Do-Over Week 3...Or Not

Well, this week was a write-off, in terms of the do-over. A couple of other genealogy things came up this week that I was spending a lot of time on, and didn't get a chance to even look at my do-over.

I was checking out my grandmother's dna matches, particularly those with trees attached, and ended up finding someone that had a death date for my 3rd great-grandmother that I didn't previously have. She has been a brick wall of mine for years, so needless to say I had to follow it up! I went looking for more information and stumbled upon a thread on a message board about her and her family! Obviously I wasn't about to consider the information in that thread to be proof, so I had to do more digging to find documentation to prove or disprove it all. I actually spent several nights this week looking into the information contained in that thread and I'm still not finished!

I've also been in fairly regular contact with a dna match distant cousin who was adopted. We know from GEDmatch that our most recent common ancestor is about 5 generations back. Through mutual matches, I was able to determine which side of my family she's on, but not specifically which line she's on. But based on new information she discovered this week, we think we now know which surname line the connection is on. The trick now is to get back far enough to prove or disprove it.

So even with no progress on my do-over, attempting to break a long-standing brick wall and helping an adoptee find her roots are valid reasons, as far as I'm concerned! Hopefully I can make some progress on all three projects this coming week!

Go dtí an chéad uair eile. 

Do-Over Week 2

Another week of progress! Slow going, but progress none the less.

I decided that since I was using Legacy Family Tree for my do-over, that I wanted to make sure I was using the best practices to make the most of my effort. Legacy has a fantastic library of webinars, many of which are free. So I located one on sourcing called Sources and Citations Made Simple, Standard, and Powerful (watch it here http://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=201). I found it extremely helpful! It confirmed that I was sourcing correctly in general, but showed me how I could improve both creating a citation and organizing them through more standardization, and save time!

I only had a few people in my tree earlier this week, so it was a great chance to edit a couple of sources to be more standardized, though most of my sources were already satisfactory. There was a bit of a learning curve for some of the new practices I'll be adopting, but once things are fully set-up with the main sources I'll be using, it will go much faster. Then as I enter people, I'll only need to enter their specific details which will save time. Using the Legacy source clip-board which I've never previously used will take time to get used to, but will absolutely cut down on time once I practice and get comfortable with it.

My Master Source List is looking nice and stream-lined at the moment, and I'm up to 16 people in the new tree. I still have a long way to go, but I know that my do-over is off to a solid start. I'm pleased with my do-over progress to date, especially since I've been focused on my course. I know I have a long way to go, but I look forward to the sense of accomplishment once it's complete!

Go dtí an chéad uair eile. 

Do-Over Week 1

I mentioned last week that I would try to update on a regular basis about my genealogy do-over. Here's my first update.

I started a new file in Legacy Family Tree, as intended. I have 10 people entered so far including myself and my husband, our children, my parents, my brothers, and one set of my grandparents Admittedly, that is fewer than I had hoped for at this point. However, it was time consuming setting my file options the way I wanted them, then entering information and creating new sources and figuring out how to attach multi-page documents. Now that I have that sorted out, it should go a little faster. So far, I've attached photos, birth/baptism records, marriage records, death records/obituaries/probates, and raw dna results. I hope to add in the other descendants of my grandparents during this upcoming week, with photos and source documentation attached.

While I'm in the process of my do-over, I'm also working on my final course for a Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies. That, obviously, has to be my priority until I finish the course in a few months, so I suspect the do-over will be a little show going until then.

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.