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So, true story, I spent almost a decade in heritage digitization (ie. preserving, stabilizing, and then digitizing old documents).

As others have mentioned here, the most important thing you can do ASAP is to get a digital copy of the document. Unless you have an insane amount of fine detail on the page, even your smart phone camera should be fine (an iPhone, for example, should be able to capture the document at rough ~170 pixels per inch which isn't amazing, but good enough for a just-in-case), although if you have a DSLR with a decent lens, you'll probably get better results. I wouldn't get too caught up on perfect lighting either, but try to make sure it's well lit. If you are concerned about getting a really high quality representation of the document, I'd recommend taking 4-12 pictures of the document, focused on different areas, and then using a program like Hugin which is 100% free to combine the individual photos into one very high quality image. Hugin isn't extremely difficult, but it's not extremely easy either so if you go that route make sure to follow the tutorials, like this one.

Additionally, I'd highly recommend capturing both sides of the document, even if nothing appears to be on the other side.

For preserving until you can get to a professional, the thing to focus on is that acid is your enemy and humidity is very particular. The first thing I'd do is pick up something like this: https://www.amazon.com/BCW-Newspaper-Polypropylene-Sleeves-50-Sleeves/dp/B00IDCZ6DS/

Regardless of what you get, you're looking for the keywords "Acid-free" and "Archival" (ie. polyester, polypropylene, or polyethylene). Make sure to avoid anything made from PVC ( polyvinylchloride), which will damage the document.

On top of that, I'd then move the now sleeved document into something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Gaylord-Archival%C2%AE-Newspaper-Preservation-Box/dp/B00ZDHEN1M/. Your goal with the box is to protect the document from any sunlight, etc.

Finally, for where to store them? No attics, garages, sheds, or basements! Or any environment with extreme temperature shifts, humidity changes, etc. Personally, I'd move the box to the top of an interior closet (ie. not against a house wall).

That being said, I professionally was asked all of the time what the best long-term way to store a document was and the answer I think most people expected was digitally and online. The truth is, paper documents outperform anything digital on longevity by orders of magnitude. Your document might look pretty beat up, but if you take some sensible steps to preserve it, it's got hundreds of years of life left in it.

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I'm not entirely sure, but you'll want to store it in an stable acid free environment.
Make sure to keep it and other valuable family heirlooms and photos in a place where it doesn't get super hot or super cold or super humid (dont keep things like that in an attic where it gets hot and humid in the summer or in a basement where it gets cool and damp and where fungus tends to grow). Keep these sorts of things somewhere in your home that is temperature controlled-- like the main floor or second floor etc. Never in a basement or attic.

I would carefully wrap it in [acid free tissue paper] (https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Free-Tissue-Paper-Acid-Free/dp/B007I10F7M) and then store it in an [acid free envelope] (https://www.containerstore.com/s/acid-free-resealable-bags/d?productId=10005416&q=acid%20free%20tissue%20paper) or something similar. The same rule hold for any other family heirlooms or photos you want to preserve-- [acid free/archival quality tissue paper and containers.] (https://www.containerstore.com/s?source=form&q=archival+storage&submit=)

TL;DR: found out my great-uncle has a secret son with a terminal illness, and he still won’t acknowledge him. My grandparents (and everyone else in New Mexico) are related to each other.

I’ll share 2 stories related to 23andMe testing I had done. I tested my father, my mother’s father, and my mother’s mother’s brother (because my grandma has already passed on). So from this point I pretty much equate my maternal great-uncle with my grandma.

My father had a 1st cousin listed in his relatives who we didn’t recognize. Eventually the cousin reached out to me and asked me if I knew [name] which he had heard from his mother, and I said yes, that is my dad’s uncle. So this guy had been searching for his biological father because he had a type of end-stage disease which was genetic, and no one on his mother or supposed father’s side had it. This confirmed it, because my great-uncle and great-grandfather suffered from the same disease. I wanted to help him, so I secretly found out as much as I could and told him everything. The cousin tried contacting my great-uncle, but he didn’t want a relationship with him at all- the responses were not straight-up denials of being his father, it was like “good luck with your disease! Laters.” But I now have a long-lost cousin and we’re friends on Facebook.

Whew. Story 2. In New Mexico there’s a strong Hispanic culture that goes back hundreds of years. The DNA testing showed that my mom’s father and maternal uncle were distantly related- they share 0.92% of their DNA. 0.92% should be third-ish cousins, which I was sure they were not that closely related. My tree was already pretty far along at this point, but I HAD to find out how my grandma and grandpa were related, they weren’t even from the same part of the state. Eventually I was able to make so many connections, like 8th cousins, 7th cousins once removed, etc. I guess all those cross-relations added up, they shared so much DNA it looked like they were 3rd cousins. My coolest tree I made though, starts with one guy Miguel Quintana (1675-1748). It shows that my mom’s FOUR grandparents all lead back to this one guy. So all four of my great-grandparents are related to each other. So I have a very strong hunch that ALL Hispanic New Mexicans are related if you dig hard enough.

