Wondering How to Organize your Documents?

In the process of researching our ancestors, we create quite a lot of documentation.  What to do with it? First of all, because I have lost my research before, I tend to back up in several places, Dropbox, external hard drive, jump drive and hard copies.

I love Dropbox, because when I am traveling around doing family history work, or as now, living in China it gives me access to my records where ever there is internet.  So if I need to quickly check a document for more information and I can easily do so. The first 2 gb that you use is free and that will hold a lot of data. I have a yearly subscription of $99/year USA but then my husband also uses it for his work we store a lot of material on it. I have been using it for a couple of years now and have found it to be a wonderful addition to my data management. It's one down side that I have found is that the various family history software doesn't change computers well.  If I am working at home on my IMac and I link the documents to a folder in Dropbox, the link doesn't always carry to my laptop or the computers at the family history libraries where I work. So about 2 months ago, I began switching the documents relevant to the individual families to a jump drive so that when working in the software I can see the documents I have linked to the families without any hassle. If anyone has a fix for this I would appreciate the information.

The various surnames on my jump drive

On Dropbox and on my jump drive I create folders to file the information in.  The files are by surname and then by family.

So each line I am working on whether for myself or for a client gets their own folder,

Than within each folder I create more folders for each individual family by the fathers name.

This allows for easy access to the information I have stored on each family.

What good is it to retrieve documents if I can find them?

broken down by family in each file

Individual documents within a family file

I try to find as many documents on a family as I can.  From Military to Census and beyond.  As you can see from the blog I have posted a few here.  I also like to collect as many pictures and stories as I can about the family so that they are more than just names and dates.

I am currently working on collecting the descendants of my great grandfather Buell Tillotson.  Trying to see the effect of when two people fell in love, I know that my own immediate family has accomplished some wonder things and what cousins I know have also done some amazing things.  I felt it would be great to collect it in one spot so that our grandchildren will have an idea of who we were.



For instance, Lionel Tillotson, was a wonderful basketball player and played for the Brookston High School team.  He also had a scholarship to play for Purdue University, unfortunately, the summer after high school graduation on 2 July, he went swimming with some friends as well as his little brother Jim.  He was the first to dive into the swimming hole and unfortunately hit his head on a rock and broke his neck.  His brother Jim, ran 5 miles into town to get help for his brother, but he died 3 days later in Lafayette Hospital. I often think how devastating it must have been for his brother who tried so hard to save him.

Jim went on to be a star player for Brookston high school as well.  In fact, his wife would tell of going to Brookston to see Jim's brother Bud play and they would get standing ovations when Jim walked into the gym.  Guess he was a good player, I know he taught me how to play well.