DNA Matches in my Excel Research Workbook

I’ve been working on keeping a Research Notebook based on a single surname. For example, I have an Excel Workbook with worksheets for 4 generations of my Smith line starting with my great-grandfather. Each family has a worksheet for their Research Plan and Inventory. I have a single worksheet to keep track of all Land Transactions for the Smith surname in the counties I am researching including siblings of my direct line ancestors.

Recently, I was asked about a way to keep track of DNA matches in my notebooks. This could be an additional worksheet within my workbook. My family is quite a tangled mess due to lots of intermarrying, so if I decide that I want to attempt this in my Smith notebook, I’ll probably have to come up with a 2 color system to show if a match is related in more than one way to explain why the cM numbers are so high. For this post, I thought I’d show an example of what I did for my son-in-law’s DNA matches.

What I’m doing is creating a “tree” of sorts. The top line shows the common ancestor that a group of matches has. The row below that has all of the children for that couple. I decided to go ahead and include all of the children instead of just the ones that have matches to save me a little time later on as more matches become available. (Although I do have some families that have more than a dozen kids and I might rethink how many to include for those lines!) Once children are entered, I merge all of the cells above into one wide cell to show that Oscar and Louise are the parents of all the cells in the next row.

When entering the 3rd generation, I insert columns to have enough for those kids and after entering the names, I merge the cells above those children into 1 parent cell. (I usually have more information in the cells like full names, relevant dates, etc. but I switched to initials for this example because some of these people are still living.)

I have also done with with 4 generations with even more DNA matches, but the chart becomes quite wide at that point, so I didn’t want to use that as my example.

When I find a DNA match, I include the number of centimorgans and I add color to a cell to see the matches quickly.

In my son-in-law’s case, we don’t know how he is related to this family. If we did, I would include his direct line all the way back to the common ancestor to help determine if a match is a 2nd cousin once removed, etc. I’d then confirm the relationship makes sense by using the free Shared cM tool found on the DNA Painter website.

I do like the idea of having everything possible about a surname available in one master workbook, so this may be something for me to consider as well!

My Smith Research Workbook

It’s no secret that when it comes to organizing or keep track of genealogical information, my first thought is to use Excel. Each Excel worksheet has a different purpose. But for my latest project, I wanted all of the various worksheets to be easily and quickly located.

I’ve decided to try to collect information and write biographies for my “top 12” ancestral couples in preparation for a printed book to give to my children. I decided to begin with my Smith line because that line has been the focus of my research more than any other. When I began about 6 weeks ago, I was focusing on 1 ancestral couple at a time, beginning with my great-grandfather and working backward. But as I go through all of the records that I have and compare with what is now available online, I’ve decided that as long as I’m looking at indexes or going through a section, it will save me time in the long run to be on the lookout for all of my ancestors in the same line. Honestly, I keep getting pulled into the records for other members of this line anyway, so I feel like if I at least keep track of what I’m seeing as I go through these records, I can do a little better job of trying to focus on analyzing documents for one person at a time!

To be most efficient with this research plan, I’ve decided to consolidate all of my tracking forms for ancestors from a specific line into one “Smith” workbook. That meant starting with worksheets for 4 different families – Oliver, Elias, George, and John M. Smith. I have a Research Plan, Inventory Page 1, Inventory Page 2 and Land Sheet for each family. Four pages each for 4 ancestors led to a lot of tabs at the bottom of the screen once they were all combined into one workbook! And while it is nice to have them all in the same workbook, I need to have the smallest number of tabs possible to make it easier to find the relevant tab. So I began consolidating worksheets.

The first worksheet for a family is the Research Plan. I created these plans to be printed out, so when I look at them on my widescreen monitor, I have lots of extra space to the right of the Plan.

Lots of empty space on the right

I decided that because the Plan is the place that I write my questions and steps I plan to take to find the answers to those question, this would also be a good place to keep my 15-minute biography. Excel doesn’t handle large amount of text easily, so I highlighted a huge chunk of cells on the right side of the Plan and merged them all and then copied the biography into that mega-cell. This didn’t help me with consolidating tabs, but it did help me with having all of the information that I’m using for this project into one research notebook. And rather than adding research questions in my biography each time I read it, I can add them directly to the Research Plan. I will probably be tweaking this as the biographies get longer, so this will be an interesting experiment.