I’d recommend buying a fireproof and waterproof safe, which I bought for my artifacts at a hardware store. It’s never big enough, but at least it suffices for the most valuable items.

And just as a temporary measure, since you’ll handle some items over and over while organizing the collection, you can individually ziplock some items, to reduce skin oils. It sure beats wearing gloves. This way is also good so that you can jot notes on post-its and slap them on the ziplocks. Later when everything is sorted, you can remove the photos & docs from the ziplocks to put in a more dignified storage.

For some items, I’m having customized floating frames made, which is expensive, but should be worth it. Framing them isn’t for display purposes per se, but just to preserve. I’m still unsure about which to use - glass or acrylic. I don’t know if ink will leach into either one.

And for wrinkled documents that you’d normally put between two books to flatten out, I recommend these plastic sleeves instead. They’re great - not for putting anything in them, but between them. These are heavy rigid plastic sheets, and I lay a wrinkled document between two sheets. Since they’re transparent, you can see where the remaining wrinkles are, and reach in with a toothpick to straighten them out.
(20) 8.5" x 14" Document Topload Holders - Rigid Plastic Sleeves - BCW Brand https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KAENV2A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8.EuDb2F1RTWV

I have a lot of documents relevant non-relatives, so I scan them and upload them to findagrave.com so that descendants of these strangers don’t have to pay anything to view them.
issuu.com may be good if your documents are several pages long, like a book.

Lastly, if you buy binder sleeves, make sure they don’t have glaring branding printed on them like “Office Depot” for instance.

First of all, I'm sorry for your loss. I am also the family genealogist for certain family lines, and I've been getting more frantic about it in the last few years. My mother died just over a year ago, and her mother, my last living grandparent, died about a year before that, so that sort of pushed me to move forward with more effort.

While your question about what kind of records to look for is important, I think that it's very important to think about what you're going to do with them. I just wanted to share thoughts on a few items that I've found very helpful.

First of all, get a scanner if you don't already have one. If you have the means to do so, get one that does slides and negatives as well as photos and documents I don't recommend some of the cheap slide and film scanners, but rather a flatbed that has fixtures for these. I didn't have a large budget, but managed to get a good quality EPSON Perfection V550 for around $150. It's not the highest quality scanner, but does a very good job and is easy to work with.

I also purchased a portable USB scanner. I don't recommend the ones that you have to drag across a page yourself. Instead, I purchased a Brother like this one. It does not do the best job with photos, but can be very useful for documents and is very portable. I can carry it in the bag with my laptop and I can use it when visiting libraries or relatives that don't have other options available.

Having access to scanners allows me to not have to make immediate decisions on what exactly I think is important. There are lots of things that I find important now that I didn't think would be, and I'm sure that in the future I'll realize that there's information in something that I didn't realize (Things like return addresses on envelopes or area codes from phone numbers scrawled on a piece of paper can be invaluable when trying to find more info on someone). Digitally archiving pretty much anything gives you the freedom to revisit these items later when you might have a specific need. It's always great for organization and preventing damage to important documents or photos.

I would also recommend purchasing a digital voice recorder. You can purchase one to carry when talking to relatives and then offload the files as MP3s. I'm awful at taking notes and always think I'll remember details that I obviously won't.

So, after all that, the short answer is DOCUMENT ANYTHING POSSIBLE. If you think it might come in handy, save it. (Sorry, I tend to ramble)

Friesian genealogy is its own animal. A part that many non-Friesians struggle with is that from a certain timeframe on the surnames are patronymic.

Some sources that might be useful for you:

• http://meta.genealogy.net/ and https://www.grabsteine-ostfriesland.de/suche.php - the second is a sort-of "find a grave" specifically for East Frisia, only that instead of recording graves they record removed gravestones. In Germany graves are removed after 30 years, we simply don't have the space in the cemeteries to let the graves sit there for all eternity. The scope of the site is very limited, there are only a handful of volunteers working on it, so don't be dissappointed if your ancestors aren't on there.
  
  The first link is the main website and database for genealogy purposes in Germany, all volunteer-driven. Consider uploading your tree to gedbas.genealogy.net in the hope of connecting with others who research the same family.
  
