Saturday, November 5, 2011

Christmas and Genealogy

Each year at Christmas time I try to think of a genealogical project that might hold interest for my family members. One year I wrote the story of my mother's great-grandfather, who had been a great mystery for many years. Another year I wrote about my father's family. Both were received with interest. Two years ago, I printed up (what I considered) a quite attractive recipe card for family members that I included in with my Christmas cards to them. The recipe card was Scandinavian in appearance with a small picture of my great-grandmother (who came from Sweden) and her original recipe for Swedish Cardamon Bread. I was very pleased with how it turned out. However, not one single person ever commented on it. So I'm not sure that it was appreciated or enjoyed at all. It was disappointing, because I had thought that it was such a good idea! And I spent a lot of time on it! But I don't give up easily, because here I am approaching the holidays and trying to come up with another clever idea! So I am searching for ideas...and will report back here if and when anything comes to me!

Monday, January 3, 2011

It's A New Year

I just looked at my stated genealogical goals from last year and I am feeling pretty satisfied with how well I completed them. That's certainly a good feeling! Now I need to contemplate on what my goals will be for 2011! 

 I noticed that I only had 10 blog entries for 2010. One of my goals is definitely to blog about my genealogy efforts more often. It is especially helpful when I receive feedback from others on my efforts. And that will only happen if I am actually blogging! In trying to identify great/happy genealogical moments over the past year, a couple of things come to mind. 

Probably the best one was finding that one of my mystery Missouri Adamsons had children before he died! I did not know that there were any descendants. And I happened to learn about this from keeping an eye on "Recent Activity" on Ancestry.com. Since that time, I have checked the activity at least a couple of times a week, if not every day! You never know when people are looking at your tree and adding something from your tree to their tree. It may end up that they have family knowledge that you don't have. 

I often contact people if I see that they have been looking at/copying from my tree. I want to share and compare information with them. Another happy incident occurred when I was searching for information about Westfield College in Illinois. Both of my grandparents graduated from there and the college no longer exists. I came across a graduate student who is writing a book about the college and its graduates. I was able to share several pictures of my grandmother and her peers from their college days with him. 

 For Christmas, I gave my three children each a scrapbook that I made detailing the history of our family cabin/summer place in Indiana. The lake was built in the late 1930s and a cabin (named "Atlasta") was built for my grandmother in 1939 on the lake. There were a few pictures from the late 1930s, and then the history included when the newer cabin/home was built, etc. I thought that it turned out well, and hopefully, my kids enjoyed it. There are certainly years and years of memories there!

 There have been contacts with Murphy/Ryan descendants this past year, and we hope to meet up together this spring. I am really looking forward to that!