After adding the biography

I had two tabs per family for the Inventory. Just like the Research Plan, these sheets were created to be printed, so I had plenty of room on my computer screen on the right side of each inventory sheet, so I simply copied page 2 of the Inventory to be right next to page 1 of the Inventory.

Inventory Page 1

I did have to do a couple of simple layout edits to make this work, but I actually ended up liking it better because I don’t have to click back and forth between tabs to see all of the information I’ve been collecting in these inventory sheets.

2 Inventory Pages side by side

I can also customize these Inventories to help me collect as much information as possible in this one location. For example, because I now have the Research Plan in the same workbook as the Inventory, I don’t need a “To Do” section in the Inventory. Instead, I changed this section to be a list of Siblings and their spouses to help me notice possible relationships in Deeds and Tax Records. I also “compacted” my column for census records because no ancestor has an entry in every census year, although I created the sheet to have space for every census as well as state census records and non-population schedules, if desired. Once I was able to adjust the census section, that gave me room to include birth and death sections for the wife.

My final tab for each couple was to be the Land Record worksheet. I decided that it would be most helpful to have all of the land records for this surname together in one worksheet. This allows me to follow along when land is passed from father to son or when it is sold between siblings. I’ve decided to use colors in the cells to quickly distinguish between the generations because I do have multiple generations that used the same names for their sons.

After making these adjustments, I have gone from 16 total tabs in my workbook to 9 tabs. I have more information in the workbook now than I originally did, making it more useful while researching. I’m sure that as the project continues, I will continue to customize these sheets so that I am able to track all of the information of have found as well as keeping track of all of the locations that I have searched. Which hopefully saves me time and helps me to find every possible record that I can.

The last thing that I have started doing is to add a link to every document that I find so that if I have a question, I can quickly find the document with a single click.

If you’d like to download blank versions of these worksheets, you can find them all in the “Downloads” menu at the top of the page.

Don’t have Excel?

Today, I had a question from Susan. “If I don’t have excel on my computer, can I still use [the Ancestor Inventory Form]?”

The answer is yes! All you need is a free Google account.

Everyone with a Google account has access to 15GB of storage for e Mail, Photos and Drive. I use Google Drive to keep all of my genealogy files and I can’t imagine not having it. If you’re not using Google Drive, I’ve talked about how I organize all of my files with it here.

Even if you don’t have Excel, go ahead and download the file. If your computer is like mine, it will go directly to your downloads folder. From there, upload the file to your Google Drive account. When you double click the file, Drive will ask if you want to open the file using Google Sheets. Click that button and viola! You can use the file!

A hint about printing. When you try to print a sheet from Google Drive, it doesn’t quite fit on one page. I think that’s due to fonts, but there’s an easy way to make it work without having to do a bunch of editing to the file.

I use Ctrl+P to print. You will see a preview of the sheet and some formatting options to the right. You will notice that that the bottom of the form wants to move to a 2nd page. To fix this, simply change the 100% to lower number and everything will fit just fine. I don’t know if every system is the same, but on my system, to print a Page 1 (census tracker) I had to reduce to 93%. To print a Page 2 (records tracker) I only had to reduce to 99%.

If you already have a Google account but you’re new to using Drive, begin by going to Google.com. In the upper, right corner, click on the 3×3 grid of squares and then select “Drive” from the menu.

In the upper left corner, you will click on “New” and then select “File Upload”. Find the Excel file in your downloads folder and click “Open”. Google Drive will upload and keep the file for you to access from any computer as soon as you log into your Google account.

When you try to open the file the first time, you will be asked if you want to open it with Google Sheets. Once you do that, Drive will keep both version available in your list of documents. You can tell which version to click on in the future by looking at the icons. The Excel file that you originally uploaded will have an icon that looks like a large X. The Google Sheets version has a green spreadsheet icon.

