Week 48 Prompt: Thief

This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is “Thief.” I am not aware of any thieves in my family and had no idea what to write about for this prompt. Then I got to thinking about a record that has gone missing. I blame my filing cabinet—it stole my record!

Many years ago I had visited a cemetery where many of my Catholic family members are buried. I was fortunate enough to get a copies of the applicable plot cards on file that show who was buried and when; they also have a drawing of the burial plot.

I do have a filing system (I use Mary Hill’s system), but I’m not always good about filing things in their proper place (okay, so maybe I’m the thief?). I have a huge section of a file drawer that has “to be filed” items. Some of those items are there because I haven’t created a file folder for that family, or they’re there because I’m simply lazy busy.

A few years ago, a person related to a woman who married into my family contacted me for more information. This woman happens to be buried in one of those plots I mentioned earlier. But for the life of me, I cannot find the copy of the plot card (or any of the others)! It’s not filed in the family’s folder, and I can’t find it in the “to be filed” batch. Worse yet, I apparently never scanned the record and therefore cannot find a digital version of it either! (Although I did enter the information into my database with a proper citation stating “copy in author’s file,” ha-ha, very funny!) Every once in awhile I search for it, even though it’s been a few years since that person contacted me—yes, I still remember, and I’m still looking for the darn thing! I really believe that my filing cabinet is the culprit—that thief stole my record!

This little lesson reminds me that I need to be better about filing things away. Part of the reason I don’t is because I almost immediately digitize paper copies and am therefore not worried about the paper copies being in the right place. But when I obtained this copy, I didn’t have a process in place to digitize paper copies upon receiving them. Sooooo, what I’m learning right now (okay, really, I’ve know this for years!) is that I need to get my paper files back in order (create a bunch of new folders and file all the paper records that are currently in the “to be filed” stash). And, as I’m doing so, I need to verify that a digital copy has been created. That all being said, I think this will be one of my genealogy new year’s resolution for 2020. With any luck, the thief (aka, the file cabinet) will return my record!