I had some amazing progress yesterday on my Mays ancestors. It all started on Tuesday, when I shared a bunch of old photos on my Facebook. I like to do that for my Aunts, Uncle, and other relations because it helps jog their memories of things. It was a wonderful day full of pictures and stories, and none of us were in the same place. Gotta love technology when you are far apart!
When I woke up on Wednesday morning I was refreshed and excited. After running the morning errands, cleaning, relaxing for a bit, and then cooking dinner, I really should have just watched a movie and went to bed. It must have been that boost from the day before though, because I just had to get onto FamilySearch and research more.
Even though my main focus is to clean up my source citations, every once and a while you just need to put in a little research time. So that’s what I do when I just need to do something fun with my genealogy.
This strategy has paid off for me because I managed to find William Travis and Sarah Booth’s marriage record! That means I’m back one more generation since it gives the father’s names.
Before my unintentional hiatus from the blog and genealogy, I was working on a little mystery. It was actually quite fun and I’m eager to pick up where I left off.
This weekend, I received a discount in my e-mail to come back to Ancestry.com and I decided to go ahead and use the discount to upgrade to the World Membership for at least the 6 month term of that discount. With my World Membership I can see the Canadian census images now which really excites me.
Hello from Southern Maryland. I’ve been working a lot lately on a bunch of different things having to do with my Family File. Most of those things involve cleaning up my sources mess.
I realized last night however, that I somehow, in the midst of all this confusion finished entering in my family lines for the Family File Cleanup Project that I began many years ago. How that snuck in on me, I have no idea.
So now I think is a good time to do a little planning on what comes next… after I clean up the sources again.
One of the things I’m doing is trying to find my Moore families in the New York state censuses. It’s not easy because of their commonly used names, but it’s fun looking anyway. I had found William H Moore Jr in 1915 at his usual address in Queens. In 1920, he lives at the same address, but in Brooklyn not Queens. I checked the map at the time and when I did, I completely understood!
It’s that time again! I’m truly coming to enjoy spending my Sunday afternoons on the hunt for Bell. Then I can write about it for Monday!
I decided after last week, to just go ahead and search the Canada census in London, Ontario for a Bell Brodie to see what happened. I don’t have an Ancestry World Membership, so I’m making do with the FamilySearch indexes! No problem!
I had a pleasant surprise in my email on Sunday morning. It was from my long lost cousin, Grace. (I love calling her that for some reason :)) I have communicated with Grace over the past few years thanks to my blog bringing us together. We’ve shared a lot of information on our linked Menzies/Love connection over the years. Lucky for me, she had something to add to the mystery of Bell Brodie!
She sent me three different letter transcriptions. Then she suggested that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be looking in London, England for Bell, but London, Ontario, Canada! Before I even consulted anything else having to do with the mystery of where Bell Brodie belonged, I brought out the map.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been jumping around a lot. I’ve been working on a billion things and not anything. Do you do that too? Always busy but never seem to get any one thing done. This weekend, I finally took some time to sit down and re-visit my Bell Brodie mystery. I didn’t expect to take such a big break but it was never far from my mind!
It’s been a wild few weeks in the Moore household. My recurring injury flared up and I was forced to stay off my feet as much as possible. Then just as I was getting on my feet again, literally, the whole household has come down with all kinds of various illnesses. So of course, this makes me want to do 80 things at one time. Funny how that happens! During all this chaos, I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog and what I want it to be. Mainly, I just want it to be a fun little genealogy blog for myself and whoever else finds it! So I’ll be taking things more slowly. I used to write an article on the spot, proofread it and post it. I’m going to slow down that process a bit, so that I have some time to add in whatever sources/pictures/documents I need to accurately say what it is I’m trying to say. I have a problem in the fact that my brain goes faster then my typing. Sometimes, that really shows!
Family File Cleanup progress as of 6/25/2013. Gosh those blank spaces drive me crazy! Must fill them!
Even though I’ll be blogging differently, I still have my same projects. I’m still working on my Family File Cleanup. I’m still trying to plan my first genealogy road trip, two years later, HA! I’m still consuming as much information I can on the subjects I want to learn, just at a reasonable pace instead of an overwhelming one. My biggest project after my Family File Cleanup is done, is going to be going through my extra hard drive and cleaning it up a lot. There’s a lot of duplicate files and stuff on there. I haven’t been as diligent in some areas of organization as others. I’m even thinking about ordering a new external hard drive that’s separate from my computer. Not until I wrangle my mess though, the mess needs to be fixed before I reward myself.
I’ve also been trying out all kinds of software. I had some extra money in my budget to play with this month. Since that rarely happens, I decided to purchase myself a copy of Legacy 7.5 and Evidentia. I really want to try these programs out and see how good they are. While I’ll try out the full version of Legacy, I have a feeling I’ll still stick to Family Tree Maker. It’s what I learned on, it’s what I feel comfortable in. I still have Roots Magic too, and I love that one too. I know it’s better to pick one and stick with it. I just really enjoy playing with the other software options. Nothing wrong with that! Evidentia interests me because though I’m usually really good at pulling bits of information out of documents, I know I can do better. I just don’t want to get too deep into re-analyzing all my records until the cleanup is done! Then I’ll know I have a strong base to work from. Hopefully, this might help me with the mystery of Bell Brodie also! I’ll be sure to blog about all my trials and errors, just like usual.
So that’s where I’m at now. How are you all doing and what are your summer time goals? Are there any huge projects that you’re coming to an end of?
Disclaimer: None of the links in the post are sponsor links. I’m not making any profit by mentioning these programs. I wasn’t even asked to mention them, I just had good old fashioned curiosity!
Every once and awhile, it’s really good to do something different in your research. I find it keeps me from getting burned out on my larger goals and lets me have a little bit of fun. I was on my way home from a frustrating day at the DMV when I decided I was going to find out once and for all who Bell Brodie is.
