Co., NC.

Marriage license on file at the NC State Archives.

1856 -    Accompanied husband in a move to Charleston, SC, where he attended medical

            school.

1857 -    Husband graduated from medical school in Charleston, SC. Returned to

             Mecklenburg County, NC.

1857 -    Ida Elizabeth WILSON born on 4 March 1857.

1859 -     Isaac Lawrence WILSON born on 8 December 1859.

(1860 Census for NC, Mecklenburg County, Western Division, Charlotte P.O.,

Roll M653-906, Page 152, Dwelling # 531, Family # 580. Record shows age as 7/12ths.)

1859 -    Ida Elizabeth WILSON died on 12 January 1859.

1860 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.)

Microfilm publication M653, Roll 906, Page 152, Dwelling # 531, Family # 580. Record

shows age as 26.

1861 -   North Carolina seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States of America on

            20 May 1861.  The Charlotte Mint was seized by Confederate soldiers.

1861 -    Mary Martha (Mamie) WILSON born on 12 December 1861 in Davidson (Mecklenburg)

NC.

Source: Obituary from Rock Hill (York) SC newspaper dated 9 February 1955,

             reporting her death on 8 February 1955.

1864 -    William Elmore WILSON born 27 April 1864.

1865 -    Emory Lee WILSON born on 12 July 1865.

1867 -  Harriett Idella (Della) WILSON born on 7 January 1867.

1868 -  Joseph Patterson WILSON born 1 March 1868.

1870 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.)

Microfilm publication M593, Roll 1148.

1870 -    John McKamie WILSON born on 9 August 1870.

1873 -    Laura Augusta (Minnie) WILSON on 24 January 1873.

1875 -   Mecklenburg County celebrated the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

            Lydia Lenora Patterson Wilson participated as a member of the ladies' planning

            Committee.

            Source: Charlotte Observer, 11 May 1875.

1880 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.)

             Microfilm publication T9, Rolls 971/972.

1886 -    Father, William PATTERSON, died on 3 December 1886.

1887 -   Assisted with organization of Thompson Orphanage in Mecklenburg County, NC.

1887 -   Emory Lee Wilson married Dora Ester McKey on 27 November 1887

1888 -    Grand-daughter Dora Belle Wilson, daughter of Emory Lee Wilson and Dora Ester

McKey, was born 21 July 1888. 

(Note:  This child was born less than 8 months after the wedding of her parents.)

1890 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.) No

census records available.

1890-1891 - Worked with her husband and others to begin the Good Samaritan Hospital in

Charlotte, which was dedicated on 23 September 1891.

1891 -    Grand-daughter Susan Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of Emory Lee Wilson and Dora Ester

            McKey, was born on 19 October 1891.

1893 -   Isaac Lawrence Wilson married Belle Chipps, 5 April 1893, in Mecklenburg County,

            NC.

1893 -    Mary Martha (Mamie) Wilson married Thomas A. Barron, 10 May 1893, in Mecklenburg

County, NC.

1895 -    Grandson, Fred Lee Wilson, son of Emory Lee Wilson and Dora Ester McKey, was

born on 7 June 1895.

1898 -    Husband retired from medical practice.

1898 -   Laura Augusta (Minnie) Wilson married Jeter Earnest Murphy on 2 February 1898

            in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC. 

Source: Marriage license on file in North Carolina State Archives.

Source: Entry in Bible belonging to Laura Augusta (Minnie) Wilson.

1898 -    Jeter Earnest Murphy, husband of Laura Augusta (Minnie) Wilson, died of typhoid

            fever in Mecklenburg County, NC. 

            Source: Entry in Bible belonging to Laura Augusta (Minnie) Wilson.

1898 -    John McKamie Wilson married Jessie McAuley on 5 October 1898.

            Need marriage location.

1900 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.)

Need census information.

1901 -   Home was destroyed by fire on 16 July 1901.  House was a complete loss.

1901 -   Following the fire, Joseph McKnitt WILSON and Lydia Lenora PATTERSON moved in with

            their son, Isaac Lawrence Wilson, and his family while their home was being rebuilt.

1902 -    Isaac Lawrence WILSON died on 20 February 1902 in Spartanburg, SC in a freak accident.

