Keeping Track of Family: Don’t Lose Anyone - Part 1

Keeping track of your family is difficult.  There was one road trip vacation we made as a family where we misplaced one of our 5 daughters.  Well, to be accurate, we had stopped for the night in Rawlins, Wyoming, and she got left back in the hotel room when we headed to the restaurant for dinner.  You’ll be happy to know that we found her. 

When it comes to genealogy, keeping track of family is no less difficult.  We are indebted to churches for keeping detailed records on baptisms, confirmation, marriages, deaths, and many other details of life.  In my own searching efforts, records from the Netherlands’ Dutch Reformed and Catholic churches have kept track of my wife’s ancestors lives back into the 1500s.  The records go back further, but they start to stretch my ability to decipher the handwriting from digital images. By 1811, the Dutch government started recording and maintaining birth, marriage and death records.  Which, thankfully, are far more legible than the handwriting of 16th century priests.

In the United States, government tracking of vital records comes much later.  My Barnes and Day ancestors lived along the frontier, homesteading in Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington when they were just territories, or shortly after they became states.  In many instances they didn’t stay long. As a result, vital records are few and far between for my family’s births and marriages. For example, in Washington State some counties started recording births in 1891, but it didn’t become mandatory until 1907.  As a result there is no record of my great-grandmother’s 1880 birth. Deaths are easier to keep track of with cemeteries and monuments marking the events.

My pedigree chart

For families trying to keep records on their own, it became common in the 18th and 19th centuries to have a family bible to record critical information.  Family bibles were valuable gifts, and were handed down for generations. For my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents, family records were hand written or typed on family trees and family group sheets. Kept in a “Book of Remembrance”, or stacks and stacks of binders.  In addition to pedigree charts and family group sheets, my personal records include a lock of my curly, blonde baby hair.

In the last 30 years, genealogy record-keeping has moved into a variety of computer programs, cloud storage, and online shared family trees.  Keeping Track of Family - Part 2 will discuss the benefits and disadvantages of current family record keeping options.