I can’t believe that this is the last weekend in August and Labor Day weekend just around the corner.

However, it is time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings and here is this week’s challenge:

1) What is next on your genealogy “To Do” list? 

Like Randy, I have several items on the list, but one is definitely on the top. Although it is genealogy-related, it is more on the tech side of things.

1. One of the goals that has been on my genealogy to-do list for several years is to clean up my software and to complete a relatively easy re-organization of my genealogical e-files, which only involved renaming a few files to correspond to the maim files on my computer and my several backup files.

In June, I went through the double sets of files – main and backup – and renamed or moved a few files so that both sets mirror each other. I added copies for the few I had forgotten to back up, nestled a few files under main files and made sure all matched up correctly.

Of course, moving a few files and renaming them created some broken links in my software. I knew that would happen, but it had to be done and the broken links were way less than 100, so it wasn’t bad fixing those.

Those steps were completed for both my and my husband’s family trees.

That brought me to the final step — working on the source citations. In reality, I have four trees with very different ethnic (locality) branches. Those are my paternal and maternal lines plus Dave’s paternal and maternal lines.

I began with my paternal branch, which is by far the smallest branch given that the Slovak village church records only go back to the early 1800s with no other records in existence.

That branch is now finished and all cleaned up! I’m very proud to say I even used RootsMagic 7 citation templates!

It was relatively (pun intended) easy because I’ve decided that family photos will not be cited as I’ve inherited 99% of those. For the very few that I’ve received from others or found in some unexpected place, I have described the discoveries in the Person Notes.

For the many newspaper articles I’ve found, instead of using the source citation templates, the pertinent information is held in the image name I’ve given it.

So, my next ‘to-do” items are to complete the process for my maternal line and then do the same for Dave’s family tree. I think I can have everything done by the end of 2022.

When all this has been completed, I will migrate everything into RootsMagic 8.

2. As for genealogical work, I am still on the fence about this, but am considering creating databases of the church records for my paternal grandfather’s Slovak village. It took me about 3 months to do the same for my grandmother’s village of Udol, but the poor handwriting was a bit easier to manage because I was already familiar with so many of the surnames in that village. Most of them had family members who migrated to Passaic, New Jersey.

My great grandfather, Stephen Kucharik, by all accounts wasn’t an easy man to get along with and, unlike my other immigrant lines, I haven’t been able to build a FAN club for him. Stephen, wife Maria, and their two children arrived in the 1880s with no other known family members or kinsmen.

Another wrinkle in my church database plan is that while Stephen’s direct line was all Greek Catholic, Maria’s father was Roman Catholic and her mother Greek Catholic, so to be fair, I’d have to create two more church databases. Like I said, I’m still on the fence about this project.

3. The last item on my current “to-do” list is to take a new look at those families who have been ignored for a long time. As I go through my software working on the clean up, it’s easy to find those families and learn more. The best example of that is William Tarbox and my discovery of his 20 day stay in the Maine Insane Hospital before he died, followed by one of my best ever resource discoveries – those Maine patient records that have been digitized and put online.

I might only have three projects on my “to-do” list, but they are lengthy enough to keep me busy well into 2023.

Thanks, Randy, for this week’s SNGF challenge.