Celebrating 2015

Jill Ball, on GeniAus, is keeping the tradition going with the Accentuate the Positive Geneameme. This is the first year I’ve participated because it’s the first year I’ve known about it!

Here are my answers to her 20 questions:

1. An elusive ancestor I found was: Nils Molin and his marriage record to Helena Andersdotter, parents of my Anders Molin, born in 1740 in Ystad, Sweden.

2. A precious family photo I found was: None this year, but I had 6000 images scanned to finish that project!

3. An ancestor’s grave I found was: None this year.

4. An important vital record I found was: I actually found quite a few birth, marriage and burial records which greatly expanded my knowledge of the Swedish branch of my family in the 1800’s.

5. Two newly found family members shared: memories and knowledge about their own branches of the family.

6. A geneasurprise I received was: finding four monogrammed coin silver teaspoons up for auctin on eBay. They belonged to Jacob Stufflebean of Sheldon, Franklin County, Vermont up near the Canadian border. These Stufflebean teaspoons have new homes with my brother-in-law’s family and mine, both Stufflebeans!

7. My 2015 blog post that I was particularly proud of was: the short series I did on my John Whitmer experiment to see how many online family trees corrected John’s parentage and birthplace when presented with a full documented article.

8. My 2015 blog post that received a large number of hits or comments was: same as the question above. I think because Family Historian isn’t as well known in the U.S. that many readers were interested in finding out more about it. The number of views was high each time I wrote about FH.

9. A new piece of software I mastered was: I haven’t mastered any new ones yet, but I am proud of the in-roads I’ve made learning to use Family Historian in just a few weeks.

10. A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy was: Pinterest, which I am just coming around to using, although I’ve had a board for a couple of years.

11. A genealogy conference/seminar/webinar from which I learnt something new was: RootsTech 2015, where I learned lots of new things! I’m looking forward to RT 2016 next month.

14. I taught friend/s how to: expand their genealogical research skills in my Kin Seekers group, for which I have been the volunteer teacher for five years.

15. A genealogy (software) book that taught me something new was: the Family Historian users’ manual as I transition away from Family Tree Maker.

16. A great repository/archive/library I visited was: the best, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was: How to Use Evernote for Genealogy by Kerry Scott.

18. It was exciting to finally meet: some of the genealogical bloggers who attended RootsTech.

19. A geneadventure I enjoyed was: as always, visiting the Family History Library. I didn’t get to any family-related geneasites this year.

20. Another positive I would like to share is …Empty Branches is almost two years old and I have a winning streak going – 480 daily posts in a row!