2020 A Year of Genealogical Research

Hard to believe that it’s time to look back at 2020, from a genealogy standpoint, again already but so glad to be done with 2020!

At the beginning of a New Year I like to take a look back and see what I have accomplished over the past year and develop goals for the new year. I retired at the end of June so…you’d think I would’ve had a lot more time for genealogy but I decided to take some time off and drive cross county. Harley and I were gone for a little over three months.  (See Genealogy Road Trip 2010)

Technically, I guess I did a bit of genealogy while I was traveling:

• visited 3 states specifically to do genealogical research
• found and visited the land a paternal great uncle owned in South Dakota and the land a maternal great-great grandfather owned in Iowa  (See posts Gerald G. Warner, Land Owner and Jacob Hamman’s Land)
• visited the town in Iowa where my maternal grandfather was born (Remsen)
• visited the towns my maternal great grandfather and grandmother were born in eastern Iowa
• met cousins I’d only previously corresponded with- 2^nd cousin in Wisconsin, a 3^rd cousin in Ohio and a first cousin in South Carolina
• visited 6 cemeteries in three states
• learned more about this Nation’s History (See The Wyoming Massacre and Congress)
• met some very kind, knowledgeable and helpful researchers
• spent very valuable time with family and friends

I use Legacy Family Tree software to maintain my family tree. I have trees in Ancestry and My Heritage but those are not the most up to date trees. (Sometimes in Ancestry and My Heritage I may collect information from hints and store them in my trees for future research and then discard them if the information is not correct. I use it as a ‘holding place’.)

From my Legacy tree:

A review of the statistics in my Legacy tree that I am most interested in since I have been blogging:

While I wasn’t able to add much new information to my Legacy Family tree in the past year I was able to go more in-depth with the information I have found on people in my tree.

In 2020:

I completed 37 Blog Posts (my goal was 50) with an all-time total of 117,002 page views.

Top 5 blog posts were:

I co-presented, Celebrating 400 Years of the Mayflower with Diane Gould Hall at the San Diego Genealogical Society on July 11th via Zoom.

Goals for next year:

• My usual goal, to complete 50 blog posts.  I have so much information from my road trip that I need to write about.
• Present a program about Carrie’s Letters via Zoom for the Chula Vista Genealogical Society on Wednesday, March 31^st.
• Complete the last edit of Carrie’s Letters finally so others can read her stories. There is so much rich genealogical information to be gathered from her letters.
• To get ready for the next genealogy road trip I want to map out the locations my ancestors lived. I have so many maternal and paternal lines from as far back as the 1600s that lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. Instead of crisscrossing back and forth across the states I had an idea to help me get organized that I’d like to work on this year so I can target the towns I would like to visit to do research. More to follow on this idea.
• Attend the 100^th Warner Family Reunion in July.
• Attend the Alden Kindred Reunion (for the first time) in August.
• Attend the Warner Cousin Christmas Luncheon.

In summary, I think it’s been another great year for research despite working full time for the first six months and then traveling for over 3 ½ months, oh yea, and Covid. There is something so amazing about being able to visit places that my ancestors lived and to walk in their footsteps.

I humbly thank all of you who read my stories! I am grateful for the photos or stories that you remember and share with me. The questions you ask spur me on to new investigations and discoveries. I appreciate hearing and knowing what you remember. It truly is the ‘journey’ that is the reward and you are all part of that. I wish all of you a very happy and healthy New Year.  Off to another exciting year of research!

If you have any corrections or additions or stories to share I look forward to hearing them.

Enjoy the journey,
Debby