            The car he was driving collided with a hay wagon, and one of the yoke arms crashed through the

Windshield and went through his head.

1902 -    Joseph McKnitt WILSON and Lydia Lenora PATTERSON moved into their rebuilt home in

            Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

1902 -   Laura Augusta (Minnie) WILSON married Samuel Goodloe MORGAN on 24 December 1902

            in Davidson (Davidson) NC.

Source: Marriage license on file in North Carolina State Archives.

1905 -   Grand-daughter, Mary Allen MORGAN, daughter of Samuel Goodloe MORGAN and

Laura Augusta (Minnie) Wilson, was born on 14 June 1905 in Mebane (Alamance)

            NC.

            Source: Family Bible of Laura Augusta (Minnie) WILSON. In possession of George G.

Morgan on 1 January 2004.

Source: Tombstone, Woodland Cemetery, Madison (Rockingham) NC.

1909 -    Joseph Patterson WILSON and Frances Lamb MIMMS were married on 5 January 1909.

            Need marriage certificate to verify date and location.

1909 -   Grand-son, Samuel Thomas Morgan, son of Samuel Goodloe Morgan and Laura

Augusta (Minnie) Wilson, was born on 18 December1909 in Mebane (Alamance) NC.

1910 -    Mecklenburg County, NC (Member of household of Joseph McKnitt WILSON.)

Need census information.

1910 -    Husband died on 26 July 1910 and was buried at Davidson Presbyterian Church

in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

Source: Church records at the at Davidson Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

1912 -    Interviewed by Charlotte Observer regarding family history.  States her residence

            at the time as being in Davidson, NC.

1912 -   Her brother, John Newell Williamson Patterson, died in October 1912,

1914 -    Died 28 August 1914 in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC. Buried at Davidson

            Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

            Source: Church records at the Davidson Presbyterian Church in Davidson (Mecklenburg) NC.

1914 -   Need information about will if any.

Information Needed:

Lydia Lenora Patterson's mother, Elizabeth McCuen Caroline Potts, was born after 1800 and before 1810, and died after birth of last child ca. 1850.  Need more information.

Need additional information about Lydia Lenora Patterson's siblings and their families.

Son William Elmore Wilson married Daisy Henderson - Marriage date and location unknown.

Harriett Idella Wilson married Richard Chalmers Knox on 6 July ???? - Marriage year and location unknown.

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Day 9: Organize Your Other File Drawers

When it comes to genealogy, there are hanging folder people, and binder people, and people who do both. Personally, I'm more of a hanging folder person. Whatever physical storage medium you use, the organizational principles work the same, but I'll use hanging files in my examples here. We've already organized the closest file drawer. How do you organize all the rest of the paper?

At the highest level, you may have one or more file cabinets. The ones that contain things you use a lot should be close at hand, the ones that contain things you rarely use should be farthest away (even in another room, attic, basement, or garage). Again, here I'm not talking about important papers, as those need to be in archival-safe storage containers, and kept cool, dark, and dry. I'm talking about papers that could be recreated as needed (such as copies printed out from online images).

Depending upon how much paper you have, you might have different file drawers for different ancestral lines (one or more drawers for the maternal side, one or more for the paternal side, unless there is some likelihood that your two main lines might be related). You'll then be organizing alphabetically by surname, perhaps by using drawer dividers to separate each surname. Then you'll want a hanging folder for a particular individual, so that you can keep all of the documents for that person together, arranged chronologically.

If you're just getting started here, then create surname sections for your 8 great-grandparent surname lines, and create individual folders for yourself, your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents. After that you can create the additional surname sections and individual folders as needed.

You may want to use another file drawer for things that aren't about individuals, such as maps or local history articles. These can be organized into hanging folders by country, state/province, and county or other geographic subdivision. You may need yet another drawer for organizations, software, or pretty much anything else that isn't about specific ancestors.

Day 8: Organize Your Browser Bookmarks/Favorites

Among the estimated 200 million active websites, there are many of some interest to genealogists. Cyndi's List has links to more than 337,000 of them. But if you're typing the URL for each of these websites, you're wasting a great deal of time. Your browser has a feature that adds a shortcut for any site you like, so that all you have to do is choose the site from your browser's menu. For Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari users, we're talking bookmarks. For Windows built-in browsers (Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer), we're talking favorites. (I'll use "bookmark" from now on, as that should apply to at least 85% of you.)

