What to do with all this information?

[SingaporeSlinky]

I’ve been researching mine and my husband’s family trees for about 6 months and have built up an extensive tree on Ancestry. I now obviously have hundreds of census returns, birth, baptism, marriage, military and death records, as well as newspaper cuttings and photos. How do I even begin to ‘present’ all of this?

I’ve seen basic trees printed with names, but these usually either only follow one line, or a very limited number of generations - because it gets huge very fast. I’ve seen a few examples of scrapbooks or photobooks but I can’t see how to begin organising it. Do you put your parents and all their children on one double page, then work back and mark it as ‘my mum’s parents’, ‘my dad’s parents’ etc. Do you include a photo of every record you found or just summarise/list their addresses, occupations etc, if that changed over the years? Do you include notes citing sources, or how you’ve verified you have the right people? E.g. we know this is the correct Joe Bloggs because grandma said his birthday was 2nd January and that matches, or the newspaper article about their wedding gave their address etc etc.

Ideally, I want to find a way to get all of the info out of my head and on record somehow. Ancestry is great, but every time my membership lapses, I can only see the timeline, not see the detail in all the attached records. But the thought of going in and manually downloading every single one and saving them to my computer is very daunting. Also, do you include your own comments about bits you find interesting, like ‘Richard’s youngest daughter can be found on the next census living 2 doors down with her own children’. Or Mary’s 2nd child was born in Sheffield, perhaps she was there visiting her brother.

Appreciate any advice from anyone that’s ended up finishing anything like this.

Yes, I include my own thoughts on the timeline, along with things I’ve been told by relatives and who told me.

And I’ve added all certificates etc on Ancestry. I just take a picture of it with my phone or iPad and upload it, very easy, and you can tag each picture in to several relatives at the same time.

In my family it has always been a folder so you can add pages but most of this was pre modern internet! Basically draw out the tree on page one then add a plastic wallet number to each person and include the info on them and how you got there.

@DustyLee123 do you mean adding photos to Ancestry? I’m talking about the opposite, so getting them off Ancestry and into some sort of computer filing system or photobook / scrapbook etc. For example I could choose a person in my tree and Ancestry has the timeline and all associated records. But what I want is my own version of that, so I would need to download their baptism, marriage, death record, census returns etc and then save them all somewhere.

How about old fashioned index cards? I'd find it really satisfying writing then up beautifully with photos. You can then lay them out in any order you like

"I’m talking about the opposite, so getting them off Ancestry and into some sort of computer filing system or photobook / scrapbook etc."

Sorry that I'm a bit late to this thread. There are various different family tree software programs so that you can download all your stuff from Ancestry onto your own PC. Here is a review of a number of them, they range in price from about £30 to £70:

https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/feature/family-history-software

Buy Family Tree Maker. It will sync it all from Ancestry to your laptop.

Will have a look into these, thank
you.

This is separate to how you store all your research, but with each family tree I write a sort of narrative summarising the key points that I have found out about each generation and anything interesting or unusual that I have come across. I try and present the evidence alongside each statement to support it, so parts of census, pictures of birth certificates etc. I include information about jobs, places people lived, family relationships and anything else I have gleaned. I may speculate a bit too, though I try to make it clear it is speculation. I use this document to accompany the family tree for anyone in my family who is interested in reading about it. I think it's important to keep a record of everything you've find out too, but sometimes it needs drawing together into the story of the family for other people (who haven't been immersed in it for the last few months!) to understand it.

I've been researching my family trees for about 12 years now. I have annual memberships for Ancestry and FMP, because I'm a wee bit addicted.

I've downloaded docs as I've gone along (as I'm aware that once I stop paying I'll no longer have access). All save as year/ type of document/ name.

I agree with @Saker that writing it out for others is a good way to share. I have actually written up one branch, for my elderly aunt who's not great with computers. I've done a diagram with the direct ancestors (name, year born to year died, occupation, place(s)), on two or three A4 pages in landscape (so my aunt could lay them out on a table). Plus a narrative of their life story, possibly a bit about historical context. The idea being that you read the story whilst looking at the diagram.

