I love participating in Australian blogger Jill Ball’s Accentuate the Positive geneameme each year and she has posted the statements to be completed for this year’s challenge with my replies:
Remember to Accentuate the Positive
2025 Prompts
1. I treasured learning more about my Rusyn heritage and connecting with second cousins still in Slovakia.
2. I shared daily tips, resources, finds and my own family history on my blog, Empty Branches on the Family Tree.
3. I travelled not very far – just to my local FamilySearch center to view some locked records. However, my short trip brought some excellent successes!
4. I learnt much more about Artificial Intelligence. While I see some terrific uses for genealogy research, there are aspects which I don’t like. Overall, I’m not a huge fan.
5. I changed – or adjusted – my mindset regarding the RootsMagic source citation templates. See #7!
6. I received two much appreciated gifts from Genea-Santa – The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1640 — A Concise Compendium, 2nd Edition and Out of Nowhere – The Art of Carpathian Rus’ by Paul Robert Magocsi.
7. I conquered – well maybe not conquered, but greatly improved my skills using the RootsMagic source citation templates.
8. I found many new documents using FamilySearch full-text search.
9. I taught my regular monthly genealogy class again this year. We began in 2010, but went on hiatus during the pandemic.
10. I cried when my Uncle Cal died in January as he was the last of the generation before me to survive. He was a wonderful person and died at the ripe old age of 91 years. He is loved and missed.
11. I was proud when I found proof of the parents of my ancestor, Loyallist John Adams, from Fairfield County, Connecticut to New Brunswick, Canada in 1783. I always suspected he was a son of David Adams and Susannah Lockwood. The pieces fit, but it took FamilySearch full text search to locate the unindexed deed located in Redding, CT, naming John, his full siblings David and Anne and their deceased mother, Susannah Lockwood.
12. I read The Ultimate Guide to FamilySearch by Dana Palmer and learned some new tricks, even though I am a seasoned user.
Thank you to Jill Ball for continuing her Accentuate the Positive geneameme this year.
Happy New Year to All.
You made such great progress this year with your genealogy research and reporting. Onward to 2026!
More positivity coming in 2026! May you have another rewarding and productive year ahead.
So thrilled to see you again Linda. I’ve been off travelling and have returned to a lovely collection of posts.
It’s no surprise that you have had another successful year.
RootsMagic citations are still a challenge for me but I enjoy many other features of the program.