Timelines and Christmas Letters, Correspondence

We had 7 in attendance of a wet, cool day. One, Cindy T brought a Xmas letter to share.
Some had never done this ever.

Gary Brock talked about the many things Wanda had done and put away that he wasn't aware of earlier.

So we discussed how to create a real useful piece of correspondence.

Not to much, not to little, clear and clean and concise.  

This applies to queries, and other pieces of correspondence.

Let's talk Xmas letter.

IF it is a genealogical relative, you should share your new finds and at least that you have them.

If not they are not interested in that but what your family did for the year.

I love using a calendar I use for yearly information.  It shares medical, birthdays, guests, surprise events, deaths, funerals etc. We had a wedding last year and a wedding this year.

If to busy at the time to enter in system you have it to go back to and verify. Distant birthdays, weddings, deaths are some times hard to file, due to how you feel about them and what is happening in your own world.

If you exchange medical knowledge with family members it needs added so no one is unaware of an allergy or reaction to a drug or procedure or newly discovered disease in family.

Not a long lengthy dialogue but mention it was brought to light and more information available if you wish to receive it.

We have many dear friends that keep us posted on their children now grown and their families. We look forward to learning how they are doing.

We have relatives that share family information and keeps us updated to events that may be coming up, ie births, marriages, school changes, graduations etc.

It can be a great running time line for your research papers.  Your future family members will be thankful for those letters.

We had a good time discussing various topics that apply to this.   Shared a Time line Paper, a Correspondence sheet,  Serious problems to be aware of: like many name spellings, boundary changes and no one's moved etc.  Some of these will be more seriously discussed in our Beginners
Classes we will be offering in the next year.

Also recruited more help to do these workshops and get beginners advice on needs.

Queries should be clean and simple also with added information to come later as requested or needed.

Name, place, dates, relationships are key in a query. The story should come later.