To rename the document (so you can have a different file for different ancestors) click on the name of the file in the upper left corner while the document is open and change the name.

You can also change the name from the main menu of Drive. Just right-click on the file name and select “Rename” from the pop-up menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Research Plans for 2018

Why create a Research Plan? What does it look like? Would taking the time to create a Research Plan really help my research? In my experience – it’s a tremendous help!

A Research Plan is a place to organize your thoughts and to keep track of research that you have already done or hope to do in the future. It becomes my “brain” when I haven’t been able to research a certain ancestor in a significant length of time. What was I working on? Where have I looked and what did I find? What was I hoping to look at next?

My Research Plan is different from a Research Log. Go ahead and Google “Genealogy Research Log” and you’ll see what I mean. To me, the forms seems difficult to read. I need a form that works with the way that I think. What is my question, where have a looked? What did I find there? What do I still need to look for? I only have a short amount of time…what’s in the plan that I can work on quickly?

For me, the beauty of a Research Plan is being able to think about what I want to search BEFORE I actually start searching. I spend time every week surfing online for information on my ancestors, but it’s pretty rare that I get to spend a significant amount of time at the library. I know that there are things available at the library that aren’t available to me at home – including websites that the library pays for that I can use while I’m there. It’s wonderful to have a place that I can keep track of questions as they come up while I’m researching at home. It’s wonderful to have a place to keep track of which books or databases I want to look at when I DO get a chance to go to the library. And going to the library is usually a last minute, “Hey! I’ve got a free afternoon, so I’m heading to the library” kind of thing, so it’s wonderful to have a plan with book titles and call numbers that’s waiting for me so that I can jump right in as soon as I get there.

This is what one of my Research Plans looks like.

Click  here to download the file if you’d like to experiment with it as you read.

I use Excel for my Research Plan, but I don’t have the grid lines turned on for printing. That makes it look a little more like a Word doc. I use Excel instead of Word because I can have a tab for each Ancestor within the same surname group. So if I’m researching John Smith and I come across a hint for his son, George, then I can easily click over to his Plan and enter that new hint along with any questions it raises or ideas of where else I might need to look. I don’t have to stop my train of thought for my research on John, I can just enter the info in George’s form and then go back to what I was doing for John.

I use the top part of my Plan to keep track of Vital Statistics information so I don’t have to stop and look it up. Then there’s a “timeline” of counties lived in based on census records, but I can add additional information below to give some specific dates.

The Research Plan we be great for the “Genealogy Snacks” I’ll be writing about. It’s prefect to use it in short periods of free time. I keep it in my Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, including on my iPad. I can spend time just coming up with questions. Or I can spend time making a list of resources that I want to check out when I have more time. These sources might be books that I found on my local library’s web site or they might be microfilms that are now available on the FamilySearch web site. I can even include reminders to go back and check FamilySearch if the film I want isn’t available yet. If I don’t have time to go and look for a specific record online, I can at least try to find a link to add which will take me to the record source later when I have more time.

I also love knowing that I can hide lines within the document. When I’m ready to work on a specific question, I can un-hide those lines only. This helps me to think about just 1 question at a time. Here’s how this file looks with the lines below each question hidden.

Notice the FAN list at the bottom. I can include whatever type of information that I want in the Plan. Want to have a list of links to each census record for this ancestor? Include that! Want to include a list of children and in-laws? Include that!

So let’s go over a few quick things if you aren’t familiar with Excel.

To add color to a cell (such as in the timeline at the top):

• Click inside of the cell to highlight it.
• From the “Home” tab, either use the color samples in the Styles section or click on the paint bucket and select a color from the drop down menu.

To hide a line (or lines):

• Click on the number on the left side of the desired line. If you want to hide multiple lines, click on the top number and drag your cursor down to the last line you want to hide. This will highlight everything that will be hidden – in this example, I’ll hide lines 52 – 58.
• Right click and select “Hide” from the menu.

