Genealogy Plan for the 2020s

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In 2030 I'll turn 77, so it seems a good time to think ahead! Are you laying plans for the next decade? Please write about your plans in the comments.

 Barbara's challenge last week is what prompted this blog. Please read her blog if you haven't done so yet!

Past

I began asking family for information about their family and ancestors in the late Seventies. There were no private computers back then, and I doubt that the word "genealogy" was in my vocabulary. By the Eighties, I was writing letters to relatives and including a stamped, self-addressed envelope (remember those?) and Family Group Sheets. I still have many of those in my first genealogy notebook. A few lovely family members included money along with their answers!

 By the Nineties, I was online (sort of) and using genealogy lists such as Roots-L. I joined the South King County Genealogy Society sometime in the Nineties; unsure exactly when. The Society was meeting at the United Methodist church on SE 248th.

 SKCGS was a sponsor of the 1995 FGS Conference in SeaTac. I remember working behind the desk, but not taking the time to attend any classes! Around that time, I began using the local Family History Centers. In June 2000, Rootsweb was sold to MyFamily.com, parent company of Ancestry.com, which really brought an end to that decade in genealogy.

 By 2001 or so I had left both Mac and Windows behind and was using Linux, IRC, and the early web, especially on Rootsweb. The earliest messages in the Rootsweb archives for the McBee list are May 1999, but it's obvious from those old conversations that the list had been going for some years before that. This was the first list I "owned," and the McBees are still my brick wall! When my mother died in 2001, I bought a life membership in the SKCGS as a memorial to her. I think she and my dad are happy about the ongoing work to discover our family.

Present

Last year at our Seminar with Dr. Coletta, I bought his books They Came in Ships, and Only A Few Bones. And for Christmas, my wonderful husband gave me Healing the Family Heart Holes by Robin Gerry, and Advanced Genetic Genealogy edited by Debbie Parker Wayne. None of these books has been read yet!

 Today, my main tree (on Ancestry) contains 22,649 people and 5331 photos. Many of those images are screenshots of obituaries found on newspapers.com, genealogybank.com, and elsewhere. I made a huge push to find and post them this year.

 A search by tree tag of DNA Match gives 96, with 27 Common DNA Ancestors. 154 DNA Connections, which are those in the tree between the common DNA ancestors and the matches. Totals include those who tested somewhere besides Ancestry and have been put into the Ancestry tree.

Goals for 2020

  1. Read the first three books listed above, and study and work through Advanced Genetic Genealogy by year's end
  2. Continue working though Ancestry's Thrulines, systematically putting all those DNA matches into my tree, and documenting each family as I travel up and down each family line. This will shine a light into dusty corners of the tree, and make it easier to find and place those DNA matches without trees. 
  3. Write to more matches, and make more personal cousin connections.
  4. Fish in all the ponds by checking MyHeritage, FamiilyTreeDNA & Gedmatch for new matches, and adding them to the Ancestry tree.
  5. Search for, image, transcribe and post as many obituaries for as many relatives as possible.
  6. Post obituaries on MyHeritage, WikiTree and FamilySearch as well as on Ancestry
  7. Research trip: Now that my oldest son lives in Denver, Colorado, I'm planing a visit to him . He'll drive us to visit the grave of my third great-grandparents in Douglas County. It would be great to get up to Weld County as well, where my third great-grandfather Peter Baysinger died. 
  • For South King County Genealogy Society, continue to write for this blog 
  • Continue to maintain our Twitter presence 
  • Spread the word about our society to the world at large and the communities we serve
  • Publicity for our 2020 Seminar *(looking for help, especially on Facebook)
  • Find someone who likes and uses Instagram, to start an SKCGS feed 

 * If you are that person, please step up! I think we could have a wonderful stream of ancestor photos and historical images of south King County. This could be done in conjunction with local historical museums and societies.

 Future Goals

 Following Barbara's lead, I commit to making a monthly assessment so I can stay on track. Eventually this DNA testing boom will slow down, and I anticipate less progress as far as adding relatives to the tree, and adding matches to it. Still, it will be fun to see how the annual numbers stack up.

 The DNA research is part of a long-term goal to get all of our ancestors traced back to the immigrants, if not further. In support of that goal, I think Barbara's suggested book, Val Greenwood’s The Researchers Guide to American Genealogy sounds like a good book for 2021.

 Right now, I have no interest in certification, but I would like to continue to improve my genealogy practice up to professional standards. To me, this means getting ever closer to following the Genealogical Proof Standard, especially as I again venture into pre-1850 territory. Learning how to use court, land and tax records will become more important as I shift focus back to the past, instead of towards the present, as I'm doing now, following descendancies.

 Along the way, it would be fun to qualify for DAR and perhaps some other lineage societies! Not this year, though.

 Some ancestors are already traced to their countries of origin, such as the Scots Cowans and my Swedes. My Dad, sister and I went to Selkirkshire, Scotland to the Cowan home village in 2003.

 In future I'd would love to go further back in my great-grandmother Selma Andersdotter's tree and visit her village in Sweden sometime this decade. The Käll line has been researched back to the 1600s, and it would be fun to visit some of the home places with the researcher-cousins. Finding and meeting some of Selma's relatives is a goal as well, which is furthered by DNA matches.

 By 2030

 Perhaps by 2030 I will have persuaded my husband to accompany me to his gggrandparents' home village of Firrel in Germany. If not, maybe another family member would like to visit. I want to travel to the Alsatian villages where our Baysingers emigrated from in 1770. They seem to have originated in Switzerland. It would be lovely to pinpoint the are in Switzerland if possible and go there as well.


Leer., Ostfriesland. See Firrel in the north?


What are YOUR goals for the year? Are you willing to go the record here on the blog?

Valorie Zimmerman

Comments

  1. ValorieFebruary 4, 2024 at 8:01 PM

    My McBees are no longer my "brick wall" and because I've continued to "build down" and identify ever more DNA matches, my tree has ballooned to 34,937 people!

    ReplyDelete

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