52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #23: Come up with a personal genealogy challenge of your own

For this latest Challenge we are asked to come up with a personal challenge of our own.  My first thought was to set myself the task of finding the parents of Elizabeth Cosens who is the mother of my 6 x great grandfather Cozens Read.  But then I thought this would be silly to do for the latest challenge, because I have already been searching for Elizabeth’s parents over several years, so I don’t think it likely I will discover them this coming week!!

In that case, I needed a more realistic goal to reach in a week for this challenge and my thoughts turned to how much time I have been spending going through all the papers, documents, Wills and masses of other things that I have collected over the years, just looking for notes, as in my Madness Monday post a couple of weeks ago, and only this week I have been hunting for a letter that I have put safely somewhere in which my uncle is writing to ask my grandfather’s permission to marry his daughter, my aunt.  It’s so safe I can’t find it!!  And I have also been searching for my parish register transcripts that I made for a particular parish in Oxfordshire to double check something, and can I find that in my piles of paperwork, nooooooo!!!!!  I don’t throw any of these things away so I know it is there somewhere!!

So, for my own personal genealogy challenge this week, I have set myself the goal to get things well and truly properly sorted into proper categories in all my files and folders, so if I want to look for a family treasure, like my uncle’s letter, I can put my hands straight on it.  If I want to find a particular parish register transcript I will find it straight away instead of searching through pile after pile of mixed paperwork.  The same with Wills and Certificates and so on.  And if possible to do more than that, maybe I will also separate these things into maternal and paternal sides of the family piles!!

original photograph taken by me and in my private collection - copyright 2010

The photo only shows a tiny fraction of my piles of paperwork so you can imagine how long it takes me to go through it all when searching for a particular something!!  I have been wanting to get properly organised for quite a while now, but just never seemed to get around to it, and now this challenge has been set!!!

So, by the coming Friday, I hope to show a different photo once I get things properly sorted.  As there is so very much stuff, I don’t think I will have all the sorting done completely, but certainly in a week, if I set to with determination, I might surprise myself.  I will let you know how I get on by Friday!!  Wish me luck!!