  
• The websites and databases of the Oldenburg Society for Genealogy, see https://www.familienkunde-oldenburg.de/ogf-datenbanken/ and particularily
  http://www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de/
  
  I did a quick search, is this person part of your tree?
  
  http://www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de/getperson.php?personID=I24087&tree=Auswanderer
  
  And this is Hermine Carls nee Tapken: http://www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de/getperson.php?personID=I91851&tree=Auswanderer
  
  Other emigrants from the parish of Bockhorn: http://www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de/showsource.php?sourceID=S746&tree=Auswanderer
  
  
• Above mentioned Oldenburg Society for Genealogy is working on creating a database of one-place studies extracted from the churchbooks. Only members have access. Consider joining and or contacting one of the volunteers working on the area you are interested in.
  
  
• http://www.akvz.de/index.html
  
  It is a website of volunteers who transcribe information of the few surviving census records in Germany and especially Northern Germany along the coast. As a non-member you have to wait 15 seconds before you can start a search, you can see the countdown in the screen. (Datenbank = database) The transcription is not complete and won't be for many years, but records get added frequently, so check back regularily. They also have a forum where you can post and ask whether records exist for the places you are looking at and whether anybody is working on it. (Again, it is all done by volunteers.)
  
  
• Another thing you could do is contact the town archive of Leer, maybe they have records regarding people who emigrated like old passport applications and stuff.
  
  https://www.leer.de/Bildung-Kultur/Kultur/Stadtarchiv
  
  Snail-mail adress
  
  Stadtarchiv
  
  Rathausstraße 1
  
  26789 Leer (Ostfriesland)
  
  Germany
  
  
• A some-what important event you should know about:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Treaty
  
  The construction of Wilhelmshaven led to lots of upheaval in the general area. Farmers who used to live in the area that became Wilhelmshaven moved away, often using the money they got for buying farms within a 30 mile radius. This was a major push factor for emigration from the general area, those who wanted to sell their farms and hop on a ship overseas or move east suddenly had solvent buyers. At the same time the construction site drew a lot of workers from all over Prussia, many of them male and single. The construction site was a bit like a wild-west gold mining town, really rattling things up in this area where things had a habit of changing very slowly.
  
  
• Finally, have you read the literary classic "Der Schimmelreiter" by Theodor Storm?
  
  It is "the" book to read if you are interested in Northern Germany, similarily to reading Gone With the Wind, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as well as Uncle Tom's Hut when you are interested in the Old South of the USA.
  
  There are two translations of this book available in English. I've been told the Denis Jackson translation from 1996 is better, this translation is titled "The Dykemaster".
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Dykemaster-Angel-Classics-Theodor-Storm/dp/0946162549/
  
  But the kindle version of the other translation named "The Rider on the White Horse" is only 2 USD, so if you don't care for a few spelling errors you could get this.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Rider-White-Horse-Review-Classics/dp/1590173015/
  
  However if you love to read for fun I would recommend picking up this collection of stories by Theodor Storm:
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Rider-White-Horse-Theodor-Storm/dp/1604597410
  
  
  

You state: "Anyway we are a mainly English-heritage family living in New Zealand now for around six generations, ancestors largely from Cornwall if I recall but some irish and scottish mixed in too along the line somewhere."

That statement jogged my memory about a statement made by Sir Winston Churchill in his great tome "The history of the English Speaking People". ........
He wrote about the successive invasions of Britain by other peoples and that eventually the last area where one could find people of ancient Briton heritage was the extreme southwest area of the island..........which would be Cornwall!\

Here is a good explanation of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Britons

Here is a good read on how the English language developed and the author's opinions of how it was influenced by the Celts.
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001JOHCHU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

It gets a bit "sloggy" in places but will all of the sudden hit you with great well reasoned statements on a frequent basis. It is well worth the read.

Perhaps your family has a tradition handed down from their Cornish ancestors regarding the Celts.

Since they were English, consider that they may actually have emigrated to Canada first. The fare from Liverpool was subsidized by the British government to encourage Protestant English population growth in Canada. A significant percentage of new arrivals then went on to the U.S. by crossing into Vermont or New Hampshire -- but those tended to stay in New England or Pennsylvania/New York. By the 1850s, others were crossing the Great Lakes from Ontario, landing mostly at Buffalo or Chicago. And Chicago isn't that far from Miami County.

Having said that, there are also various gaps in the passenger lists for New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, which would be the obvious points of debarkation for a direct crossing from Liverpool or Plymouth. I have a couple of Irish families that I'm pretty certain landed at Boston in the 1840s, but I've never been able to locate them in the ship lists.

