One year ago today, I got married to the most amazing person I've ever met. The time has flown. I look at photos of our ceremony, and it feels like yesterday. It was such a happy day. And today has been a happy day, despite hardly seeing each other. We worked opposite schedules today. We celebrated yesterday instead though since we knew this would be the case. We went out and perused some of our favorite stores and then went to a brewhouse for dinner, just the two of us.
Today is also a day we share with my inlaws. They got married on this day 32 years ago. I looked back through some of their wedding photos today. It's amazing to see the changes that happen in 32 years. They were so young (though not as young as we are). They may not be so young, or brunette anymore, but the light in their eyes and the love between them is still there. I love going to visit them for the very reason that their house is always so full of love and happiness. I want to have that when we have children. I want them to enjoy being at home while they're growing up and coming back home once they're out on their own. It brings a smile to my face to think of raising children together. If they turn out anything like their daddy, I will be a happy mom. That is several years down the road still, but it still crosses my mind from time to time.
Apparently it is also my husband's godmother's anniversary too. (I didn't even know he had a godmother!) Donna Smith has been married to her husband, Rodney, for 20 years now. I can't wait until that milestone. Well... I can, but I can't. Haha. Donna is also from Randolph County. That means, more than likely, they are related somehow. Maybe I will find that connection soon.
I have lately, however, been shifting my focus from adding people to the tree as I said last time. I'm still investigating source documents on what I have already. I've also been checking to see if I have any of what Geni calls "zombies," people who are actually deceased but still listed as living. I have so far only found one though. I have a feeling there are many more out there though. I just have to track them down.
Another rather important thing I guess I should mention... I found out at least one relationship between me and my husband. A while ago, though I forgot to record it at the time, I found a link through Pocahontas. Since I didn't record the path, I therefore could not figure out our relationship to each other. All I remember is she was a cousin of his and she's my 13th great-grandmother. In any case, I found another path I was able to track through Annica Jansen and Thomas Southard. Through that connection, we are seventh cousins 15 times removed. That is distant enough for me that I don't have the same fear as my mother-in-law of our children being "retarded." Haha.
It somewhat saddens me because my husband does not share the same joy of genealogy that I do. He feels as if these people that came before him mean relatively little now. I disagree. I feel a need to seek the people who came before us and learn from them and figure out why we grew up the ways we did. I love the feeling of having a legacy or a family right to uphold. I'm hoping to find some photos of his more distant relatives in hopes that it will make him feel more connected to his past and his family's past, especially if I can find a relative that looks like him.
Anyway... I'm think that's about it for now. I will be back soon I'm sure with more news and updates. Until then!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
I found it!
So, after a few months of searching, I have finally found it. I found out the relationship between husband's parents. They are third cousins once removed. I told my mother-in-law about this, and she was shocked. She always thought they were something more like fifth cousins. She said they had to be more than third cousins or else her children would have ended up retarded. Well, lucky for all of us, all of her boys are lovely and very much not retarded.
I'm still working on finding the relationship between my own parents, but with each new person I find on the tree, I come closer to discovering the connection. I have, however, been taking a break the last couple of days in adding people to the tree. I have instead been pruning and preening my profiles. Geni has what they call "Master Profiles." They have a wonderful format to them that will actually be very helpful with a little side project I'm working on that I won't mention yet. So far, I have four master profiles. (I'm so proud of them!)
In addition to updating my own profiles, I've also been helping fix some other people's work too. In Geni, when merges happen on two profiles, the "About Me" section is also merged and there is often duplicated information left behind. I've been helping out wherever I'm able in fixing this and leaving behind nice and readable profiles. I've become more addicted to that than I was in just finding relatives and ancestors (if you can believe it).
My goal over the next few weeks is to work my way through each project I am following on Geni and complete as many profiles as possible. My brother, who has a lot of source documents already, is slowly sending me copies of what he has to help with this.