Even if you don't want to do a whole branch or tree, you can focus on one particular person or family of interest. Eg I might realise that today is the anniversary of an ancestor's birth, wedding, death and write up a short biography to share with family.

And I must look into the software resources that @Another2Cats has linked. I also want to 'bequeath' my research if anything happens to me. I've got a cousin who's very interested for that side of the family but no-one on the other side (but maybe they'll come to it later in life, as I did).

I much prefer having it all in writing too.

Although the paper isn't big enough for the tree so I usually do the child related to me, parents, grandparents, great grandparents.

Then again the relation but then add their spouses, siblings and parents.

Then I do another with their spouses and kids.

I'm probably making it harder for myself.

My experience is that most people find it difficult to follow things like Ahnentafel diagrams and they need a standard visual diagram to get it. However as has already been pointed out they can extend for metres!

I think you have to think about the purpose of it - do you want a list of names and places and dates or do you want something more interesting? eg my Great Grandfather was put in the poor house at the age of 3 so I am currently working on that city and experiences.

My husband's family only came to the UK in 1913 and before that information is very difficult to get. The family spread across the globe so I have compiled a book with photos and information as the amount of people is not extensive.

I do find Ancestry a good way to let people have access to the tree and most seem to be able to master some if not all of the info on the trees.

I attended a lecture at the Who Do You Think You Are show about data storage and it is complex. Look at the advent of computers and change of storage systems in our lifetime alone. Something tells me paper is not a bad idea in addition to other sources.

Thank you, lots to think about. I think a paper narrative is probably the way to go, with docs as back ups. I did recently try to show someone (who’d asked to see) but without the context of me explaining, I think they were overwhelmed with all the documents and needed me to explain what it all meant. From memory I was able to say “oh I found this interesting obituary that showed that the eldest son had been killed, and he’d been supporting his elderly parents so it left the rest of the family in trouble”. But I guess that’s the part that needed writing down into the story they could have read, rather than just a load of death certificates without context.

I bought four of those A4 book file things (sorry, not sure what they're called) with plastic folders inside. I bought four so that there was one for each grandparent and their ancestors. Then I made each plastic insert for one person, and put the census and certificates relating to them in there, along with a tree of their relationship to me. You could also use just a ringbinder and add sections.

"But I guess that’s the part that needed writing down into the story they could have read, rather than just a load of death certificates without context."

Yes, exactly this.

When explaining family history to people I've generally adopted a paper based approach as well.

As @DisplayPurposesOnly said:-

"I've done a diagram with the direct ancestors (name, year born to year died, occupation, place(s)), on two or three A4 pages in landscape (so my aunt could lay them out on a table). Plus a narrative of their life story, possibly a bit about historical context. The idea being that you read the story whilst looking at the diagram."

I totally agree with this and think it's a great idea.

I have done something similar a number of times. The direct ancestors on a simple tree printed landscape and then a separate word document giving the story of each person. Although I didn't include their occupation on the tree - only in the description. But there again, for most of the earlier generations of my family, the women generally worked as domestic servants and the men as farm labourers so it does get a bit repetitive. And many of the later generations of women all worked in the local jam & pickle factory or the local match factory.

"Plus a narrative of their life story, possibly a bit about historical context"

I've found that this really does engage people. For example, most domestic servants weren't working in the equivalent of Downton Abbey but rather a much more modest, middle class home.

Most of the family stayed in Gloucestershire but one of my ancestors moved away to London. She worked as a domestic servant from at least the age of 14. She worked for a couple who lived at 81 Hartham Rd, Islington, London N7. If you have a look at the google street view you'll see that the house is nothing great, but this is the sort of place where most servants actually worked:-

81 Hartham Rd, Islington, London N7

Others worked in Cheltenham, one at 5 Imperial Sq:

5 Imperial Square, Cheltenham

The feedback that I've got from people is that this is a great way of explaining things to somebody who has never come across Ancestry. Sometimes the Ancestry site can be confusing to use, especially if they have an older, rather slow, laptop or pc.

