Monday, January 1, 2024

How Did I Do With My 2023 Genealogy-Related Goals?

 I posted Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- What Are Your 2023 Genealogy Goals on 7 January 2023 with hopes of finally meeting at least one of my stated goals in 2023 before being distracted by bright shiny genealogy features.

How did I do?  I'll give myself a grade for the year after reviewing the goals and whatever accomplishments I achieved.

The stated 2023 goals (in green) and the 2023 accomplishments (in red) are:

1)  Keep writing the "52 Ancestors" genealogical sketches.  I will need to decide later in the year if I want to continue this into the 8th great-grandparent ancestors (there are over 400 known ancestors in this generation, so it may take 8 years to complete this generation, and I'm unsure if I'll live that long).  Then add the sketches to FamilySearch Family Tree profiles.

2023 accomplishments:  I wrote 42 more 52 Ancestors genealogical sketches and got up to 7th great-grandfather #1004 on my ahnentafel list.  I have more to do in the 4th to 7th great-grandparents list but I need to do more research on some of them.  I'm going to hold off on the 8th great-grandfathers for the time being.  I added quite a few of the sketches to the FamilySearch Family Tree profiles as Life Stories.  Grade:  B

2)  Keep writing the "Amanuensis Monday" posts transcriptions, mainly of probate records.  I've done probate records of many of my ancestors, and this year have branched out to non-ancestor Seaver persons in Massachusetts.  I may go for other New England states, or New York, next, based on FamilySearch or Ancestry images.  Then, add the transcriptions to the profiles in my RootsMagic database.

2023 accomplishments:  I wrote 50 more Amanuensis Monday posts, mainly probate records of ancestors or Seaver people in New England, New York and Pennsylvania.  Grade:  A-minus

3)  Continue to "collect" records for descendants of my 4th great-grandparents.  This is mainly for DNA match purposes.  Also, continue to create 6 generation descendants report using RootsMagic and post them on Genea-Musings.  

2023 accomplishments:  I slacked off a bit in researching the descendants of my 44th great-grandparents, but still added over 1,500 persons to my family tree, many of them descendants of my 4th great-grandparents.   I posted 8 new 6 generation descendants reports on Genea-Musings, bringing the total to 16 out of 32 possible reports.  Grade:  B

4)  Continue to use Ancestry Record Hints, MyHeritage Record Matches, FamilySearch Research Hints, to find records for profiles in my RootsMagic database, especially for newly added persons.

2023 accomplishments:  I don't know how many record hints/matches I added throughout the year, but I tried to add information from hints/matches every week.  It didn't help that Ancestry deleted all of my record hints from my tree and started adding them for profiles with new information.  It didn't help that I deleted my old MyHeritage tree and added a new updated tree to MyHeritage which wiped out all of my record matches and the system has added matches for about 10% of my tree profiles since April.  Grade: C

5)  Gather family photos into one file folder and standardize photo captions with name, date, place, event information.  

2023 accomplishments:  I had my family photographs scattered all over my computer file folders.  I copied as many as I could find from the surname file folders to the "My Pictures" file folders (I have major family photo folders for Seaver, Richmond, Carringer/Auble and Leland/Schaffner surnames).  I also have family photos by year since 1999 in separate file folders in "My Pictures."  In addition, I scanned over 500 photographs from my photo albums on my bookshelves and loose photographs from bags in my piles of stuff.  Many of these were scanned by the Reimagine mobile app and colorized with the MyHeritage tools and saved in MyHeritage Photos.  Grade:  B

6)  Complete one year's worth of family stories using StoryWorth and publish a book with them for my children and grandchildren.

2023 accomplishments:  The StoryWorth writing went well for several months.  I ended up writing 37 stories for the book, including some photos, and I have edited the stories twice now.  I have not completed the bookmaking process.  Grade:  C

7)  Continue chasing DNA matches, especially on Ancestry and MyHeritage, to find the common ancestors for me and each match.  I need to do more "skeleton" trees to solve relationships with more matches without a ThruLine or a Theory of Family Relativity.  

2023 accomplishments:  I have kept up with the new DNA matches on AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.  I write notes for many of the new matches if I research them.  For those that I can identify a common ancestor, and a paper trail back to the common ancestor, I add the paper trail families to my RootsMagic family tree.  I made very few (less than 5?) "skeleton" trees for DNA matches with very small trees and didn't solve any (?) mysteries by doing that.  Grade:  C

My conclusion:  It was a fairly successful year achieving my 2023 goals!!  At least I worked on all of them, and graded out with at least a C grade on all of them.  Overall - I think a B-minus.  

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1 comment:

Linda Stufflebean said...

Randy, I'd say you earned an A+ for all your genealogical accomplishments. Excellent job!