Jill Ball, author of the Australian blog, GeniAus, has asked us all to again reflect on our geneayear.

Jill asks if her geneameme is now a tradition – I’d say it is and a very nice one, too, as we all pause to look back on our accomplishments.

Here are my 2017 answers:

1.  An elusive ancestor I found was on my husband’s side of the family – Polly Williams, called Polly Love, in her father’s 1823 will in Cumberland County, Virginia. A descendant of Polly found my blog post about her and contacted me. Made my day!

2.  A great newspaper article I found was – none this year! The two places I really want to put newspapers online, Calais, Maine and Passaic, New Jersey, have nothing.

3.  A geneajourney I took was to Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, where two of my English ancestors who settled in but left Massachusetts died in the 17th century.

4.  An important record I found was the death certificate of Robert Nelson Stewart’s daughter. (See #17)

5.  A newly found family member shared her work on the family of Polly Williams Love (See #1).

6.  A geneasurprise I received was being invited to be an official  RootsTech 2018 ambassador. 🙂

7.   My 2017 blog post(s) that I was particularly proud of was my 52 Documents in 52 Weeks series where I shared common and not so common types of records that can fill in the details of our ancestors’ lives.

8.   I made a new genimate who joined my Anquestors group this year. There were actually two new ladies who have attended regularly, Carolyn and Susan. 🙂

9.  A new piece of technology I mastered was – I can’t say I mastered it, since my hosting company did the work, but I survived the migration of my blog this month from one host to another. I learned a lot about this process, much to my chagrin!

10. I joined the Southern California Genealogy Society, in preparation for attending the 2018 Jamboree in Burbank in June.

11. A genealogy event from which I learnt something new was RootsTech 2017, definitely!

12. A blog post that taught me something new was – too many to cite just one. I learned a lot about DNA results on DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy. Roberta Estes does a fabulous job making it easy to understand.

13. A DNA discovery I made was that I am an exact mtDNA match to a woman whose earliest ancestor was born near Stavanger, Norway in 1828. My female line is in northern Denmark back into the 1700s. Church records in both places go back to the 1680s so we have a chance to find our common ancestress! Exciting!

14. I taught genimate(s) in my Anquestors group how to look beyond the big name subscription companies to delve into online records at archives, state websites and regional libraries.

15. A brick wall I demolished was finding the brother of my 2X great grandfather, Robert Nelson Stewart, who married in Charlotte, Washington, Maine in 1860 and disappeared. I suspected that he might have lived in Canada and had also died as a fairly young man. Thanks to the combination of searching a person on FamilySearch by entering the combination of the parents’ names (Stewart and Grass), one hit came up for a daughter and that put a big chink in the brick wall. Yes, he did move back and forth over the Maine/New Brunswick border and managed to elude census takers in both countries!

16. A great site I visited was The National Archives of Norway.

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was Val Greenwood’s The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4th Edition, published in 2017. It is a great book and should be on the reference shelf of every American genealogist.

18. It was exciting to finally meet – I don’t think I met anyone this year in the exciting category. 🙂

19. I am excited for 2018 because I am a first time official ambassador for RootsTech. 🙂

20. Another positive I would like to share is genealogy is the best hobby in the world. Where else can you do what you love while meeting so many wonderful people online and find new family?

Thank you, Jill, for this new tradition.