Death Records Now

…Legislators clearly need compentency testing ! Citizens vote…The states/and FEDS collect taxes that are to preserve /protect the nation Yet our Congress refuses to ensure that votes are not compromised by failure to fund and enforce the simple requirement…Voters MUST be US citizens DUH..This is deceit and criminal fraud.
…Many states register "voters" based solely on utility stubs,local address, & maybe a DR liscense. Recently Texas was "embarrassed" to find that their prospective jurors were NOT US citizens..(seems the jury pool is taken from registered voter rolls)
…Why has there been NO demand ( or even noise) for a Federal data base that correlates birth/death records?States have had $ & time yet manyhave yet to complete record update(computer). In todays technological world, identifying a US citizen should be a few mouse clicks away. Yet every election, we joke about how many dead people vote ??
Government "by the people" or arrogant corrupt Congress?

Voters for federal office must be US citizens by law. State offices require voters to be citizens of that state (which in effect requires them to be US citizens). I’m not saying that there isn’t a huge fraud problem (there is – the laws are not being enforced well), just that it is already a requirement. A national ID is not the answer either. Laws are laxly enforced because some influential people whine that legitimate voters will be denied their vote if we make them prove they are citizens before voting but my belief is that those weeded out are likely to be those people who vote based on what others tell them they should do, ie, the people who are unwilling to prepare themselves. The US would be better off anyway if a greater percentage of those who do vote were knowledgeable voters. I’d also like to see the Electoral College strengthened as so many people are now squeezed into narrow strips along the four coasts that vast parts of the country simply have their views mainly ignored. It’s not a big state/little state issue anymore.

I’m hoping for some advice here. Normally, I would go to my mother for all things genealogical, but she’s more “old school” in that she’s used to dealing with hard copies that she has ordered and received. The majority of her research (the last 30+ years) was before the advent of ancestry.com, GenWeb, and online depositories put together by the individual states.

For most of my family lines, I’m the same way. My family is from Kansas/Oklahoma and North Carolina (so far). My ex-husbands paternal line is from Pennsylvania. All of which require you to write and order vital records directly from their local/state offices. Then it’s just a matter of scanning the received records onto my computer and inputting the information into my genealogy program.

However, my ex-husbands maternal line isn’t nearly as easy or clean-cut. They are primarily from Virginia/West Virginia which has started putting all their vital records online. So it’s easy to run a search of who I’m looking for and get immediate access to copies of their records. Then it’s off to ancestry.com or other sites to look up census records, burial records, tombstones, etc.

The trouble I’m facing now is that I just don’t know how to file the items on my computer. It started off easy enough. I had the main surname file for my mother-in-law’s maiden name. Within that file I had separate folders for her direct ancestors (Gma, Gpa, GGma, GGpa, etc.) with secondary files by their siblings.

For example:

I would have a folder for “Joe Blow” (Gpa) which I would save all his pertinent documents (birth, death, marriage, census records, etc.). Next to that folder would be one titled “Joe Blow Siblings”. Within that folder would be additional folders for each of his brothers and sisters.

Then, because I was getting into extended family, I would have subfolders for their spouse, their children, their spouses parents, etc. If I was doing any of the other lines, I wouldn’t be going that far right now, but because the files are online for the taking, I figured “why not”? Plus, I’m a little anal when it comes to blank spots, so I think a bit of OCD has kicked in.

Anyway, this is where the problem has arisen.

The family is primarily from the Cabell/Wayne County areas of W.VA and what I started to see what cousins marrying cousins (some 1st cousins, but a lot of 3rd cousins, 4th cousins, etc.). People have started to pop up in two or three (or more) areas of the family. In one spot they might be a spouse, then later as a brother, and then again as a 2nd spouse or something.

Obviously, the way I was doing it isn’t working anymore. I was going to start ending up with multiple folders for the same person and a billion shortcuts which would just cause even more confusion.

I’m sure others have run across this problem in small communities in which their families are long standing residents. Is there a better way to save the information to the computer? Has anyone figured out a good way to file their info in a way that makes sense, is easy to access, and limits the possibilities of duplicate individuals?

I’ve currently done away with the former system and just have all the saved files in the folder for my mother-in-law. But now I have over 700 files sitting there and several people with the exact same names (ex: Benjamin Franklin Doe, Andrew Jackson Blow).

Thanks so much for the advice!
Thanks Tom, I totally agree. And on a side note: I "enjoy" how someone gave you a thumbs down for your advice, yet didn’t offer any of their own.
Marci — Thanks for the tip! I had no idea this resource existed. I’m going to definitely check it out! Thanks again!

WOW! You are way more organized than I am. I file under my and DH’s 4 grandparent surnames with file-names that indicate the name or family the document concerns. Fortunately I have not had any crossovers. If I find a particularly interesting family, I might have a sub-folder for them. I feel so disorganized.

Lisa Louise Cook on Genealogy Gems has covered this topic several times on her podcasts, You might want to listen to some of the suggestions she and her guests have had.