Feb 28 2008
Technology
I’m pretty sure that I’ve been able to get into genealogy at the best time. Nine years ago, when my mother began this research, she wrote to a lot of people, she visited a few of the local historical societies, she talked to the living relatives and she managed to work out a decent pictures of her WINSTANLEY line, who began in Leeds, York, England and ended up in Collingswood, Camden County, New Jersey.
A lot of the resources I’ve been able to use were not available to my mother (she’s especially sore about that 1930 census coming out after she no longer had the time to devote to it) and I’ve not only surpassed her research, but I’ve been able to go further back and flesh out the ancestors she put me in touch with.
I have a very small budget when it comes to my genealogy — I’m unemployed and I usually can’t spare more than $50 a month to devote, sometimes a lot less so I have to be careful where I spend my time and money.
The three things I recommend are as a follows:
HARDWARE
A single disposable camera. I know it doesn’t sound like much a of a technological advantage and I’m sure most people have graduated to digital cameras. I don’t have the money and my local CVS is usually running a deal — two for one is my favorite. I take my instant camera to the local cemeteries, to the places where I know my relatives grew up to take pictures and even take pictures of landmarks where my family lived in Salem and Cumberland counties of New Jersey, just to take home the memory of where my grandmother’s family lived for nearly a hundred and fifty years before she married and moved to Camden County. So, for you genealogists on a budget, I wholeheartedly recommend a disposable camera.
SOFTWARE
I’ve tried a lot of software — from managing my entire family tree, to managing the documents I have, to even managing my research but I have to say that the piece of software I could never live without is my Excel. I find that I like being in control of my own information, how it’s formatted, how it’s sorted and even how it prints. I use it to plan my research trips, to organize the information I’m going to post on this blog and even to find out what I don’t know. You don’t have to use Excel, since it can be expensive, but any kind of spreadsheet program is definitely recommended.
WEBSITE/BLOG
It’s so hard to narrow this down because I do have a list of sites and blogs I check faithfully, but the other day my mother and I were having a discussion about this and I knew that in the coming months I was going to have cut out all but one or two subscriptions and I have to say that I knew right away that this site was one that I wouldn’t dream of cutting, even though it’s a huge chunk of the budget and that’s my world deluxe subscription to Ancestry.com. I know a lot of people will say that but there’s a reason for it — it’s true. Especially for someone like me where just about all of my known foreign relatives wandered here from England and most of my lines have been here since the late 1700s or early 1800s. Even if the only thing Ancestry could offer were their census collections and the BMD indexes, I would feel that it was worth the price of $30. Do I wish it were less? Sure, but I’m okay with what I get for my dollar. Thank God, Ancestry has a lot more, of course. A great military collection, access to some decent vital records — it’s worth every penny.