During October 2023, my husband and I traveled to Alabama to pick up genealogical research from a cousin who had decided at the age of 91, to retire from this part of his genealogical life. He continues to research his direct family, but what was being handed down to me was 25+ years of research on the Johan Melchior Yoder children. Since I’m a direct descendant of one of those children, I was asked, to take over the responsibility. My mother had been involved in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s to help with the research on this line for the Yoder Newsletter. So, we picked up 35,000+ names in a FamilyTreeMaker (FTM) file plus the paperwork, well organized, that filled one 4 drawer filing cabinet. Plus, he gave me genealogical journals, maps, and books collected along the way that dealt directly with this family. It is expected that by April 2023, I will review, update and publish using the Yoder Newsletter, information on the seven family lines that descend from Melchior. But the question really became how do you get your hands around the gift? How do you begin to tackle that much genealogical information? Below is a picture of my hallway after we moved things back home. I anticipate across the next couple of months to write about the journey I’m taking to help others who find themselves the recipient of such a genealogical gift. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to tackle reviewing and organizing someone's research. In the first case, I received 40 boxes and 4 filing cabinets of material from my mother after her passing. My dad added to those files with 3 more boxes upon his passing. Although it seems like just yesterday, I’ve had over 15 years to work on all of those boxes. I still have almost all the books (15 of the boxes) and have digitized five more boxes of photographs. The 4 filing cabinets have been whittled down to just 2 drawers, with the rest being scanned and organized online on my computer. I still have the 1000 original letters my mother wrote and/or received as she was researching her family prior to the Internet explosion and working on the plans for those in the upcoming years. And all of the binders of research that filled the other boxes, still need to be re-organized, scanned and reviewed. My mother started research in 1943 (the first date on a research log that she kept meticulously for each family name). Her wish was that I put the material and information online so that others could have access to her work. Currently I have over 8700 names on my family tree, with confidence that the research done backs up their lineage. But I know there is much more to do.
Since October, my mind has been focused on the Yoder family. I’ve tackled two of the lines that I received from my cousin in Alabama. The first is that of Catherine (the youngest daughter of Melchior) and the second is of John (the oldest son of Melchior). In both cases, I chose to export from FTM just their line into a new FTM tree which really gives me the opportunity to focus on the singular line, and not get lost in 35,000 names. Catherine’s initial export was of 270 individuals. Today it boasts more than 900 sourced names that actually cover 6 generations. And although the number of names grew, the focus actually was finding the documents that proved birth, death, and marriage. The Yoder Newsletter pages (YNL- Introduction (yodernewsletter.org)) goal is to offer those doing research a way to find basic information about their family members, whether they are Amish or non-Amish lines. The reasonably exhaustive research is left for the articles published in the quarterly newsletter, which started in 1983 and is therefore celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. Often those articles are used to add additional facts to the individuals. When possible, I add to everyone in the FTM database newspaper obituaries, probate or will records, and military records when they are easily found to grow the historical background. The goal is to have for each child of Melchior, 5 generations of descendants that can be published. The hope is that eventually that will grow to six or seven generations for each line without publishing living individuals. I’m currently beginning the third child of Melchior, which is Benjamin, and it is the largest line that I’ve worked on so far, with over 1700 names in the exported database. My next blog will be about the steps I’m taking to compare the paper files with the content on FTM and make decisions about what information should be scanned and what should be kept in hard copy. Until then, happy researching!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2022
About this BlogThis blog has been designed to serve two purposes. The first is to leave the written histories of my ancestors.
The second purpose is to offer some of my own stories, so that my children and grandchildren can learn more about my direct family and my childhood. Categories |