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21 April 2013

Don't Slack off When You Are Excited

I recently discovered a probable sister of an ancestor for whom I have been looking for over twenty-five years. Once I located her, I made some discoveries of her children and other family members. When I went back to organize my notes, I realized that my handwritten notes were difficult to read, I had abbreviated both "baptism" and "born" with a letter "b," and I had neglected to indicate where I had obtained the names of two of the children.

I was able to straighten out the mess and the confusion, but it took almost as much time to do that as it did to do the research in the first place.

Don't let your excitement over a new discovery cause you to be hasty in taking notes and making citations. When you are trying to figure out where to go next, you will be glad that you don't have to "redo" your original research.

Your ancestors are dead-they are not going anywhere.

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