I would be highly surprised if you're not already making use of your browser's bookmark features, although you may not use it as often as you could. I'd be much less surprised to learn that you use the bookmark feature a great deal, perhaps to the point where you have so many bookmarks that you spend some of your time trying to find the one you need. This is where a better bookmark organizing scheme comes in.

Let's remember those two basic rules of organizing: (1) keep it as simple as possible, and (2) put things closer or farther away depending upon how often you use them. How do these apply to bookmarks?

Because bookmarks can be placed into folders, you might be tempted to create a hierarchical system where you have links inside of folders inside of folders inside of...you get the idea. But this would be a complicated system. You'd be better served by a system that is not nested too deeply (folders with subfolders, but that's it). If you have a large computer display, and you don't enlarge your displayed image too much, you may be able to have as many as 20 items at the top level (a lot also depends on how long each label is). I'd recommend keeping the top level somewhere between 10 and 20 items (either direct links or folders).

Unless you are accustomed to reading right-to-left, you're probably going to scan across your bookmark menu from left to right. This means that your leftmost links should be those that you use very frequently, from multiple times a day to at least once a day. For instance, my two leftmost bookmark menu items are direct links to Gmail and to Facebook. After those I have direct links to Feedly (where I read blogs) and to Wikipedia.

Once you have bookmarked your most frequently used websites and moved those to the far left of your bookmark menu, it's time to think about how to organize all of the remaining links. This is where you'll want to think about how your sites fall into categories. You might have a single folder for Genealogy, or you might have several (Records, Newspapers, DNA, etc.).  If you find yourself using any of the sites in these categories every day, then move them out of the folder and make them a direct link on the bookmark menu.

Sooner or later you'll get to some sites that you'd like to remind yourself of, but that you don't use often. These can definitely go into categories folders, and if you have a lot of these, into subfolders of the main folders. A main menu Surnames bookmark folder might be further categorized into subfolders for websites for specific surnames.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot depends on how long the bookmark label is. When you bookmark a site, nothing obligates you to keep the original site's long bookmark name. Edit its name so that the first word is the keyword, and delete any other words that aren't needed to tell you what the site is. For instance, if you were to bookmark the Ancestry.com site, it would give you a default bookmark name of "Genealogy, Family Trees and Family History Records online - Ancestry®." You could edit that to say nothing more than "Ancestry." Make the first word of each bookmark the most meaningful, so that you can scan down a list of bookmarks in a folder to quickly find the one you need. If you use one (or a few) more than the others, put those at the top of the folder. If all the links in the folder are used about as often as the rest, alphabetize them.

One more thing (that George reminded me about): Backup your bookmarks file!

RootsWeb Mailing Lists - End of an Era

Ancestry has officially announced the end of the RootsWeb Mailing Lists for new posts, effective March 2, 2020. The list archives will remain available for searching.

The history of these lists can be traced back to the mid-December 1987 launch of ROOTS-L, which began its life on a server at North Dakota State University. In August 1995, the list was moved to Apple eWorld, where it remained until July 1996, when it was migrated to RootsWeb, under the management of Karen Isaacson and Brian Leverich. Even after RootsWeb was acquired by Ancestry in June 2000, the lists continued to operate, and today, there are still over 32,700 lists.

In my own opinion, two things have led to a drastic decrease in the use of the RW lists: (1) the security, software, and hardware problems that required the taking down of the RootsWeb servers for a long period of time, and (2) the dramatic increase in the use of Facebook as a tool for genealogical communication.

Although I have long been a user of RootsWeb mailing lists, I became much more a part of the list community when almost exactly 8 years ago I took over the list administration for the RootsMagic-Users mailing list from Alfred D. Eller, who had created the list in September 2002.

I will certainly miss the RootsWeb Mailing Lists and the communities that they created. I hope that existing subscribers and posters will find alternatives where they can continue their conversations, whether those are on the Ancestry message boards, in the Facebook genealogy groups, or in other places (such as the support forums maintained by genealogy software vendors). My thanks to everyone who ever created a list, administered a list, managed the servers behind the lists, or  contributed to the lists. You should all be proud of the history you created.

