Cleaning Up Your Genealogy Files

The ongoing process of cleaning up genealogy files will be never ending. No matter what you do today there will always be changes to the formats used and information requirements involved. Thomas MacEntee is currently embarking on a program called a Genealogy Do-Over. This is something I have done for several of my family lines from time to time. Creating clean files, especially within online genealogy family trees, is critical to our ongoing research. Using a systematic format of recording information is the basis of researching.

Today I discovered that someone has extended my Tidd family back several generations. The changes are recent and yet there are no sources or notes to indicate how the information was accumulated. In hopes of starting a dialogue about this family information an email was sent to the contributor. The chance of a response is about 50/50. Within five hours there was a response and it was very interesting. The responder noted that they are only related by marriage, but "simply put all the pieces of the puzzle together that were already there." The person is "an unofficial full time volunteer who tries to fix things when I can." They, "put much effort into this, and it is refreshing to receive thanks instead of hate mail for their efforts."

While some of the new information included birthdates in the 1500s, it is probable that the information either came from parish registers, probate records or other community records. Some of these records were microfilmed years ago, but recently were digitized and provided online to researchers. There were records from Norfolk, England for the family that were recently noticed on familysearch.org. These more recent ones are from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, Hampshire, England also from familysearch.org. Now it is important to go back and compare the information from both locations.