On the whole puzzle of trans-Atlantic immigration, by the way, the very best source of genealogical information and methodology is They Came in Ships by John Philip Colletta. Phil is the recognized expert in this area. If you ever go to the NGS or FGS conferences, he's also an excellent speaker, and he teaches in the IGHR at Samford every year.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but I just bought Professional Genealogy: Preparation, Practice & Standards and love it. My dad and I are starting a new genetic genealogy business and I personally have found it to be good resource. Not only for the “professional “ part but also for the resources covered and best practices. Hope it helps! :)

I found an anti-static brush like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007FMGNTI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 to be a necessity for cleaning off scanner glass and photos and slides.

When I scan on my Epson Perfection v600, I do absolutely no corrections in the scanner software on archival items. I save as TIFF at a very high resolution, unaltered, then I post-process a copy in PhotoShop CC (usually autolevels and autotone, then touching up dust where necessary). Then I save this copy at a more "reasonable" resolution to share with family.

My thinking is this way another descendant with better software and/or skills will have the raw unprocessed file to work with some day. Also maybe someday they'll have monitors that can better render 16-bit grayscale files, etc.

I try to stay neutral about most people I'm researching.

As /u/nosleeptilwhiterun said in a different thread:
> I always say if you are going to be "proud" of your ancestors accomplishments, I hope you then feel shame for their misdeeds. I feel neither.

I agree with that.

Some people I'll find more interesting than others - because they're more active (newspapers) or because you can see them accomplishing or overcoming things in their lives or helping to change/improve their towns or cities where they live. I'm not sure I'd call that pride per se, but more like you're happy to watch them improve.

Quick example, a woman I was researching was the first woman elected to the town's board of education in 1889. She was a suffragette, very involved in local affairs and beat her opponent with nearly double the vote. Good for her.

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I added this in the other thread, but I think it fits here too.

In The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy by Val Greenwood, he writes:

> "If you are scared of skeletons then stay out of closets. And if you are ashamed of ancestors who do not meet your own social standards then stay away from genealogy." (pg 12) ...

> "Regardless of what you find, your first responsibility is to the truth." (pg. 12)

If they are all about document size or smaller, you can buy an archival document box on amazon like this : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003HAAJPQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They also come in other sizes. Just make sure it's archival. Then I would buy some buffered archival tissue and put a sheet in between each document in the box: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003DPVJ1I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The photos may not need the buffered paper, but definitely for anything else. But I'd just use the buffered paper on photos too, it'd fine for them, just not necessary.

As for labeling, I'm always torn on how to do that too. I lean towards marking the item with something removable. I'd probably mark the back in pencil. That way it's on the object but is not permanent. If you want to permanently mark something, just a use pen with archival ink. They should be easy to find.

Wow, that is fantastic-- thank you for the link to that book! It was not until very recently that I actually found out how early U.S. Jewish history really began. All of my paternal ancestors emigrated to South Carolina (though far more recently than yours; they came between 1904-1940), and reading this book in order to learn a bit more about the world they inhabited was also really interesting from a perspective of learning about earlier American Jews.

If you're already dragging around a computer, full sized flat beds are pretty light and will fit right in your backpack (if you've got a decent sized backpack) with the laptop. I use this one, and although it's not "portable" per se it's pretty portable to me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SSXQ7Q2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Found this on one of my Facebook genealogy groups. If you buy from Amazon and add it to your cart, there's an additional 20% off, bringing it down to $63...and free shipping with Prime. I don't believe it's an affiliate link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TRLVKW0/?tag=smsibiho-20

Of course I find this literally the day after I purchased a kit for my cousin! sigh

I've made do with cell phone photos, which (as you noted) are not ideal, but very portable.

There are small portable "bar" scanners where you feed documents through them. For old, possibly delicate photos this is not great - the rollers can damage the original photo. You really want a flatbed scanner.

In the end, your best bet is probably just to get a compact flatbed scanner - there are a number of models (like this Canon scanner ) that are about the size of a laptop. You can carry it in a regular laptop bag.

I use this one, it's great. It runs fully on USB so no external power is needed.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LN0NUOO

I would probably do AncestryDNA because the database is so large and its family tree interface is the best. The downside is no chromosome browser, limited tools, the whole subscription thing, doesn't take uploads.

AncestryDNA is on sale, including at Amazon, free shipping plus Prime. An email I received from AncestryDNA said the sale ends Sunday.

I like 23andme, especially its tools, like the chromosome browser and DNA painting, but so few people add surnames and even fewer add trees. It's difficult to make genealogical connections, even with closer matches.

I like FTDNA, too, but again so many don't do trees or surnames, which is strange to me because its reputation is being more oriented to serious genealogists and genetic genealogists. Maybe they're more privacy concerned? I don't know. I am also not a big fan of the family tree interface. YMMV.