A mess of documents - Part 3

Marriage Records

When I browse marriage records in one of my surname folders, I want to know immediately who is getting married and to whom.  I feel uncomfortable putting only one party to the marriage in the file name for a few reasons: 1) Both the bride and groom may be my ancestors; 2) If an individual was married multiple times, I want to know which marriage the document is for by spouse name, not by year - I can't remember years for everyone, but names ring bells; 3) Having a second name is another way, like including a middle name or year, of distinguishing John Doe from his son, nephew, and father, all also named John Doe.

I use the following format for the image file of, for example, John Doe marrying Jane Smith in 1950:  Marriage_Doe_John_Smith_Jane_1950.

Whose name should come first?  If only one of the parties is related to me (like if it's the marriage of an ancestor's sibling), the ideal situation would be to have my blood relation's name first.  The problem is that I want all file names to follow the same format so no guesswork is involved, especially if I share the files with others.  Absolute consistency (although I'm sure not absolute workability) requires one gender or the other to always be listed first.  For marriage records of direct lineal ancestors, both parties will obviously be related to me by blood, so I can't use a "blood relation first" rule in these cases and will be forced to choose who is named first.  I might as well be consistent through all of my records by always having a particular gender listed first.

So why the men first?  In the United States and other countries, women have traditionally taken their husbands' last names.  Men will not change their names throughout their lives, so I can easily trace them from file to file.  A woman who gets married will be more difficult to track because of her name change.  Additionally, all of the children will presumably have the husband's last name (at least at birth and growing up).  Listing the husband first will, in my surname folder system, put a couple's marriage record in the same folder as the birth records of all of the children, amongst other important records.  This helps keep the family together in one folder, at least until the female children age and start families of their own.

Place Names and Sources

Tina previously commented on my post, "A mess of documents - Part 1" with her own file-naming techniques, which include abbreviations to indicate the state in which an event took place and the source where the document was found.  I do not include location or source names in my files, but I think both of these are great ideas!

Place Names - I seriously considered including place names in my document titles but chose not to for a number of reasons.  The primary reason is that my family simply did not move around much once they settled somewhere.  They almost always stayed in the same state or province, so I pretty much know where they are and when.  Place names would be beneficial in my particular family tree to distinguish between towns or parishes.  Unfortunately, these cannot be as easily abbreviated as state names.  I guess I'm "lucky" because my ancestors' non-migratory (is that even a word?) habits make them easier to trace and confirm as "the right people."  The downside is that I can either 1) include sometimes incredibly long town names (Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, anyone?) in my already-long file titles or 2) do what I currently do- open each file if I want to see the location.  I think for now I will choose option 2.  In the future, as I become more familiar with the places my ancestors lived, I'd like to create easily identifiable abbreviations for the town names.

Sources - My images primarily come from Ancestry.com or FamilySearch, and the types of files I get from each tend to be different.  I also started keeping a detailed log of what I research, when, where, and the results of the search, so that keeps track of my sources for me.  However, I think Tina has a really good idea to also identify the source in the file name itself.  I may be incorporating sources into my own file names in the future.  For now, doing so wouldn't help me keep track of my research since I already am keeping track in a different way.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tina so much for commenting on my earlier post with her methods for labeling document files.  It's great to be able to compare techniques with other researchers, and I hope this blog can become more of an exchange of ideas, stories, and information like this.  After all, we can all learn from each other.  I recommend everyone take the time to visit Tina's blog, Generations Past!