I've found that people are often interested to find out that their ancestors have been criminals. Our family are descended from a right bunch of petty criminals.

Just as an example, one of my great great grandmothers, Eliza (born 1834) worked as a domestic servant from about the age of 15. Then, when she was 18, she was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment in Gloucester prison with hard labour for the crime of “larceny from her master”.

The details given were:-

“For stealing, at Westbury-on-Severn, on the 3rd of January last, about half a pint of gin, the property of James Trigg, her master.” [for context, that’s just over a third of a modern day bottle]

That's rather more harsh than you'd get today for nicking a bottle of gin from the supermarket!

And entirely separately, her mother and sister were also sent to prison at about the same time. Her sister had stolen a table cloth, two dresses and some other items. She was convicted of stealing them and their mother was convicted of receiving stolen goods.

The census data can also give an interesting glimpse into life back then as well. At the same time that one side of my family were prisoners, another ancestor of mine was actually a prison warder at that prison.

At the time of the 1851 census there were 188 male prisoners and 25 female prisoners - along with two infants under the age of one - in Gloucester prison being looked after by 17 male prison officers and two female prison officers who also were resident there.

In contrast, the prison governor lived there with his wife and eight children along with the children's governess and four other servants.

In contrast to this, people are often also really interested in any family members that have served in the armed forces, especially if they fought in a war. This can be from the Crimean War, to the Boer War and then WW1 and WW2 and the Korean War.

Sorry, I've been rambling quite a bit. I just wanted to give some examples of how you can bring family history to life a bit.

@Another2Cats thanks so much, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Even reading your examples proved the point that it was the story I wanted to read. A load of dates doesn’t mean much, but the context of each person within their family, and within their time in history, or a city, is the interesting part. And actually it helps avoid some of the disappointment of hitting a brick wall with research too.

I’ve found some ancestors of mine were publicans in Sheffield and although I can’t seem to find their parents, I can find quite a few stories in the newspapers because pubs were often centres of the community in terms of events, and so their names popped up more than others. Another ancestor was a policeman and again, his name pops up often in the papers as the arresting officer etc, and finding out a bit of what his job would have involved (around 1850s) such as obtaining and keeping a horse at his own expense, is so interesting.

It’s certainly a lot of work, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Yes that's exactly the sort of thing I have done, and I have sometimes made it as birthday presents for people (if they said they wanted it!) - presented in book form with all the birth and death certificates and a family tree. It is so much more interesting and makes a lot of sense. With Google maps and streetview you can often get pictures of houses and churches etc. It's amazing how many stories there are in every branch of the family!

@Saker did you do the gifts as a digital book or paper copies? Can I ask how long it took you, roughly? I’d love to do this but it’s so daunting.

I did them as paper copies, partly because the people who wanted them didn't have a computer. I did large print too as their eyesight wasn't great. It wasn't particularly cheap when you included the cost of the certificates etc! I printed everything out and put it in a plastic presentation folder book thing with a fold out family tree.

Before I started I asked the person which family line they wanted me to follow and for as much info as they had already and then only got certificates for direct ancestors. I researched siblings at each generation too and a couple of these were interesting enough to follow up further and write more about (e.g. I remember one who had pushed the maidservant down the stairs and got sent to Broadmoor). It did take a while (weeks on and off) but I enjoyed doing it so it wasn't too painful. I am happy to send you an electronic copy if you would like to see.

@Saker I think I’m getting an idea of how to do it, it’s just going to be time consuming. I appreciate the replies though. I’ve used Photobox in the past for family albums so I think I’ll start by typing up all my findings for each family and try and flesh it out more with stories and context of the time, and see if it makes sense to try and make a book out of it. One obvious downside of that would be if any new information comes online in future, I wouldn’t be able to just insert a new page, so I’ll think about that as I go along.
Thanks again.

I’m just marking place for this as it is something I need to get sorted. I’ve also got stuff in Ancestry and FMP and in various folders. I was a data storage profess for 30 years. There’s no excuse.