To unhide the lines:

• Click on the line numbers above  and below the lines you wish to reveal. In this example, I’ve clicked on line 51 and dragged my cursor to line 59.
• Right click and  select “Unhide” from the menu.

Did you also know that you can Hide and Unhide tabs? I’m not sure why you’d want to, but it’s nice to know that you could! Just right click on a tab and use the menu that pops up. Hiding a tab is easy, but if you want to unhide it, right click on any tab and click “Unhide”. A list of all hidden tabs will pop up and you can select the tab you want to reveal from the list.

To insert a weblink:

• Find the web page and copy the address at the top of the screen.
• Click in the cell you want to add a link to. (You add links to cells, not to text.)
• In the Insert tab at the top of the screen, click on “Link” and then paste the web address that you copied.

If you think this might help you with your research, feel free to download the file here!

 

 

 

 

Plan for Success!

I do the majority of my genealogy research at online sites. I am so happy with the amount of information that is now available online, especially through FamilySearch. But sometimes, the information that I’m looking for hasn’t been digitally recorded and I’m lucky that when I look at what’s available for a certain location on FamilySearch, they not only list microfilms, but also books.

Barren County, Kentucky example: 1 Film and 1 Book

If I see a book that looks valuable, I copy the name of the book and then look to see if my local library has it – and it usually does!

Because I don’t make it to the library as often as I’d like, I keep a list of books I want to make sure to look at when I do get a chance to go. The more planning I do ahead of time, but better success I have when I DO get to the library. I am able to prioritize what I want to look at and really think through exactly what I’m hoping to find in each book. This is the kind of thing I can do when I have a short period of time to PLAN rather than time to research. And I’m taking care of creating citations in the planning stage so that I’m ready to copy and paste a citation directly into my document when my brain is more engaged in thinking through what new information means to my research – when I’m more tempted to say “I’ll take care of that later”.

And how do you think I keep track of all this information? Excel, of course! I have created blank forms for the information.

I use my time at home to gather as much information as possible about the book as I can. I collect the full name of the book, author, publisher and the call number. Here’s where I cheat just a little. When looking at the book information on FamilySearch, I use the link to go to WorldCat and look up the book.

WorldCat link on every FamilySearch item

I then use the citation creator to go ahead and create a Chicago style citation and I copy and paste that into my form.

Then, if I add new information to my files as a result of this source, I have the citation ready, I just add the page number at the end of the citation. I doubt that my citation format is the “proper” format, but it works for me and it’s quick. I find that if I try to create my own citation, even from a template, it takes time and I tend to put it off.

I try to fill in as much information as possible before I get to the library, but I also print several of these to take along for the books that I find after I get there. For these “unplanned” books, I delete the text at the top of the form so everything is blank before printing. Here’s another cheat that I use a lot for these unplanned book – instead of writing everything down, I take a picture of the information on my phone and then I write on the sheet that I took a photo and then I add in the information when I get home. I can go back into my library website and use the call number to copy the complete title, find the publisher information, etc.

 

Often, I have my laptop with me and I’ll just go ahead and fill out the form while I’m there, but if I’m on a roll or feel pressed for time, I use the phone shortcut. Then I use the form to keep notes of what I found or didn’t find.

As soon as I find a book that I want to view when I get to the library, I fill in the form and I use the notes section to remind myself of anything specific I want to look for. When I’m actually looking at the book, I can add information about what the book covers or the condition of the book. Sometimes the layout is poor or it’s hard to read because it’s a copy of a copy. Sometimes there are 2 different book with identical information so I can add a note to save time from looking through both books. Sometimes a book gives me hints on other places to look and I’ll write that in the notes. But I always try to include what I searched for and if I found it or not. If I found something, I add the page I found it on. Anything I might need for my citation later or anything that will remind me if I need to come back to the book later is also included.

 

I’ve also included boxes at the top to let me know if the book has an index or not. Did I search the entire thing or did I skim it? Did I just look for a certain person? Did I look for every “Smith” in the book?

I have a similar form for microfilms. I use these forms whether I am at home or at the library. The blank for location is for the name of the library or website where the film was found. The WorldCat hint also works for microfilm citations.

