How did my 2017 Genealogy Resolutions go?

You might remember, that each year since 2013 I’ve set myself some Genealogy New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t bother setting myself any other kind (seems fair enough, right?), but how did I fare with them in 2017?

Here’s how my 5 Genealogy Resolutions went:

1. Kill Mary Clarke

This is the Nth year that I’ve tried to kill off my child-abusing gaol-bird of a 4x Great Grandmother, but sadly, she survives for another year. Instead, I finally unpicked the puzzle that led me to kill off my time-travelling  5x Great Grandmother (different branch of tree), Mrs. Elizabeth Yarrow (née Wright), after finding her disguised as ‘Elizabeth Yerroll’.

FAIL 😦

2. Scan my BMD certificates

I have made some progress in this in the last few months. Partly because of the wonderful ‘trials’ that the General Register Office have been doing to explore digital delivery of birth and death certificates, but also as am adding them in as digitised image sources to my hop from Reunion11 to Mac Family Tree 8. It’s being a great opportunity to read them again for those minute details – love examining those marriage witnesses for cousins. I am nowhere near 50% though, which was my target… probably 10%.

PARTIAL PASS 😐

3. Finish reading published family histories

The books I gave in my example didn’t get anywhere near my eyes this year, but I did find a page-turned queue jumper in the guise of Stephen McGann’s book Flesh and Blood – no, not just another sleb-turned-genealogy-expert, but a famous family of which he has been the quiet observant researcher for years. It’s an enjoyable read, and I am within the final third of the book. I’m a slow reader. and quite frankly, I’ve got this history hobby that keeps distracting me 😉

PARTIAL PASS 😐

4. Find my uncle’s grave

In October 2016, at an uncle’s funeral, I learned that I was missing an uncle completely – right there, right under my nose! I was sad that I’d missed him, and sad that no-one had talked about him until after my other uncle’s death. Suddenly my Uncle Malcolm existed in my world, and I felt that I needed to bring a little life back to his name once more. With the help of the parish church, and an afternoon searching a cemetery with the burial notebook to hand, I found the spot.

PASS 🙂

5. Run a 4th AncestryDNA test

I had no trouble achieving this one – partly aided by a price war at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2017 show, and the visit of my paternal aunt. In fact, I was able to take my DNA test tally up to 5… with both a paternal and maternal aunt both giving me some spit in exchange for info, cousins, and silent tree-less non-responding genetic tourists ;). You can read about my family’s first three DNA tests here.

PASS 🙂

Conclusion:

So, I think I’ve scored 3/5 in 2017 – a good year for progress.

There’s been plenty of other things going on too – I completed and moved into a new (well, 1955) house which involved creating gardens and decorating etc, I adopted a cat, and I changed my job.

In genealogy, I also got to know my late-Grandfather’s (79yr old) cousin and her husband much better – and made a few visits to see her late-mother’s Victorian photograph collection where I made copies, and shared trees with her. I hope to return to coax a little spit for a test soon 😉

I also made progress on my wandering Simpson Bishop puzzle – he too needs killing off, but it seems that he became an American citizen in his 60s in the 1880s, and never returned home to his 3rd wife and his older children.

As I type this, I’m tidying up data in Mac Family Tree – i’ve been doing it since 26th December…. and I’m enjoying it, will no doubt be doing it tomorrow, and it will no doubt keep me busy!

I’ll be compiling my 5 Genealogy Resolutions for 2018 shortly, but let me know in the comments below if you have any, or how your 2017 ones fared.

As ever, happy tree surgery, thanks for reading, and have a very happy and healthy 2018.

Happy New Year.

Andrew