Our Journey When you take the first step of a journey, you never know what's around the next corner, or where you will end up. For millennia, people have made pilgrimage a part of their life-plan. According to  Books: A Living History by Lyons [1] Pilgrim's Progress , published in English in 1678, has been translated into over 200 languages and is still in print  [2] . So this is a oft-used metaphor and we still take literal journeys which may be pilgrimages to the home places of our ancestors, or retracing their migrations. There is something profound and important about seeing those places now, and experiencing a bit of what those who came before saw and felt. I will never forget visiting the churches that my second-great-grandfather Cowan would have worshipped or traveling over the hills where he herded sheep as a boy.  Some of our journeys are more based on education and practice than travel. Barbara Mattoon has written some wonderful posts about educatio...

[Valorie] In our research, we're always seeking to establish identity, relationships, locality, occupations, and most of all, to understand the lives of our forebears. WHO includes everyone, not just our "direct" ancestors , but their families, friends, enemies, neighbors, fellow congregants and club members, colleagues, competitors, fellow travelers and "kin," however they defined that. We know where to find them—census (including agriculture and manufacturing schedules), tax lists, newspaper articles, city directories, club rosters, church records, family photos, scrapbooks, county histories and so on. Critical, specific information was the plot of land where they made a living, alongside neighbors and relatives.   Where? MAPS How about maps as a tool to help ? In preparation for today's workshop on platting , I watched a very old Legacy webinar by Mark Lowe of Kentucky and Tennessee, about how to use the plats to learn more about our ancestors than I thou...

In tennis lessons years ago, the instructor kept stressing "follow through" which meant that the stroke was not finished once I hit the ball, but only when my momentum was used to set up the return. I learned the same thing when learning to shoot a firearm—steady, aim, fire, follow through.  It has taken years to figure out that follow through is important in research, for the same reason.  In order to get around my stubborn streak, I began the research log for a new project by identifying and prioritizing the most useful databases, then creating a citation for each database before digging into the searches. Getting the "dirty work" out of the way first made it easier to gather the other details, such as date consulted, search terms used, FANs identified, and analysis of any useful records found—even when there were no or negative results. Momentum is powerful! Follow through results in more effective research and saves a great deal of time. A FamilyHistoryFanatic...

2025 Calendar Courtesy OpenClipart Whatcha Gonna Do This Year?  Some make New Year's resolutions; I usually try to set some goals, and look back and measure progress made during the year. Our former president and director of our Education team Barbara Mattoon has set an even higher bar, publicly announcing her goals in our SKCGS blog   2020--What's in Your New Year?  and   2024 Genealogy Resolutions . Lofty goals, and worthy of her dedication, skill and determination.  Inspiring. Back in 2021, I wrote "As I begin this new year, I was determined to not make any resolutions, yet I can't stop myself.  "The book Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W. Jones was a Christmas gift, and I immediately dived into reading it. I even started blogging about it on my personal blog, https://genweblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/end-of-2020-time-for-something-new.html . That's great, but unless I put the principles to work in my own research, what good does the reading and le...