Author: Kathleen

As I continue to work on my long enduring family file cleanup, I find small ways to amuse myself. Also, I rewrote that sentence three times. Once in my head, twice by typing. Anyway, today I was really amused as I was adding more census information into Family Tree Maker 2012. I’m making a really big effort to make all my sources Evidence Explained Style. Though I’m not exactly keeping a ruler around to slap my own knuckles. I’ve been basically looking up each source in my copy of the book, then emulating how I think the source will come out. I’ve also tried to make sure I use the pre-made templates in the software, so that my source citation will be as close as possible.

With the cryptic, rambling explanation out of the way, I’ll show you the source of my amusement today. P.S. I rewrote that sentence twice.

I’m not completely scrapping the website redesign. However, I’m not sure how I’m going to proceed. I feel like I might have overwhelmed myself by trying to write a tutorial for something that I didn’t feel comfortable “teaching”. So the design is going to happen, the only thing I’m not sure of is how I’m going to finish up my redesigning my chaos series. To be honest, the TNG portion of it is already just about done anyway. I think when people ask me about my custom design, they don’t realize how custom it actually is. While yes, I can just tweak a template to make it look like my own, I much prefer to start with the blank slate and really make it my own. Not everyone is comfortable doing that, which is fine, I just don’t know if I feel comfortable teaching my method anymore. If you hadn’t noticed, I have a bit of a confidence problem!

Over the next few weeks, I’m hoping to finally get in touch with my DNA matches on Ancestry.com. I’ve been really lazy with this. I’ve always answered those who wrote to me, but now it’s time to throw away my shyness and get to answering the rest! I’m a little worried that I’m not going to get anything new from any of these matches, since the initial glances don’t show a lot of promise.

I’m not sure if the lack of matching surnames is that I haven’t finished entering my tree, or maybe I just haven’t researched far enough back yet. Either way, it’s all very interesting. Most of the matches do end up coming through Virginia and Kentucky, which is definitely consistent with my mother’s side of the family tree. My closest DNA match, is actually on my father’s side though, which I found interesting! It was even a Thorward, so that makes it even better for me, since Thorwards aren’t that common.

I’m feeling most anxious about how to word my emails. Maybe I’ll come up with a basic template and make changes depending on the information for each person. If anyone has any tips or help, I’d be glad to hear it!