Whether I’m scanning at a microfilm machine or downloading from the internet, I have place at the bottom for me to tell when the scans are located. The blue flashdrive? Dropbox? Transferred to external drive? In the “good old days”, I had several flashdrives in my backpack when I’d go to the library and I’d have to make a note about which flashdrive I had used. Things are easier now because so much is online, but I still like to keep track because sometimes, I don’t get back to the files right away.

The Excel file has 2 forms per sheet. But I also use the entire Excel Book to keep track of everything I find – kind of like a research log. To do that,  I copy and paste the forms so that I have all of the Books or Films for a particular county together in one tab. (These forms could also be easily edited to keep track of websites.) If you copy these to a new sheet, be sure to adjust the margin settings including checking the boxes to Center on page.

For these, I don’t worry about being able to print them out, so I have blank columns between the forms to make them easier to read. The forms are the same size, so I can include books and films in the same tab. Do not include the blank columns between the sheets if you intend to print them.

In this instance, my tab would be labeled “Barren County” and whenever I want to do research, I can see exactly what I’ve looked at and what I want to look at next. If my notes are good enough, I can tell exactly which book would be good to go back to if I find another person to research from the same area. I would have a different tab to keep track of resources in other counties.

You can find these forms in the Downloads tab at the top of the screen.

Happy Hunting!

DNA Tracker Full Sheet

Updated:

As usual, I have continued to modify my form and I find that some areas I don’t use the way that I thought I would. I also found a few other things that I wanted to keep track of, so I’m updating my workbook. The workbook now includes an example of how to use the basic information full page sheet, a blank full page sheet, a blank “doubly related” sheet and an example and blank DNA Circle sheet.

For the basic information sheet, I decided not to keep track of the Chromosome because I’ve found that to be less helpful that I thought it would be. Instead, I’ve started keeping track of when I contacted a person (I can include a date or a check mark and a smiley face if I got a response) instead of using my notes section for that. I can also indicate if I’ve added a match to my DNA painter profile.

I decreased the area for keeping track of “In Common With” matches because I’ve decided that until I get quicker with using my DNA matches in my research, I’m just overwhelming myself with matches that don’t have a tree.

In the Notes section, I can keep track of details from emails and I can indicate if I’ve added that person’s family “path” into my Public tree on Ancestry.

For my own organization system, I use the DNA Circle sheets as family dividers. In my example, I have a “circle” for John Smith and Sally Jones. I would add basic information sheets for anyone who matches that couple and place those sheets after the Circle sheet in the workbook. I also color code the tabs (right click > tab color) so that I can find the Circle sheets quickly.

I’ve included this new format in the downloads tab titled “DNA Workbook” or you can download it here.

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As I work more with my DNA matches, I keep finding additional information that I’d like to keep track of. I really like the Ancestry DNA circles, but unless information in two trees matches in pretty specific ways, the matches don’t show up in your circle. I wish there was a way to add people to a user created circle to help me keep track of those matches.

So I decided that I needed a way to keep track of “In Common With” matches to make a DNA circle of my own. Because I was always jotting notes in the margins of my DNA planner half-sheet, I decided I needed a full sheet version as well.

This sheet has the original layout on the left, but on the right side, I’ve included an area to keep track of “In Common With” matches. You’ll notice that on the left side, I have included my actual information. That is the email address that I use when exchanging information with people who are a DNA match for one of my kits. And those are my GEDmatch number, FTDNA number and MyHeritage name. Might as well get those out there for my cousins to find me with! I keep track of which chromosome we have matching segments on in the center column.

Honestly, at this point in my research, I mainly use Ancestry and GEDmatch, so if I need more space for GEDmatch kits, I rename the FTDNA and MyHeritage lines and use them for the additional information, but I wanted to show how it could be used.

All of the information on the right side is fictional. I wanted to show how you can customize your sheet by making some words bold as well as how I indicate a number of shared cMs. When I end up with a cluster of matches on a specific segment of DNA, I take a screenshot of that information and print it on the back of this sheet. (I’m not showing the kit details to protect the privacy of those matches, but I would include that as well.) You’ll see that on the left side of the sheet, the chromosome number 12 is in red to show that I have a screen shot of that information on the back of my page.

