Reviewing my Genealogy Projects or Goals for 2022

Well it’s been a full month into 2022 and I decided to review my goals. I realized that I need to put myself on a schedule to accomplish my goals. I don’t want my goals to overwhelm me and prevent me from getting anything done.

In the past, I found that scheduling genealogy was the easiest way for me to accomplish my goals.

My goals consists of writing for my genealogy blogs, I also want to clean up my paper files, especially those I inherited from my aunt, I am creating some trees from a couple of genealogy family history books that I hope will help with my DNA matches and with my own family tree, plus I need to sort through numerous slide boxes that I inherited from my parents. I also started a new project helping my sister-in-law with her mother’s maiden name family history. Someone started this back in the 1980’s and it hasn’t been updated since. She is planning on a family reunion and wants to present a book for family members.

I have a lot of projects and limited time to achieve them. Like all of us, time in finite but my projects seem infinite. So instead of be crippled by the thought of all these projects, I have decided to come up with a plan or guide to get these items done.

For my blog writing, I have decided to participate in Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. In the past I have made a feeble attempt at this, however, this year I have decided to do better. Notice I say DO not Try, I am going to DO IT! Anyway, since the prompts come out on Monday, I am going to dedicate Monday to writing the blog.

Next, I have created two trees based on printed family histories. One is for my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, Hiltz or Hilts. This branch seems to fall apart after my 3rd great grandfather. I am speculating that the primary couple of this book is really my ancestor, so I want to create the tree and then see if I can place my matches onto this tree.  I also started a tree on the Boone Family, you know the Daniel Boone family. I have many matches with Daniel Boone’s ancestors and I have two book sources to create this tree. Because I don’t really want to work on both at the same time, I have decided to start with the Hiltz/Hilts family because I have already done 232 of the 319 pages in the book. Thus I will work on this project on Tuesday. I will then work on the Boone family, once I am done with the Hiltz/Hilts book.

My Sister-in-law has been helping me with her family tree. We are working off the printed pages from the previous person and researching for more complete information, expanding branches. She is my other set of eyes and helps me avoid some silly input mistakes. I have decided to designate Wednesday for her Steffes Family. 

Thursday will be my going through my Aunt’s binders. A lot of this is from a project we worked on for her maiden name. While looking at my tree, I realized that I really didn’t do any source citations on where I found this information. So I am reviewing what we had, updating my citations, adding new information, scanning what I need to get rid of all this paper. I am keeping some paper stuff, such as pictures and some obituaries that I am not finding online. This is slow going. I had originally thought I could get through one binder a month; she has about twelve fat binders. However, I am only on the first binder and I realize this is unrealistic. I need to get through this project, so I am not going to allow this to get me off track. Any binders that I get through will be good. 

Finally, those darn slides, 48 boxes of those darn slides. I plan on reviewing one box at a time. I purchased a slide projector to see the slides. I want to keep those with family in them. Being the youngest, I don’t have a lot of pictures of my family. I was hoping to create stacks to designate those I could send out to a third party to scan for me. However, I do have a personal scanner and could do it myself. I am no fence on which way to proceed. I might have to see how long it will take me to get through a box. I thought I would do one per week, but I think I was being ambitious. I won’t know until I do at least one box of slides. For now, I have decided Friday can be my slide day. 

This leaves me Saturday and Sunday as my free days. I don’t really do Genealogy every day of the week. My retired hubby would not let me get away with that. However, when I get a day or two, I can let the day of the week help me guide me into which project I want to work on. My mood might be a bigger contributing factor in my decision.

How do you work on your genealogy? Do you need a schedule like me or do you just do whatever? It doesn't matter how you do it, just DO IT! 

Is your tree built out enough for your DNA Matches.

 Do you have that strange match that seems to match relatives on both your parents’ sides of the family?

You know your parents aren’t related but there is another reason.

Here is an example:

My maternal 1^st cousin twice removed, Fred married Ella Gorr. My paternal first cousin also married a Gorr. Ella’s parents are Albert Gorr and Emily Damp. They had a son Alvin Gorr. Alvin had a son Richard Gorr. Richard’s son married my paternal first cousin.

Thus my first cousin’s children with the son of Richard are also related to the descendants of Fred and Ella Gorr.  Ella is my first cousin’s son 2^nd Great Aunt. Her children are first cousins twice removed to said son. Ella’s grandchildren are 2^nd cousins once removed, while her great grandchildren are 3^rd cousins with my first cousin’s son.

I am third cousins of Ella’s grandchildren and 3^rd cousins once removed to her great grandchildren. Thus when looking at shared matches with my Paternal first cousin’s son, some of Fred and Ella’s descendants could end up on our shared matches list along with my expected matches from my Paternal side.

Moral of story, even though people say “DNA never lies” it can be confusing. Keep in mind that if all your 3^rd cousins did test, you might only match 90 percent of them. It is how DNA is passed down, very random.

I figured this all out because I had entered the spouses’ parents of people who married into my family. I recognized this name, however, even if I didn’t, I do all my entering in Family Tree maker, and whenever I enter a new surname, I can quickly see if that surname already exists in my Index. From there, I can do some quick research to see if those people are related to each other. This also helps with duplicate people. If I notice the same name already in my file, I do some extra research and see if in fact these are two different individuals or the same person and thus they need to be merged.