There are so many genealogy rabbit holes, and so little time to fully explore them. I have written several blog posts a day for over 16 years, and I have been lax in adding the information I write to my family tree database in RootsMagic. Every day I vow to get "a round tuit." But there are always more rabbit holes to go down and they are more fun than the task of adding transcribed information (probate records, land records, pension files, obituaries, articles, vital records, etc.)
1) Ideally, I should add content to a RootsMagic profile every time I write a blog post - an efficient researcher would add the transcribed content to a note, craft a source citation, and add a record image link immediately after downloading, transcribing or summarizing a record. I tend to do that for probate records, but not always with land records, vital records or obituaries.
For the past few days, I have been going back in time to find my blog posts for the "[Surname] in the News" blog theme. I was writing a weekly post for "Seavers in the News" and another for "Vauxes in the News" because these newspaper articles reveal information about families in my family tree that may be unique. In each blog post, I include the snipped image of the article, a transcription of the article, a source citation for the article, some commentary on the article, a brief sketch of the person's life (birth, marriage(s), death), a brief list of children, and a comment on my relationship to the person. All of this is done so that a family member can find the article in a Google search.
2) Here is an example:
I wrote "Seavers in the News -- Frank Seaver Dies in 1964 in Moretown, Vermont" on 19 May 2022.
And further down the page is the transcription, the citation, and my commentary:
3) It is a relatively simple task to Copy the text of the transcription, the citation and the commentary from the blog post, and then paste it into the Note section of the person profile in RootsMagic. Here is the top of the Person Note page in RootsMagic. The Note section is on the right panel:
I usually put the short life sketch of the person at the top of the Note, followed by the obituary, and then any other notes about other records that I might have. I usually have to edit the Note in order to organize it and make it readable because the RootsMagic note editor is fairly primitive. It usually takes me less than 10 minutes to do each one.
4) So this week I did about 40 of these that I've written in 2022. I have many more to do from before 2022 (there are over 500 blog posts for my "Historical Newspapers" link) and I will work on them as time goes by.
5) The end result is the person profiles in my family tree in my RootsMagic program, and by extension on Ancestry and FamilySearch Family Tree, are enriched. They are always incomplete - they are working sketches of a person's life. I do them more completely for my ancestors but don't do complete research for the relatives of my ancestors.
Whew. This rabbit needs to get a round tuit for some greens and carrots to carry on for the rest of the day!
Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.
Gosh Randy, your post reminded me that my Legacy 9 Family Tree software has a Stories feature for profiles. When the Stories note is accessed, there are fields for Story Title, Date, Place and a field for the story (up to 1,000,000 characters). It never crossed my mind to add biographical blog posts to Legacy 9 profiles—duh! I am so glad that you got a round tuit and wrote on this subject. Now that I have re-discovered the Stories feature I can follow your example and beef up my genealogy database. Ever so grateful for the tip. Take care.
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