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!
One of the things I constantly beat myself up about is that I don’t really keep up with my genealogy resolutions each year. I’m going to try something a little new, a little smaller. I tend to take on too much and then get overwhelmed. It’s time to change my patterns and see if I can’t find a more productive way of getting things done. The way I’m going to try and do this is to think outside the box. I’m no longer going to think in terms of multiple monthly or yearly goals. I’ve got to start focusing on just one thing at a time.
The first goal I’m going to work to complete, is actually a month long goal but there is a reason! My 3rd blogiversary is coming up on March 13th. So that’s my deadline date.
It’s no coincidence that right before my genealogy hiatus, a traumatic event happened during my file cleanup project. The main objective of the cleanup project was to finally have an organized, sourced core family tree to work from. The project has been going on for three years now.
Well into the project, I finally got a nice pace going. I also finally had an organization method that was “synced” between Family Tree Maker 2012, RootsMagic, and my moore-mays.org database. Basically, I would enter a person into RootsMagic since the program automatically assigns a number to a person, and as far as I know, there is no way to change it. Then I would use that number as a Person ID in Family Tree Maker and the website. I would also label all my digital files with the same number. So that I could always refer to one number for each ancestor. It was a beautiful system that worked beautifully!
This entry is going to show you just how far behind I am on following leads, but oh well! Such is life I guess. Anyway, months ago, I wrote an entry about how I loved being a mystery detective when it comes to my family tree. That entry highlighted Emma Carter and my search for her mother among a group of sisters. I discovered her mother was Sina Carter and that Emma married Charles Hurdle.
Thanks to a wonderful friend/reader, Magda!, I have a few more leads after this entry to get me started. Unfortunately or fortunately, it could be both, I am only left with more questions. Ha! Magda commented on the entry to say my Carters sparked a few thoughts about her own Carters in that area, so she decided to dig a little deeper to see if there was a connection. Sadly, there wasn’t, but she did find some great records on FamilySearch for me to look at and analyze!
The first record she linked was the death record of Lewis Carter, the other mystery Carter from my previous entry. The death record gives his mother’s maiden name as Sina Carter and doesn’t list a father except for the last name of Carter. So that’s still an unknown at this point. The other record Magda found was a marriage record for Emma Hurdle and Elmer Fite! The best part is it actually gives Emma’s father’s name as John Jennings. I do wonder if maybe Lewis had the same father but without any record to back up that thought, it stays a thought. So I’ll leave Lewis for another day this week and take on Emma’s clues.
Yesterday I wrote about my first productive day back from an unexpected break from technology. As with all research, one thing can always lead to many more avenues of information. Yesterday was no different for me. I talked about my marriage possibility list and how I was going to use the list to see if I could find out the spouses of my 5th great grandfather’s siblings. Often when I’m coming back from a break, and I’m looking for something specific, I re-examine the records I’ve already found. So yesterday, I decided to go back through the death records I had for all of the children of James Love and Janet Fleming.
Whew, who knew a break from technology would be that long. I sure didn’t! Yesterday I ended my unexpected hiatus by booting up my desktop and opening every genealogy program I own. I guess I had decided enough was enough and it was time to do something tech related again.
My focus yesterday was the Love family. (Of course I chose them, I always start with them after a hiatus.) One of the first things I did was break out my printout of all Love surname marriages for Beith parish. I made the list months ago using credits from Scotlands People. Since I knew I was going to be dealing with a lot of Loves eventually, I spent the credits at the time and figured it couldn’t hurt.
I’ve come to the point in my Family File Cleanup where I have to make a decision. Whether or not to enter the descendant report for John Taylor into my family file. I have two Taylor descendant reports, the other being the one for Bartholomew Taylor (pictured above). It was easy to use the Bartholomew report because it was easily backed up with record proof. Not entirely but for the most part. Now that I’ve come to adding John and the earlier Taylors in, it gets more difficult.
The reason there is a decision at all is it gets harder to verify the families are correct because I’m venturing past the 1850 census now and into the 1700’s. So I’ll only have a number count for the children in the census and birth records are less frequent and less accessible. I have to decide whether to add these next few generations in or to leave them off. The pros to leaving them off would mean a complete fresh start with the early Taylor generations. The downside is that I’ve seen enough of the parish records over in Salisbury, Maryland to know that having a guideline would be a tremendous asset. You see, there are a lot of John, William and James Taylors in those records. I’m also finding in this cleanup that my original trees were a bit more accurate then I originally thought. Which is a good thing. There are inaccuracies but they are quickly rooted out.
Jane Menzies-Love
What I think I’ll end up doing is adding them into the tree but not adding them to the website until I’ve got more than just my descendant report as a source. I definitely don’t want my website information to get out of hand or inaccurate. I’ve noticed while getting my tree synced on Ancestry.com that a lot of my pictures are being added to people’s family trees. I guess I hit the genealogy jackpot with that picture of Jane Menzies-Love because it is a popular one in member trees. The only problem is that no one is contacting me to compare information or trees. Since I know that my tree is being used as a resource, I don’t want to lead anyone in the wrong direction. There’s no reason that adding them to the website can’t wait until I’ve got more information in hand. I don’t like to take family lore completely out of the loop, but I’m definitely learning more about what can happen with internet genealogy.
So for now, I add the descendant reports as unsourced family records and then try and find the proof in the actual records next time I’m over on the Eastern Shore. I know I say I’m going to these places a lot and then never go, but it’s just the way it goes. I’ll get there someday and I just want to be ready for it when I do. My biggest flaw is getting flustered and overwhelmed when I walk into the libraries. Not anymore, I’ll have a clear, concise list and plan in hand the next time!
I’ve never been a stats watcher. Sure I like seeing how many visits my page gets. It’s not my main focus though, I just love talking about genealogy. I could write multiple entries every day about genealogy if I had the time. What I do like to do is to check my popular posts. The top four are in my sidebar at all times and I don’t think they’ve changed in months, now I see why!
Before the 1940 census was released, I made 2 entries (part one, part two) detailing where I thought I would find my Dad’s side of the family. I previously posted a chart where I showed who I had found two days after the census was released.
My 1940 Census Cheat Sheet
I was just looking at all my different entries and decided to see if I’d found everyone from the lists yet.
William H Moore Jr is the brother of my 2nd great grandfather. He was also one half of Moore Brothers Publishing. Sometime between 1920 and 1930, William moved his family to Belleville, New Jersey which is only a short distance from where his father and brother eventually settled in Caldwell.