He has been mainly helping in working out the true parents of one of our ancestors, George Hodson Triplett. His parentage has been a mystery for quite sometime. Rumors state a couple of possibilities, but I am looking for proof. I have to admit, I'm a little frustrated with this "brick wall". My brother claims to have some proof on the matter, but he has yet to get it to me, so I'm stuck waiting anxiously in the meantime. Oh well.
I guess that's about it for now. I will post again soon, and hopefully I will have something a bit more exciting to report.
I'm still working on finding the relationship between my own parents, but with each new person I find on the tree, I come closer to discovering the connection. I have, however, been taking a break the last couple of days in adding people to the tree. I have instead been pruning and preening my profiles. Geni has what they call "Master Profiles." They have a wonderful format to them that will actually be very helpful with a little side project I'm working on that I won't mention yet. So far, I have four master profiles. (I'm so proud of them!)
In addition to updating my own profiles, I've also been helping fix some other people's work too. In Geni, when merges happen on two profiles, the "About Me" section is also merged and there is often duplicated information left behind. I've been helping out wherever I'm able in fixing this and leaving behind nice and readable profiles. I've become more addicted to that than I was in just finding relatives and ancestors (if you can believe it).
My goal over the next few weeks is to work my way through each project I am following on Geni and complete as many profiles as possible. My brother, who has a lot of source documents already, is slowly sending me copies of what he has to help with this.
He has been mainly helping in working out the true parents of one of our ancestors, George Hodson Triplett. His parentage has been a mystery for quite sometime. Rumors state a couple of possibilities, but I am looking for proof. I have to admit, I'm a little frustrated with this "brick wall". My brother claims to have some proof on the matter, but he has yet to get it to me, so I'm stuck waiting anxiously in the meantime. Oh well.
I guess that's about it for now. I will post again soon, and hopefully I will have something a bit more exciting to report.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Well, I did it...
I made a genealogy blog. I've been wanting to do it for quite some time, but I wasn't quite sure I would have anything to say. After thinking about it non-stop for the last couple of weeks though, I decided "Why not?!" So, here I am. It may be slow going at first, but I have a feeling things will pick up quickly.
To start this thing, I guess I will mention a bit about my interest in genealogy. I'm not sure what exactly got me started in it. The first time I ever remember asking questions about ancestors was in ninth grade. I had an English assignment that required me to write an autobiography. Me, being the over-achiever that I am, decided it wouldn't be just about me, but also about the people that made me me.
I asked my grandmother and my great-grandmother about any relative they could remember. They had a lot of stories. That autobiography would come in so handy right now because it detailed some people we know very little about in our family. I swear somewhere I still have it, but I cannot seem to find it. If I had to guess, my parents threw it out when they moved or when I went to college. Oh well. My great-grandmother has since passed away, but what I do remember her telling me has proved to be a big help in researching her family.
In any case, that time in ninth grade I think is what started all this mess for me. I became interested in knowing who came before me and how the ways they lived shaped who I am today. Later in high school I think is when I started working on a tree on Ancestry.com. They have since become very exclusive to members only, so I have left them and moved on to Geni.com. I LOVE Geni. They suit my needs perfectly and make finding cousins and relatives very easy. But back when I started using Geni, it was just a little here and there. It has now, however, become a bit of an obsession of mine. I blame my husband's mother.
I got married last March, and my mother-in-law was so excited because she knew I loved researching family trees. She said "Now you can do ours too!" I looked a little, but I wasn't able to find much. Then, this last holiday, she gave me the holy grail of her family: a book outlining all of her father's side of the family as far as they had reached (the 1700's). Since I received this book, I have, literally, been going non-stop working on her side of the family. Then! She gives me the name of someone on my husband's dad's side of the family that has been doing that line. Between all of this information, I have been quite a busy gal.
Since acquiring all of this data, I have added thousands of people to the family tree, and I have even found a few relationships between my husband and I. Very, very distant relationships, unlike the relationship of his parents, but still. I have also gotten closer to realizing the relationship between my own parents. Their relationship seems perhaps even more distant than that between me and my husband. It's in finding all of these connections that I find myself loving genealogy.
