5 Ways to Get Your Family to Talk Genealogy

Why not talk about your favorite subject this holiday season? Genealogy!

How much better would it be to talk about genealogy at the holiday table than topics that make people angry?

The trick is simple: Give your friends and family something they can relate to before their eyes glaze over.

Here are 5 ways to tailor your message of genealogical obsession to the audience.

1. Speak to the Puzzle Fans

Genealogy has a lot in common with puzzles. You can solve them, but they take a lot of reasoning, logic, and effort. Does someone enjoy jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, word searches, or Sudoku? Speak to them.

Tell them how genealogy is like the world's biggest puzzle. It's always exciting to complete a section. But the goal is personal. The end result is a complete picture of your family.

Ask them to imagine a puzzle that big and personal. Then tell them about some of the mysteries you've solved. Or the ones you're still working on.

2. Lure in the History Buffs

Is there someone in the group who loves watching war movies? They probably love talking about their experiences, whether they were in the service or stayed at home.

Tell them about your ancestors' draft registration cards and military records. I have a newspaper clipping saying a cousin was wounded in action. And another saying my uncle was killed in action. I even have the eyewitness reports about his final mission and how his bomber was shot down. There's a You Tube video interviewing an old man who saw the plane go down when he was a little boy.

Get them to tell their stories, and find ways to relate them to the genealogy documents you've found.

The history buff will appreciate what you've learned about the soldiers in the family.

3. Give Reasons to Be Thankful

Your friends and family may be thankful that their parents made a better life for them. But chances are, they don't know much about their earlier ancestors.

I can tell my family a lot they didn't know. Our great grandmother was 5 months pregnant when she took a 3-week voyage to America in 1899. I can tell them that she'd already lost her first child. And I can tell them that she had 3 other siblings we never knew about because they died so young.

Tell them how your genealogy research explains why your ancestors left their homeland.

4. Satisfy the Curious

My mother loves all things Italian. That makes her curious about the Italian names and hometowns of our ancestors. I can lure her in by telling her the background to one of her favorite stories.

When she was born in New York City, her immigrant father declared her name "Mariangela". My grandmother, who was still recovering from the birth, later said, "Oh no you don't. It's Maryann."

The story had always been that Mariangela was the name of my grandfather's mother. But my research changed that story. There was a Mariangela who was my great grandmother's older sister. But she died as a baby. My great grandmother's name was Marianna.

That's ironic, because it's even closer to Maryann and would have been a better choice.

But I also found that Marianna often went by the name Mariangela. That's the name she used on the birth records of her children. So, it's possible that my grandfather didn't even know her given name was Marianna.

Genealogy makes the story even better.

It took genealogy research to learn the truth about my mother's namesake.

5. Educate the Non-believers

There will be people at any gathering who think DNA tests are a waste of money. "I know I'm half German and half English. Why should I pay money to see a pie chart?"

You can explain that people buy DNA tests for lots of reasons besides their ethnic pie chart. DNA testers can:

• Find unknown cousins anywhere in the world (There are so many people with my last name in Brazil.)
• Discover an unexpected relationship (My parents share DNA!)
• Connect with not-so-distant cousins (I found and met a 3rd cousin who lives a few miles from me.)

And some DNA testers can find a genetic reason for ailments and personality traits.

How many holiday visitors can you turn on to genealogy this season? Even if you don't convert anyone into an amateur genealogist, the conversation will be a lot more enjoyable for you. Happy holidays!

2 Ways to Give Your Family Tree a Checkup

Don't wait for an annual checkup for your family tree. Do it often.

Have you added any people to your family tree lately? Have you added or changed any facts? Then it's time for a checkup.

Even when you think you're being extra careful, mistakes can happen. Why not spend a few minutes every 2 months or so to find and fix your slip-ups? The things you forgot and the goofs you made will surprise you.

Here are 2 ways to give your family tree a checkup. You'll feel more confident about your tree after you've fixed some errors. You'll feel even more confident if you don't find any errors!

1. Run Family Tree Analyzer

The free Family Tree Analyzer program gives you one-stop shopping for all kinds of errors. Launch it, load your latest GEDCOM file, and click the Data Errors tab.

Check all the boxes to find these errors:

• Birth dates that are:
  
  • after the person's death
  • more than 9 months after their father died, or any time after their mother died
  • before either of their parents were 13 years old
  • after their mother turned 60 years old
• Death dates that are:
  
  • after their burial (yikes)
  • after they were 110 years old or more
• Marriage dates that are:
  
  • after the bride or groom's death
  • before the bride or groom turned 13 years old

Give your family tree a quick checkup with the powerful error finder in Family Tree Analyzer.

