[Genealogy] Organization Urges, Trips, Scanning Versus Photographing

[Michael John Neill]

In this email:

The Urge to Not Organize
Farmers But Not Landowers
Library of Virginia Research Trip
Midwest Genealogy Center Research Trip
Scanning Versus Photographing
Consultations

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The Urge to Not Organize
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I’ve been using Archion.de to access Evangelical church records in
Thuringia, Germany, for the ancestors of Johann Michael Trautvetter who was
born in 1839 in Wohlmuthausen. The records for many of the villages where
his forebears are from are available and, other than handwriting issues,
fairly easy to utilize.

It takes time to get to reading the German script and I have occasionally
had to ask for help with a word or to as I want to interpret things as
correctly as possible.

The problem is that it is fun to find things. It’s not always so fun to
organize those findings, put them in a database (or tree), and give
structure to the images that I’ve downloaded so that I can find them again.
I’ve also had to make certain that I’ve included enough information with
each downloaded image or file so that I can craft a citation later. That
means: type of record, book used to get record, page number, year of event
(as not all records include the year on each page), who originally had or
created the image, website used to obtain the image, and date of access.

I know some people enter each thing in their genealogical database as they
find it. When using records in a language other than English, I find the
stopping requires me to gear back up when I go back to looking at the
records for the next entry. When using church records, for example, I
prefer to find all the records for the children (at least their births and
baptisms) and the parents and then stop and work up the data entry. Then
when doing the entry, I can review what I have found as I’m entering it in
the database. Since I’m entering it in when it’s not as fresh, I find that
I catch more errors of one sort or another that way.

But, for me, when I’m using foreign-language records, going back and forth
constantly slows me down too much. I lose my place too easily and am
concerned I’ll overlook something. I also research more efficiently and
effectively if I switch between tasks of looking for things and entering
data too often.

Your mileage may vary.

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Farmers But Not Landowners
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Presentations on farming ancestors tend to focus on those who owned real
estate. It can be a challenge to research those farmers who rented their
ground, worked as sharecroppers, or those who worked in agriculture as farm
laborers. In this presentation we focus on these types of individuals
<https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/farmers-tenants-and-laborers/>.
Farm renters, sharecroppers, and farm laborers tend to leave fewer
records–we’ll
focus on research strategies directed towards them.
<https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/farmers-tenants-and-laborers/> They
can be challenging to research in a way that landowners are not.

Details at:
https://genealogytipoftheday.com/mailman/listinfo/genealogy_genealogytipoftheday.com

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Library of Virginia Research Trip--March 2026
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Join Michael for four days of research at the Library of Virginia in
Richmond this March.
https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/2025-library-of-virginia-research-trip-richmond-virginia/


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Midwest Genealogy Center Research Trip
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Join me for four days of research in Independence, Missouri, and the
Midwest Genealogy Center in May 2026. Details on our announcement page at
https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/mid-continent-genealogy-library-october-2025-research-trip/

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To Scan or Photograph?
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My mother has approximately 12 years of daily calendar entries in various
day planners and other similar fill-in notebooks. How to preserve them is a
concern. The entries are short and usually revolve around the weather,
farming, who called, who visited, and other short snippets of daily life.
They are not diaries with long, detailed entries.

So how to preserve them?

I’ve decided to take pictures of each page instead of scanning them. I
realize that scanning can create higher quality images. I also realize that
I’m not reproducing photographs here. My goal is to preserve the text and
taking photographs will be much faster than scanning. That makes the
likelihood that I actually complete the project higher.

And to me actually getting it done matters.

That time can then be used to create a guide to the entries. This guide is
not going to be a complete annotation of every day–at least that’s not my
goal at this point. My initial goal with a guide is to reference the
individuals she only mentions by a first name and indicate who I think they
are. The same can be done with farm properties (*eg*. “the Coeur place”),
local businesses (*eg*. “Casey’s), and the like. To me, the annotation
seems important as well as when I and my brother are gone, much of that
knowledge will be gone as well.

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Common Name Webinar
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Details on this presentation are at:
https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/2025/11/04/common-names-at-familysearch-full-text-webinar/

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Consultations with Michael
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Need help with your research? Schedule a genealogy consultation today!

https://genealogytipoftheday.com/index.php/consultations-with-michael/

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Michael John Neill
Genealogy Tip of the Day
http://www.genealogytipoftheday.com
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