Omigosh.  Omigosh! Obituaries are the mother lode of family information. My advice is to go slowly, line for line and word for word, to extract the greatest value.  Because there is so much detail in your average obituary, I literally don’t enter any new information until the preceding words have been combed, starting with the headline.

Imagine if the death date isn’t specifically listed (Widow Jones Died Sunday Following Car Accident), but you have the date the obituary was published (Wednesday, March 12, 1930). Legacy has a nifty tool on each person’s page that looks like a calendar page. When you click on it, you can use the calendar to go back in time and see what day of the month was the Sunday before Wednesday, March 12, 1930. 

OK, you could probably do that on your fingers, but maybe not if the time gap is between months.

Anyway, you’ll know for sure she died Sunday, March 9.  If the newspaper got it right.  And don’t assume the car accident was Sunday.  It might have happened days prior, and she didn’t die until Sunday. This is a good tip to check earlier issues of the newspaper to see if there is a story of a car accident.

And did you notice “Widow” Jones?  If you don’t have a husband listed for her, create one, using the name Husband Jones.  For his death date, input “bef 9 Mar 1930.” 

Wow! That’s a lot to think about, and that’s just the headline.

Continue on in the obituary. Usually it lists birthdate and names of parents.  Add the parents if you don’t already have them. Add Events to her page for religious affiliations, organizations, hobbies, education, employment, even the fact that she won blue ribbons at the county fair!

When survivors are listed, add them to your family tree, using the same source. If spouses of adult children are listed, add them to your database. 

For each child, record on their page an Event like this:
“Lived at the time of mother’s death 9 Mar 1930 Ivanhoe, Lincoln (County), Minnesota, USA.”

Repeat with each survivor, applying the correct relationship and residence at the time of death.  This notation can be very helpful later if you’re trying to sort out where this person lived when.

Be sure to fill in the deceased’s page with info on burial date, location and name of cemetery.

Of course, before doing any of this, you’ve scanned or downloaded the source document, named it according to your identification system, and created at Master Source. As you input each piece of information, you applied the source to those fields.  Brilliant!

This is the last of this series on how to get started with family history research. For more information, I recommend studying the Legacy software tutorials or viewing You Tube videos.

rI hope by now you’ve given up hope of creating the perfect family tree.  I don’t believe it exists.

The first rule of genealogy is “There Will Always Be Errors and Omissions!”

The second rule is “Review Rule One.”

Sometimes conflicting information isn’t because of anyone’s error.   My Grandma spelled her name Mabel on the inscription when she gave my Dad a gift Bible. Not sure what her monument says, but she was born in Mable, Minnesota, and at one time in that town, any parents naming their child Mable would get some free land. It’s spelled Mabel on some documents, and Mable on others.

My children’s second great grandmother was named Johanna Sophia, but her descendants can’t agree on whether her daughter was Johanna Sophia or Sophia Johanna.

My aunt Margaret was known to family by that spelling, but her monument says Margarette as well as at least one census record.

Speaking of the census! There’s a great place to find misspelled names.  I’ve found that one year everyone in a household was listed by their middle name! The original records were hand-written, so you can imagine the challenge they had when trying to decipher the digitized records.

Surnames, of course, often changed spellings over the years.  If someone spells Stillwell with only 3 Ls, I don’t rule them out.
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Monuments and markers are sometimes erected years after the burial.  Dates, therefore, can be easily confused.
That’s the beauty of saving scanned or downloaded documents and listing the source in the Source Clipboard.  Now you’ll be able to consult your entry and tell what the source was for any piece of information.  When someone challenges your info, you can reveal your sources and reason together.

“Too complicated!”
Using shorthand to ID photos like “Uncle Jerry’s youngest sister, Sarah” or “Grandma Wilton” won’t be  less complicated for future generations.  Every generation produces more Grandma Wiltons.  Now THAT’s complicated. How are they going to figure out who’s in the photo a few generations from now?  Probably they’ll have shrug their shoulders and give up.

It sounds complicated. It’s a bit difficult to explain.  But if you persevere and try it, you’ll be glad you did when you’re able to locate some obscure document or photo without pawing through stacks of paper copies or shoeboxes full of photographs.
 
“What happens if the Legacy family tree is not available anymore?” 

That’s something I’ve wrestled over a long time.  Is it a system that is useless without the MRIN and RIN numbers from the database on the Legacy program?

I’ve decided, no. If you are diligent about using both the identification numbers and names when you name the photo file or document image, you can search your hard drive for people just by their names.  When you look at the results, there should be marriage and individual numbers included in the file name.  Copy down those numbers and do additional searches. Future generations can benefit from those MRINs and RINs even if they don’t have the database.
 
“Can you make it less complicated?”

I think what makes it feel complicated is that you have to look up MRIN or RIN numbers for each person identified in the photos. It takes a bit of care to type in codes, names, dates and other notations. I can’t make that easier. I can only attest that the effort is truly worth it.
 
Do I have to code every photo and document like this?”

No.  Just the ones you want to be able to find quickly.  The main body of your photograph collection is snapshots.  I put these in one big file. I’m in the process of getting at least approximate dates for them, and a list of who are in the photo. The special photos, like birth, graduation and wedding photos get carefully labeled and put in a separate file.  Legacy makes it easy to link photos in this file to the program, so you get a picture of a person next to their information.
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I also delete a lot of duplicates and bad shots.  This is definitely a time when less is more.