It came to my attention recently that all the research that I have done on Ancestry would disappear forever if (heaven forbid!) the website ever went down. On Ancestry, when I "save" a document to my family tree, it is merely linking the document to a person on my tree. It does not save anything to my computer. I broke down and purchased Family Tree Maker, which syncs to Ancestry and supposedly saves everything to my computer, but I don't trust it completely. I decided to systematically save every piece of evidence one by one from Ancestry to my personal computer. After two years or more of research, this is a massive undertaking! The result, however is totally worth it. I now have a folder of primary documents that are labelled in detail and easily organized.
I started with my own profile and downloaded every supporting document. Each document is labelled: YEAR_LastName_DocumentName_PlaceName. For example, one might be called: 1859_Allen_USCensus_HancockIL. At the same time, I create a fresh research log on paper for each person, giving the date, event, document, and conclusions. I am currently on my 3X great grandparents.
This process is much more organized, and makes it easier to spot discrepancies and inconsistencies in my research. I am not making any forward progress on building our family tree, but I am certainly shoring up the foundation.