I still use my half-sheet for people that I share smaller numbers of cMs with or haven’t quite found a connection for or who I don’t have contact information for yet. But I’m finding this full sheet to be helpful for keeping all of my information straight in my mind.

You can find the sheet in the Downloads tab at the top of the blog, or by clicking here. Blank DNA Full Sheet

 

DNA Sheet – Doubly Related

As I have been organizing my DNA matches, I have found a surprising number of people who are related through 2 different lines. For these people, I have created an Excel doc that has an area for each tree.

For these situations, I have a page that is intended to be folded in half before adding to my 5.5 x 8.5 planner. If I ever decide that I need a larger book such as a 3 ring binder for DNA information, then I would use all of my sheets “as is”. No folding or cutting in half.

For these sheets, I have included a larger area for notes as well. As I research each line, I can keep notes on communications I’ve had with this DNA cousin as well as notes about documentation that I have found that tie the two lines together.

In addition to the 4 kits that I manage for my Mom and her siblings, I also manage a kit for their first cousin. When cM numbers seem “out of whack” such as when this cousin has a MUCH higher number of cMs than the siblings, I can use the 2nd chart to show that. He may be related through his paternal side (my Mom’s side) as well as through his maternal side – which my Mom and her siblings are not. Even through the 2nd chart will show a relationship that is not part of my direct line, it helps me to understand why the cM numbers seem to be inconsistent.

Click here to download this Blank DNA Doubly Related or find the link in the Downloads tab at the top of the page.

 

DNA Sheets for Genealogy Planner

I have jumped into the DNA pool with both feet. To say that it has become an obsession would not be an overstatement. And as I learn more about it and begin to interact more with DNA cousins, I have had to develop a system for keeping track of information. If you have Russell County connections and you are on GEDmatch, I would love to have your number to compare with my kits! I will add my kit numbers to the About Me tab.

I love the format that Ancestry uses for showing you how another user is connected to you based on their DNA plus Tree. If a person has a DNA match to you AND they have a tree with a common ancestor in it, they show that person’s path to the ancestor right next to yours. And if you are related through more than one person, they will show you that as well.

I want to be able to keep track of these connections as well as be able to track when a person’s DNA results are also on another cite – especially GEDmatch.

I have created several different sheets, but I thought I’d share them one at a time. I keep tweaking them as I use them more, but I’m pretty happy with this first sheet. After I post each sheet, I will update the Downloads tab at the top of the page to include every sheet.

 

My sheets are designed to go into my Genealogy Planner, so there are 2 sheets per page which are made to be cut in half and hole punched to fit in a 5.5 x 8.5 planner. The layout is landscape and the margins are .25 on the top and bottom, .2 on the left and right.

My first page is like a “Contact” page. I have the person’s name, if known. Many times, I won’t know a person’s real name until we connect through the messaging system on Ancestry or through email if I’m using GEDmatch. You don’t want to keep referring to someone as DrummerBoy once you know their real name! I have the Excel sheet set up so that the name that I type in this area also shows up on the side of the sheet so when I am flipping through my pages, I can find the name faster.

 

On the right corner, I have Paternal/Maternal. I simply delete the text that doesn’t apply. I keep these organized in my Planner based on my Maternal and Paternal Grandparents. Below that line, I have 3 lines for the surnames that we match on.

You can also see that in the middle, I have a column to keep track of which chromosome(s) we have in common. You cannot find this information on Ancestry, but any site that has a chromosome browser will allow you to see this.

In the next section, I keep track of user names for each of the sites that I use. It’s not uncommon for someone to have their results on more than one site, but they don’t always have the same name. So a test might be “B.C.” on Ancestry, “Aunt Barbara” on FTDNA and her full name on MyHeritage. GEDmatch assigns every kit with a number, but the person uploading the information gets to decide if they will use an alias or a real name.

