Taking and keeping notes important to record keeping

Nina Brawn, Special to The County
13 years ago
I believe that keeping records well organized makes doing genealogy easier and more fun, but I’ll have to admit, I don’t always keep things the way I should. Recently I have been going back through old research. I was preparing my presentation on organization for a past Wassebec meeting, going through one of the first binders I had completed and I was dismayed at all the information I hadn’t put in. I found some interesting quotes about early members of the Briggs family, and I wanted to read some more, but I hadn’t written the name of the book from which I had taken it! I know the book came from the Connecticut State Library during my sisters’ and my week of research there, so I think I figured I would never have access to the book again. But I have since found several of the same books at the Bangor Public Library, so I was probably wrong about that, too. (Don’t quote me on that!)

It is especially important to keep good source records if you are a butterfly researcher like me — always flitting from one project to the next and back again. Also, very few of us have much time to devote to research, so it is critical that we be able to pick up where we left off and get back to previous sources if we need to. I was pleased to realize that I have gotten better about it.

The thing is, we are learning all the time, and you just never know when an old piece of information is going to come in handy. I had a bunch of letters written to my grandfather that he had saved. A few years later, in re-reading them, I realized that when my Great-Aunt Elaine referred to “Mr. Mather”, she was not referring to my great-grandfather, as I had supposed, but to her husband, Warren Mather. This sweet Southern Belle had referred to her husband, my great Uncle Warren as “Mr. Mather” all their married life. Since reading the letters the first time, I had learned more about social customs during that period. Knowing this helped me establish Uncle Warren’s death date, and so I was able to find his obituary. It also explained why I had not been able to find his father’s records on that date.

Cindy and I are inveterate savers, it’s funny how often we have saved a piece of paper we weren’t sure about only to find it a month (or years) later and have it solve a question we’d been puzzling over. Just yesterday we re-found a census record for our great-grandmother Bridget Gallagher in 1870. We didn’t think it belonged to her the first time, because there were two girls instead of the one we expected, but we saved it anyway. Now we know better, Bridget did have two daughters, and a son, we never knew about.

I have just decided that, “Now I know better” is my new genealogy motto.

Editor’s note: This regular column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society. The group meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501. Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com.