You may have what I call legitimate errors. For instance, I do have some babies who were born before one of their parents was 13. In one case, when I looked in my family tree, I found a note saying "The mother was 12 years old." That's more of an "unlikely" than an "impossible" feat.

I also have a baby born almost 11 months after his father died. But that's what the birth record says. I have a note wondering about the man who reported the baby's birth. Is it possible he was the real father?

If seeing all the errors at once is too much, click one checkbox at a time, and resolve or look into those errors.

2. Check Your Family Tree Software

The only family tree software I've ever used is Family Tree Maker. I hope that you're using desktop software for your family tree, and not keeping it only online. Building your tree online doesn't give you the same level of control. And you'll miss out on lots of features.

Every once in a while I check a few of the tabs in Family Tree Maker for errors. This time around I found several place-name errors. I'll bet they got messed up when I had a failed synchronization with Ancestry.com. But they were an easy fix.

In Family Tree Maker, look at these tabs:

• Check Media for images that are:
  
  • uncategorized
  • missing a caption, date, or other information
• Check Places to find any that are not properly categorized
• Check Sources to find any that have no facts associated with them

Each tab in Family Tree Maker gives you a different way to find errors.

If you give your tree regular checkups, your errors should be minor. Of course, your first checkup may be a bit of a shocker.

Make this a routine and keep your family tree healthy and hearty.

Work in Sprints to Strengthen Your Family Tree

If you work flat-out on only one task, you'll do it better and faster.

I started this blog almost 3 years ago with one idea. Encourage people to use business practices to make their genealogy research more professional. I think I've inspired a lot of you to treat your research more seriously.

Today let's look at a business practice that Information Technology (or IT) teams use. In a word: sprints.

You know what an athlete who runs a short distance at maximum speed is, right? A sprinter. A few years ago IT teams began using the term "sprints" to mean that they work together on one project for, say, 2 weeks. That's all they work on, giving it their full attention.

Sprint to the finish, keeping your focus on ONE genealogy task.

They find that removing all other distractions helps them do their best work on any one project. And this is true for us, too. Here's an example.

I keep a list of things I want to do to improve my family tree. I call it my "rainy-day genealogy list." Can you relate to any of these?

• transcribe my taped interview of Mom and Dad
• sort out my photos and add more to my family tree
• review my old notebook of Ellis Island entries for people I need
• review my brother's college genealogy paper for more facts from Grandpa
• file away everything that's in my temporary "gen docs" folder
• add details to all my ship manifest images
• search for documents for all the people with partial birth and death dates

I started working on the last item this past weekend—and only that item. I'm treating it like a sprint, which means I'm giving it all my focus and working through it completely.

What I do is sort the list of people in my tree by birth date. My tree is 90% Italians from the 19th century, and I have vital records from their towns starting in mid-1809.

In one sitting, I went through everyone I'd marked as born in 1809 through 1814. I searched for their birth record. Some were born in another town, so I went online to find their birth records.

And with that total focus, I solved most of them. At least 2 or 3 times I found that a person in my tree with a missing birth date was really someone else in my tree with a birth date. I needed to merge them, and then everything fits.

Tackle the problem one chunk at a time until it's through.

I've done this in the past with another limited project. I wanted to add full details to each census record image in my family tree. I created a format to use, and went through every single census image in my family tree's media tab. It took more than one sitting, but I got it done. Now, if someone finds my census image on Ancestry, they can follow the link to the original document.

Do you ever sit down to work on your tree with no specific goal in mind? I'll bet you're more likely to get bored that way.

If, instead, you pick one goal to work on, and give it your full attention, you'll get energized. You'll feel excited that you're getting through that goal. You'll have to hold yourself back from all the other goals you know you can finish.

Now, make yourself a short list of limited goals you want to achieve for your family tree. They should be specific ("add a census sheet image to each member of the family"), not open-ended ("see if I'm descended from royalty"). Pick one goal and make a commitment. You're going to work only on that goal and see it through to completion.

If it helps you, set a deadline. But only do that if that's what you need to light a fire under yourself. Personally, I get energized by seeing myself work through the pile. When I progress through the years of people with missing birth dates, that is my inspiration. When I work through all my ship manifest images to add missing details, I'll get excited when the bottom of the list is in sight.

Do whatever works for you, but take it seriously. Think of yourself as that sprinter on the track. Give it all you've got and set your new personal best.

If genealogy is your passion, you can strengthen your work in sprints. Tackle that backlog of tasks so you can move on to new discoveries.

Get inspired by organizational tasks:

• When to Use Estimates in Your Family Tree
• 4 Quick Family Tree Clean-up Tasks
• It's Time to Revisit & Improve Your Earliest Family Tree Research