I also have the pleasure of having someone else in my family share my love of genealogy. My brother loves doing it too. He may not be quite to the level of obsession I have reached, but he has traveled across the country researching family lines. While I would love to be able to do the same, I tend to let my fingertips do the researching. I rely on whatever records I can find online and the wonderful site findagrave.com for photos and locations of graves.
So, with all of that, what do I hope this blog will be? Well, I came up with a few ideas. First and most importantly, it will be a place I can record all of the crazy relationships and ideas that circle my head when I find new information. I can also record progress made or not made in a certain area. I also hope to use it as a way to tell stories I find or hear about family members in hopes of remembering the way they lived, saw the world, or why they moved from one place to another. I can discuss discrepancies I find in data (which often happens) and try to hash out the truth and think of ways those discrepancies may have come about. There are so many ways I plan to use this blog. I'm so excited to start. Now to work on the tree some more so I have something to write about later!
To start this thing, I guess I will mention a bit about my interest in genealogy. I'm not sure what exactly got me started in it. The first time I ever remember asking questions about ancestors was in ninth grade. I had an English assignment that required me to write an autobiography. Me, being the over-achiever that I am, decided it wouldn't be just about me, but also about the people that made me me.
I asked my grandmother and my great-grandmother about any relative they could remember. They had a lot of stories. That autobiography would come in so handy right now because it detailed some people we know very little about in our family. I swear somewhere I still have it, but I cannot seem to find it. If I had to guess, my parents threw it out when they moved or when I went to college. Oh well. My great-grandmother has since passed away, but what I do remember her telling me has proved to be a big help in researching her family.
In any case, that time in ninth grade I think is what started all this mess for me. I became interested in knowing who came before me and how the ways they lived shaped who I am today. Later in high school I think is when I started working on a tree on Ancestry.com. They have since become very exclusive to members only, so I have left them and moved on to Geni.com. I LOVE Geni. They suit my needs perfectly and make finding cousins and relatives very easy. But back when I started using Geni, it was just a little here and there. It has now, however, become a bit of an obsession of mine. I blame my husband's mother.
I got married last March, and my mother-in-law was so excited because she knew I loved researching family trees. She said "Now you can do ours too!" I looked a little, but I wasn't able to find much. Then, this last holiday, she gave me the holy grail of her family: a book outlining all of her father's side of the family as far as they had reached (the 1700's). Since I received this book, I have, literally, been going non-stop working on her side of the family. Then! She gives me the name of someone on my husband's dad's side of the family that has been doing that line. Between all of this information, I have been quite a busy gal.
Since acquiring all of this data, I have added thousands of people to the family tree, and I have even found a few relationships between my husband and I. Very, very distant relationships, unlike the relationship of his parents, but still. I have also gotten closer to realizing the relationship between my own parents. Their relationship seems perhaps even more distant than that between me and my husband. It's in finding all of these connections that I find myself loving genealogy.
I also have the pleasure of having someone else in my family share my love of genealogy. My brother loves doing it too. He may not be quite to the level of obsession I have reached, but he has traveled across the country researching family lines. While I would love to be able to do the same, I tend to let my fingertips do the researching. I rely on whatever records I can find online and the wonderful site findagrave.com for photos and locations of graves.
So, with all of that, what do I hope this blog will be? Well, I came up with a few ideas. First and most importantly, it will be a place I can record all of the crazy relationships and ideas that circle my head when I find new information. I can also record progress made or not made in a certain area. I also hope to use it as a way to tell stories I find or hear about family members in hopes of remembering the way they lived, saw the world, or why they moved from one place to another. I can discuss discrepancies I find in data (which often happens) and try to hash out the truth and think of ways those discrepancies may have come about. There are so many ways I plan to use this blog. I'm so excited to start. Now to work on the tree some more so I have something to write about later!
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