Day 7: Organize Your Nearest File Drawer

From day 1 through the end of January, we have been and will be looking at a lot of different areas of physical and digital organization. But there are some underlying principles that apply to nearly any area to be organized. One is to keep things as simple as possible. The other, which certainly applies today, is that you should reserve the spaces nearest to you (physically or virtually) for those things that you need most often. The less often you need it, the farther away you should keep it so that it doesn't get in the way.

Although I recommend moving away from paper storage, some genealogists still prefer working with physical documents. To be frank, I would say that unique documents, those that are difficult or expensive to replace (assuming that they can be replaced at all), should be quickly digitized and then stored using an archivally safe system. You can print copies of the digital images for your regular files. But what if you want to work with those paper copies on a regular basis? In that case, you're going to need to file them somewhere close by so that you can review them as often as needed. So the nearest file drawer becomes especially important.

If you have a number of simultaneous projects going on (both genealogical and non-genealogical), and you're the type of person who needs to keep active projects visible, you may find using a stand-up file organizer on top of the nearest flat surface to be ideal. I suggest keeping the number of these folders to fewer than 10 (remember, keep it simple). Too many, and you'll be wasting time finding the one you need.

But what if you're the type of person who wants to avoid the visual distraction of all those folders? Then they go into the nearest file drawer, organized using whatever system makes the most sense to you. Each folder might represent a particular ancestor you're researching, a particular genealogy event you are attending in the near future, or (if you're a professional researcher, speaker, or writer), a particular client project, presentation, or article.

All your other files for all those other ancestors or for later events can be filed in other file drawers, farther away because you don't need them right this minute. We'll talk about how to organize those in a few days.

Day 6: Organize Your Top-Level Computer Files

By now, you've probably noticed that each day we're alternating between organizing physical items and organizing digital items. We'll do this for a few more days, although eventually, we'll be focusing exclusively on the digital side of things.

In the physical world, you'd probably have more than one file cabinet (perhaps even in different rooms), where everything in a given cabinet would probably be of the same type or topic. Then you'd have specific file drawers whose contents would be even more closely related, and then you'd have the usual set of folders and files inside in each of those. This has been how physical material has been organized since the invention of file cabinets in the late 1800s.

When computers were invented, and digital files needed to be organized, the metaphor of "folders" was taken from the real world. However, rather than dealing with file cabinets and file drawers of fixed size, we could have folders of any size (at least up to the size of the entire hard drive), and we could put folders inside of folders (inside of folders, etc.), so we didn't really need the separate idea of a file drawer or file cabinet. We just had folders (and the folders and individual files that lived inside of them).

How does your knowing this help you organize the files on your computers? Let's consider these issues:

1. Your computer's operating system may have a number of default folders at the top level, which may not allow you to change those very much, other than perhaps changing the order in which they appear. For instance, on my macOS system, I see listed in the category of Favorites:  Applications, Desktop, Dropbox, Downloads, Documents, and a few more (AirDrop, Recents, Google Drive, One Drive, and iCloud Drive in my case). Because I'm a big Dropbox user, I'm moving away from using Documents entirely, because this gives me access to all of my files on all my computer devices.
2. Whether you are using a cloud-based service (like Dropbox) or your computer's usual Documents folder, the important thing will be how you organize the folders within that, starting with the folders at the top level.
3. Some of the applications you install may create their own top-level folders. For the most part, you can ignore these, since your applications will handle all interactions with these folders.

So what else do you need at the top level (and how do you keep them listed first)? You start their names with an exclamation point (!), so that they will sort first above any folders created by your applications. You'll have one for genealogy (!Genealogy), or possibly two if you genealogy both as a business and for your personal research (!Genealogy - Business and !Genealogy - Personal Research). If you have a non-genealogy business that you use your computer for, you may have a !Work folder (or named after your company). And you're likely going to want one for home-related or personal things (!Home).

You may need an !Other folder to file those things that are not fitting neatly into any other category, or to move everything into until you have relocated the files to their proper top-level folder.

And you'll want an !!Inbox folder (note the two exclamation points) that will be the first folder, and you'll use this to put any new files that you haven't had a chance to file away elsewhere. Make a plan to visit this folder at least once a week so that files can be moved out of it and categorized properly.