In an area to the right that’s not meant to be printed, I have a chart to help me keep track of how many shared cMs each of my kits has with a cousin’s kit(s). I then use Jing to take a screen clipping of this information and I paste it into the area titled “cM shared”. On the right side, I have not merged the cells so that if I only have information for 1 person who matches 1 of my kits, I can use the lines to add that information instead of a table. So far, I have always ended up merging those cells and using my table, but I wanted to leave the option in there. I also try to always tell where the numbers are coming from because the different sites do not calculate shared cMs the same way.

In the bottom section, I have the Ancestry-like relationship chart and a blank line for me to enter the calculated relationship.

 

I prefer rounded corners on my boxes, so these borders are created by adding a shape on top of the cell. You must click in the center of the cell or your text will not appear because Excel will think that you are adding to the shape if you click on its border. If you find this frustrating, you can always delete the shapes and add a border around each cell. Text wrapping is turned on, but you can force a line return by typing Alt + Enter if you want to force the female name onto the 2nd line within the cell.

I have a 2nd sheet within the Excel workbook that includes blank lines for notes that can be printed on the back side of the contact sheet. Sometimes, my notes are nothing more than the date that I tried to contact a person, and I do have a short area for notes on the front for that. But sometimes, if a cousin and I are researching together, I also keep notes to help me remember what I’m keeping my eyes out for.

I hope you find these forms as helpful as I have! There will be more DNA sheets to come over the next couple of weeks!

Click here to download the Blank DNA Planner Sheet.

 

The Features of the Tax Database

Yesterday, I wrote about the benefits of tracking your ancestors through the tax lists in the county where they lived. Today, I have uploaded the companion video to go with the Excel file, which is available in the “Downloads” tab at the top of the blog.

Watch the video to see the features of the database and different ideas of how it can help you with your research.

A Roadmap Through Tax Lists

As I get further back in my family tree, I have to do a lot more detective work to find my ancestors because of the lack of vital records. Census records only appear every 10 years, and in Kentucky, there is no 1800 census so there are 18 years between statehood and a census record. Once you get into available census records and an ancestor “disappears”, how do you know if he died or moved away? How can you find out where he went? When did he leave? Who else went? Land records are often helpful, but can be difficult to locate and don’t usually indicate if someone is selling land because they are moving to a new location.

Enter tax records! I’ve had great success in finding tax records on FamilySearch for counties in Kentucky. My library (Allen County Public Library) also has microfilms of tax records for every county in Kentucky through the 1850’s, so tax lists are my “go to” record when I’m stumped.

Kentucky began collecting annual taxes from the very beginning of statehood in 1792. Every male aged 21 and older was to be included on the lists as long as they owned at least 1 horse. This means that an ancestor (or his children) didn’t even have to own land to be included on the list.

Beginning in 1795, columns were added to the tax list to indicate who had entered, surveyed and patented the land – helpful when looking for the origin of an ancestor’s original land in a county. In that same year, they began tracking the number of white males above the age of 16 in addition to those above 21.  By 1821, the tax lists were used to track the number of school aged children between 4 and 14. In 1840, this changed to children between the ages of 7 and 17.

All this to say that I spend a lot of time looking at tax records! When census records indicate that someone has passed away since the last census, if I can’t find a death record, I go to the tax records to see when their name was included last. Often, you will find a person paying taxes for the deceased individual or their heirs. That’s an important name to have! If I suspect that an ancestor moved to a new location, I look at the tax records in each location to see if their name disappears from one list and appears on the other list at the same time. I also try to track the other entries for the same surname to see if they were joining family or if family traveled together.

This means a lot of information to track! So over the years, I developed an Excel worksheet to help me to keep track of the information. As I would collect information for different years, I would add appropriate columns to the database to keep track of it all. Every clue to track an ancestor is worth keeping!

I’ve decided to make the form available in the “Downloads” tab at the top of the blog. I’ve also made a new video to show the different features of the form as well as different things to help you make the most of it. I’m planning to finish that video today and to post it tomorrow wo be sure to check back then!