Your Quick Tips

Ancestral Greeting Cards
I have begun copying old photos and mounting them on cardstock to create greeting cards for my grown kids and other relatives. They can add them to their family history notebooks, if they wish. Especially good are crazy snapshots of their parents taken when they were young. You can buy envelopes at office supply stores in many sizes.

Pat Blake LaRock

Donate Research Time to Silent Auctions
I support a number of charities and non-profit agencies. Many of these agencies have auctions (silent or live) as part of their fundraising events.

I often offer ten hours of genealogy research and advice as an auction item. I am not a professional or certified researcher, but it’s a good way for the agency to gain (usually) between $500 and $1000 for their work, it’s not a strain on me, and the winner gets to deduct most of the cost as a charitable deduction.

If the winner is new to genealogy, I can easily spend that time getting them started and organized. If they are experienced, I can help them work on specific research, or help by being a “different pair of eyes” on their problems.

I enjoy learning about different kinds of records, or records about different locations, since the winners’ ancestors usually came from different places than my own. And even some of the “losing” bidders are motivated to start our addictive hobby!

Jeff Lewy

Twenty Questions
I have been doing genealogy research since January of 2006. It’s not a long time compared to many, but long enough to have a list of at least twenty questions I wish I could ask my ancestors about their children, way of life, certain good/bad events in their lives, funny stories about their parents/grandparents, etc. Since I can’t ask them, I decided to think about my descendants instead. I made up a list of twenty questions I wish I could ask my ancestors and sent it to my siblings, parents, cousins, and aunts and uncles for them to answer and send back to me.
 
These Q&A papers will go into our family history I have been collecting, so that my future descendants will have answers to questions I never had myself.
 
Kim
South Carolina

NOTE: Kim was kind enough to share her questions with us and we’ve posted them here on the blog.

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: mailto:[email protected] . Thanks to all of this week’s contributors!

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the “Ancestry Weekly Journal,” please state so clearly in your message.

Click here for a printer friendly version of this article.

 

11 thoughts on “Your Quick Tips

  1. Ancestral Greeting Cards is a great Idea! I have done that occationally for a special person in the family.

    I am interested in your name “Pat Blake LaRock”. My Maiden name is Blake and my sister was Pat Blake. Would like to talk to you at the e-mail address above.

    Norma Blake Christie

  2. Would you ask Kim to send her list of “20 questions.” I think it would be good to share with your readers.

  3. I would also love to have a copy of Kim’s 20 questions. I hope she will be willing to share these. It sounds like a great idea.

    Thank You, Joan Lente

  4. I would really enjoy a copy of her 20 questions. I am often sending out questions to people in my family to try to get a better picture of who they are now so that someone like me isn’t trying to reconstruct our lives 50 or 100 years from now.

  5. Lots of good ideas from readers! Norma, since they don’t print the email address, mine is [email protected] and we’ll see if it gets printed. Perhaps the blog would consider giving an option to let submitters say “okay” to publishing their email address? And, Jeff, I’m trying your idea of research help as a silent auction item in 2 weeks. Hope it sells! Thanks.

  6. I too would love to receive a copy of Kim’s 20 questions. I am new to genealogy but would love to add this type of information to my genealogy for future generations. You have my permission to send my email address to Kim if you would. Thank you very much!

  7. Kim I also would like the 20 questions. I send messages to cousins and there families trying to pry the names out of them and I don’t know if they or spouses delete or what happens, but I only had one divorsie correct her maiden name.
    So I’d love your approch.
    My address is [email protected]. I will send along a new one when Timewarner takes over.

  8. Kim- Would be interested in seeing your 20-questions that you came up with, if avaiable. Thanks. -Rick

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *