Trigger Warning: Family Violence, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, Mental Abuse, Childhood Abuse, Sexual Assault, Substance Use and Abuse. Please do not continue if any of the above topics trigger you.
Understanding the Impact of Generational Trauma through Genealogy.
This blog continues John Wayne Gacy’s genealogy. Please see blogs 13,14 and 15, which showcase Gacy's paternal and maternal lines back to his grandparents and his relationships with his own family.
Methodology
Every person who has taken on a large, complex project, especially a genealogical project, understands the need to stay organized to alleviate unnecessary stress, such as wondering at the last minute, "Where did I get that piece of information?" There is no worse feeling when you are getting to the end of a project and can not track down a source and are forced to leave that information out or stall your project until said source can be found. While I am not perfect at keeping my genealogy logs, I do my best to keep my research well organized starting from day 1 of the project. In this blog, I will show you how I organize my information on my computer.
Electronic Organization
Over the years, I have developed a solid methodology for storing and organizing genealogical data I find online. I have my personal genealogical information separate from that of my professional. If I am working on a project for a specific client, I will place a folder with the client's name in my folder labeled "Professional Research." I then have a folder titled "Admin" that houses any contracts or other items related to the business side with that client. I also put the research question and plan in that folder for easy access.
While every project differs, I consistently use the following organizational method for client research. It is in the client's folder where most of the organization will be found. Below is an image of how most projects are typically organized. It may differ from project to project depending on the research question. I hid the names in the example below but took the organization for a project I did where a client wanted more information about a specific side of her family, a side she was pretty sure had Jewish roots. She wanted to know about her maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, and their children.
Most of the genealogical research will be placed within the Genealogy Folder. In this case, there will be a folder labeled Maternal Grandfather, and another labeled Maternal Grandmother. The names of the individuals I am researching will be within each of these, organized by individual names.
Here is an example from my personal research on my maternal side:
Every person has their own folder, and I maintain order based on the information available while always thinking about the final product.
Percy's file had the most information, as this project focused on generational trauma passed along the Wright line through Percy.
While this may not seem like a lot, approximately 38 newspaper articles were organized in these folders. I rename documents by year/name to better "see" the timeline when working in any given folder. For example, the first document in the "Poor Farm History" folder is "1931 Poor Farm School Bluefield_Daily_Telegraph_Fri__Jul_10." In the example above, I was able to easily research information pertaining to Percy specifically, including information about poor farms in Mercer County, social service interventions in his early life, and a number of articles detailing his father's and his brother's crimes.
Organizing information via folders on your computer is essential to maintaining accurate genealogical information. While my organization method might not work for you, organization of some sort is necessary.
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