Hello Cousins! We’ve got another tip for you this week.

After putting all your grandparents in order last week, you may be left with information on all their children; not just your parents. What are you supposed to do with that? Is it really useful to you? Of course it is! You’ll soon learn as a family researcher that those lateral connections can offer great clues when you are having troubles figuring out who is who. You want to keep all that information as much as you want to keep your grandparents’ information. One great way to keep track of it is using family group sheets. Pedigree charts from last week do an excellent job of helping us see our direct line, but for each set of those parents, there is a family attached. I like to write the page numbers of the family group sheet to corresponds to someone after their name on the pedigree chart so I can find them quickly.

A family group sheet simply helps you keep the information you have on a family all in one place. You start with the parents at the top, usually, then fill in what you’ve found for all their kids, like birth dates, places and spouses. These, like pedigree charts, are easy to come by via free download on the internet. It may seem unnecessary to keep all this on paper with all the great online places to keep a family tree, but even in a digital age, paper copies of things are so beneficial. Showing what you’ve found to family is easier; if you are without internet but want to check on something, you have access; and if aliens attack and the world falls to pieces, you know who your Great Uncle Zadok was named after. 
This chart from BYU (https://sites.lib.byu.edu/familyhistory/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2009/06/family-group-record.pdf) is one of my favorites because the information is kept tidy and there is plenty of room for little notes.

Post by Abby Glann

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