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Saturday, January 2, 2021

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- What Are Your 2021 Plans/Goals/Resolutions for Your Genealogy Research

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  It's the New Year, and many readers and bloggers have already made resolutions, or goals, or plans for one or more tasks or projects.  Or they haven't yet, but could, or should.


2)  For this SNGF, please tell us what plans you've made, or what goals you've stated, or what resolutions you've averred for 2021.  Writing them down may help you achieve them.  Do one or more as you wish.

3)  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post so readers can find your resolutions/goals/plans.  

Here's mine:

I usually don't do this because it seems that I always fail (yes, I think I won the ##GOPA for 2020 - see below).  

However, I will state three goals that I hope to accomplish in 2021, but two of them are the same goals that I set last year at this time:

*  Goal #1 is to apply to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants for at least one ancestral line - the William White line.  Several friends of mine recently applied and two received membership in GSMD so it can be done.  I feel a responsibility to do this for my cousin Laura who asked for help several years ago, and sent me the information she had collected, and I have not progressed past reviewing her material and my material.  I summarized it in Do I Have Enough Information to Join Society of Mayflower Descendants?  A reader in Illinois who is a GSMD member offered to create an application and thought that I had enough evidence to support my application (and hopefully Laura's and any other Seaver/Richmond descendant).  

I had high hopes for completing this in 2020 because it was the 400th anniversary year of the Mayflower landing in 1620 in Massachusetts Bay.  I filled out the Preliminary application form (see General Society of Mayflower Descendants Application Process - Step 1) in January and submitted it.  Well...I started reviewing my "stuff" again and figured out that I needed to order several birth certificates, including my own (I have a birth registration record that doesn't list my parents!).  

Then COVID-19 hit and all of the repositories closed.  In July, I figured I had better get going, so I got half of my "stuff" into generational documents that I could access and print for submission, with a thought to do the second half of it soon.  "Soon" became December, and the local society person reminded me that fees were going up and if I submit now then I might avoid the fee increase.  I also filled out the draft of the GSMD application and sent it to the local society person who said it looked really good, and get it done!  In haste, I mailed a form and a check to the San Diego County Recorder for the two birth certificates I need and haven't heard back from San Diego.   

Therefore 2021 Goal #1 is to finish this in 2021 and join GSMD before COVID-19 gets me.

*  Goal #2 is also from 2020 - to keep gathering my triangulated DNA match data from the chromosome browsers on FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritageDNA, 23andMe, and GEDmatch and create my DNA Painter display of which bits of every chromosome in my DNA came from which ancestors.  I have started the gathering process with MyHeritageDNA, but I have not finished it.  I need to do one of the sites each month, and finish this process, put the data into DNA Painter, and see the results.

 Well ... I have hardly started this.  I had all year to start it and finish it, but ... nada.  No COVID-19 excuse for this one.  

Therefore 2021 Goal #2 is to do this in 2021 and produce a pretty picture of my ancestor's contributions to my DNA from DNA Painter.

What Are the Odds is a feature on DNA Painter to help figure out common ancestors - maybe Jonny Perl can modify it to give odds on how long this Goal #2 will take me to complete it.

3)  Goal #3 is to updated my eBooks on my ancestral families and descendants of my surname study families (last done in 2012 and they are still on Scribd.com (see   https://www.scribd.com/user/43095920/Randy-Seaver), and are searchable).  I need to update them because I have found a wealth of information on my ancestral families and descendants of my surname study progenitors in the last 8 years.  I will do this using one of the genealogy software programs that formats ancestor and descendants reports in a standard format that looks best.  I will include sources, but not notes or media (the 2012 books are already hundreds of pages without them).  

Here is what I think the Seaver books will look like:

Those are my three goals for 2021 - what are yours?

##What is GOPA - I know that inquiring minds want to know:  Did I win the "Genealogist's Outstanding Procrastination Award" for 2020?  If not, who did?  

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The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-what-are.html

Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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5 comments:

  1. I did this last week, not as a SNGF, but I think reflecting on last year and creating new (or used) goals is a good idea.

    https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2020/12/52-ancestors-week-52-resolution-goal.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's mine:

    https://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-what-are.html

    I tried to keep it doable. We'll see...

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  3. This worked out very well Randy. I listed my goals from last year and whether I completed them or didn’t and then listed my goals for 2021, in my end of year blog post. Here’s the link http://www.michiganfamilytrails.com/2020/12/year-end-post-2020-look-backwhat-were.html
    I think you may have won that award, but I suspect there are co-winners amongst all of us. We are all great procrastinators.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here is mine - slightly modified and updated from last year's list. https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-74/

    ReplyDelete