Category Archives: Geneameme

Geneameme

Accentuate the Positive 2025 Geneameme

3 Comments

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.

Geneameme

Accentuate the Positive 2024 Geneameme

2 Comments

I love blogger Jill Ball’s Accentuate the Positive geneameme and am so glad that she has published it again this year.

Here are her questions and my answers:

1.  Google provided an answer to many general searches, but no single one comes to mind.

2.  I was the recipient of genearosity from several readers who have messaged on my blog and shared new details about several common ancestors.

3.  This headstone gave me some extra information – one in Preakness, New Jersey as it linked a collateral ancestor with earlier generations. The ancestor died in her 20s, but shared a gravestone (original to the time period) with a grandmother who died about the same time. With the lack of NJ records, it would have been very difficult to make the family connection.

4.  A useful record I discovered was a death certificate that named the suspected father of a person born in 1864 to parents who weren’t married.

5.  A newly found family member who shared – not newly found, but a second cousin from whom I rarely hear shared information on the births of the youngest generation on that side of the family.

6.  A geneasurprise I received was thank you notes from people to whom I gifted ancestral photos that I rescued/bought online. One lady in her 90s was absolutely thrilled and mailed me an handwritten note.

7.   My 2024 post that I was particularly proud of was the series I did on the Robert Caldwell family of Waterborough, Queens, New Brunswick, Canada.

8.   DNA helped me to do not much. I’ve fond no unexpected surprises and my brick walls are earlier in time than can be helped with autosomal DNA.

9.  I was pleased I upgraded to the Friend subscription level on American Ancestors. They offered TWO 30-minute sessions with a professional instead of one. Now, I need to decide what qustions to ask!

10. Although Face to Face events have returned Zoom has been my preferred method of attending genealogy meetings. Even the “local” meetings would involve an hour’s drive each way for a 90 minute meeting and most of my current interests are in places far from where I live. Zoom allows me to attend and participate regularly.

11. I dipped my toes into artificial intelligence, which I find to be quite scary in the long run.

12. I connected with a second cousin who asked for help researching his mother’s side of the family. We are related through his father.

13. By dipping my toes into AI I was able to learn more about the fun genealogy uses for AI in addition to the tech advances like with FamilySearch full-text search.

14. I was honoured to receive thank yous and a phone call from some of the people who received my gifted ancestral photos. (See Question #6 above.)

15. I found this presentation most useful – Thomas MacEntee and Randy Seaver gave talks to GeneaBlogger premium members about artificial intelligence. Both were excellent and I learned a lot.

16. A great repository/archive/library I visited was – none this eyar. The farthest I’ve been from home for genealogy is my local FamilySearch center.

17. I got the most value from this book – I splurged and bought Spartanburg County South Carolina Minutes of the County Court 1785-1799 by Brent Holcomb because most SC records on FamilySearch are locked and my husband has multiple families living in Spartanburg County in this time period. There are tons of mentions of those surnames in the index. That made me a very happy genealogist!

18. It was exciting to finally meet – no one new this year!

19. A geneadventure I enjoyed was – again, none this year.

20. Another positive I would like to share is how much I love connecting with other bloggers and readers. We are so lucky to live in a time where it is so easy to share information with others living so far away. I wish everyone a happy, healthy New Year with lots of genealogical successes in 2025.

Geneameme

Accentuate the Positive 2022!

2 Comments

What a great way to end a genealogy year with Jill Ball’s GeniAus Accentuate the Positive 2022 geneameme! I look forward to this every year.

Here are the questions with my answers:

Remember to Accentuate the Positive

(Please delete the items that are not relevant to your situation.)

1. I was happy to start back up Anquestors, the local genealogy group that I teach months after a Covid absence of 26 months.

2. In 2022 I was particularly proud of writing up and posting family surname sketches for all the Rusyn surnames found in Udol, Slovakia church records. The posts aren’t very interesting for most people because they are abstracted church records, but they will be invaluable for descendants researching the families who attended St. Dimitry’s Church, serving both Udol and Hajtovka, Slovakia from the 1820s to early 1900s.
3. A new software package or web application I embraced – well I haven’t exactly embraced it yet – but I finally downloaded is RootsMagic 8 and I plan to import RM7 gedcoms when I finish my family tree clean up project.
4.  My sledge hammer did great work on this brick wall . . .there wasn’t really any single brick wall that came down. However, I was successful at piecing together more of the stories of my Wilson family from Campobello Island, Canada and several of my husband’s Scots Irish families who migrated from the Carolinas to Tennessee and Kentucky.
5. A new genealogy/history book that sparked my interest was Hunky by Nicholas Stevensson Karas, an historical fiction book about the lives of Rusyn immigrants to America. I can imagine my grandparents and their families and what they went through assimilating to a very new life.
6. A geneasurprise I received was  – thanks from three recipients of my re-homed vintage photos and postcards that went back to descendants of the original owners. Hearing how thrilled these people are absolutely makes my day. The most recent was a Christmas card that came a week ago thanking me for her grandmother’s photo.
7.  In 2022 I finally virtually met a number of new Rusyn friends. I even met the cousin of my 7th grade science teacher. I had no idea she was Rusyn.
8.  Locating  the Augusta, Maine state hospital records of William Tarbox online gave me great joy, even though it was a very sad end to the last 20 days of his life.
9.  I am pleased the Covid situation caused me to change my travels. As much as I love to see the world, it’s been a wonderful respite being at home. I have plenty to keep me busy every day.

10. I progressed my DNA research by not much. I just don’t get any close matches and have solved no family tree mysteries this way. I’ve taken both the autosomal and mtDNA tests and my husband has taken those plus Y-DNA.

11.  An informative  journal or newspaper article I found was, in general, The American Genealogist, a scholarly publication with excellently researched genealogical and historical information.

12. I was pleased I could contribute to/answer questions from several distant cousins needing research help and/or clarifications for “facts” they had found. I always answer blog commenters or people who email me directly within a timely manner – a few days – whether I feel I can help or not. There’s nothing worse than being ignored when genealogy questions are asked, so I always respond.
13.  I’m not a techie person and sometimes need help fixing tech issues. My blog host, Site Ground, taught me how to fix small issues that appeared after plug in updates. That’s a huge achievement for me!
14. I got a thrill from opening someone’s eyes to the joy of genealogy by returning those old photos and postcards to family members. One man said it has totally gotten his sons into wanting to learn more about the family history.

15. The best value I got for my genealogy dollars was Jill Morelli’s Advance Swedish methods class on the relatively new Applied Genealogy Institute.

16. A DNA discovery I made was – well, my husband’s cousin actually figured out how a pretty close DNA match with a young lady fit into our family trees. It was a NPE with a long deceased person in the 20th century.

17. I enjoyed my first post Covid face to face event because Anquestors (see Question #1) members had a great time catching up. We had not gone virtual, so it was a lot of fun meeting in person.

18. A fabulous event I attended was the virtual RootsTech 2022 conference. I had the opportunity to hear many new speakers and the variety of topics was broad.

19. I’m happy I splashed out and purchased both a new desktop and a new laptop computer. With some great Black Friday offers, my slower than molasses laptop was replaced and my desktop, which crashed last month (but started up again, thank goodness, has also been replaced. We’re in the midst of moving everything over to the new technology.

 19. I got the most joy from sending those photos and postcards to descendants. I know I sound like a broken record, but it warms my heart to see these family mementos returned to descendants.

20. Another positive I would like to share is that many brick walls aren’t really true brick walls, just stumbling blocks. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE research possibilities and you might be surprised at how many unexpected answers you will find.
Thank you, Jill Ball, for creating this fun geneameme. 🙂