MpP Family Tree

883 and Counting

2011-05-30T21:51:00.000-06:00

I've been away from the blog for a while, but not from the tree! Through my friend, the cemetery, I have connected with a bunch of distant cousins on Facebook. Although they are descendants of a few different brothers, the vast majority are descendants of Robert Melvin Pierce. Before I started this project, I only had a few descendants of Robert Melvin identified, maybe 30. Thankfully, several of Robert Melvin's descendants are also into genealogy. Several weeks ago, Wendy Miller sent a packet of information to me originally compiled by Helen Marie (Pierce) Gerlock. It's taken until now to work through the pages and pages of information she gathered and load the information into Family Tree Maker. Those 30 or so descendants I had identified before? Well, now there are 315 descendants! Across all 8 brothers, I'm now up to 883 people identified!

Now, where was I before that packet arrived?

Rollin Melvin Pierce (1895 - 1963)

2011-05-01T16:56:00.001-06:00

I am now organized to take on the Descendants of Eight project. Well, at least a bit more organized than I was before. More on that later...

Historical Records
To test my newfound organizational tools, I spent some time with Rollin Melvin Pierce today, (2^nd generation, Robert Melvin's youngest). I didn't have a spouse or any descendants identified, so I thought it was a good place to start. Although a little slow and tedious at times, it was a very productive afternoon! With the help of Family Tree Maker's little leaf, I found Rollin in the 1900, 1910 and 1920 census records as well as his WWI Draft Registration card. The 1900 and 1910 census records showed Rollin living with his parents Robert Melvin and Ida M. Pierce, along with his sisters Jennie L. and Mabel C and brother Leon J. In 1920, however, Rollin was newly married and living with his wife, Alice M! Now we have a spouse! I wonder if there are any children... I wasn't able to find Rollin and Alice in the 1930 census; I'm going to have to run some creative searches to find them.

Public Member Trees
After working through Ancestry's immediate historical records, I decided to try my first deep dive into Ancestry's public member trees. I've been wary of these in the past because, although they have interesting information in them, they are often unsourced and, therefore, unreliable. But, what the heck. I'm now taking notes and documenting sources, so anything that ends up being suspect should be much easier to identify and deal with...right? There were a total of 9 different public trees that contained Rollin. The first tree had some great information: Alice's full name (Alice Marie Partise), when she was born, passed away and the date of their marriage (19 Mar 1919). Wow! I wasn't sure about the source of the marriage date and then I noticed Rollin's record had a transcription of the marriage announcement:

ONTARIO COUNTY JOURNAL Friday March 21, 1919 COL 4

MARRIED

PIERCE PARTISE

At Canandaigua, March 19, 1919, Rollin Melvin Pierce and Miss Alice Marie Partise, both of Canandaigua.

PIERCE PARTISE

The marriage of Rollin Melvin Pierce, of Canandaigua town, and Miss Alice Marie Partise, Pleasant Street, took place at the Baptist parsonage on Wednesday afternoon. They will reside in Canandaigua town.

Cool! Odds are...that's accurate and I guess some people do document things in those public trees. The next 7 trees didn't provide any new information but the last one may be another gold mine. It was the Gerlock Family Tree...and it listed a daughter for Rollin and Alice: Helen Marie Pierce! Helen was married to a Gerlock, had a daughter who then married a Devlin (more information wasn't available as these folks are all still living). Two more generations! And since this was in the "Gerlock Family Tree" I'm hopeful that one of Rollin's descendants posted the information to Ancestry. I sent a message off to the owner of the tree in hopes of finding a new, living relative. Keep your fingers crossed!

Enough for today...there are miles of bills to pay before I sleep...

Can a cemetery be your friend?

2011-04-21T23:27:00.000-06:00

Turns out, in the era of Facebook, yes it can. And for the Descendants of Eight project, it just paid off big time!

A week or so ago, as I was working through the burial listing from Woodlawn Cemetery in Canandaigua, NY. And when I was on Facebook, Woodlawn Cemetery popped up as a suggested friend. Crazy! How can a cemetery be your friend? Well, maybe for someone into genealogy, it's not such a stretch. I "friended" Woodlawn and forgot about it. A few days later, I noticed an interesting name show up on Facebook as a suggested friend: Julie Pierce Elder. Hmm. A "Pierce"? That caught my eye. I looked at her profile and found that she was from Canandaigua. That got me thinking...could she be one of the Descendants of Eight?? I started checking my tree for Julie or any of the other Pierces she was connected to on Facebook. I came up empty. Nobody was showing up. Maybe Canandaigua has been infiltrated by some Pierces that aren't part of the family...

Well, I sent Julie and email to see if maybe she was aware of a connection to the family. Her response came back and it didn't sound positive. But she gave me the name of her father Bernard Leighton Pierce, grandfather Bernard Pierce and her grandfather's siblings, Melvin, Ida and Robert. A glimmer of hope...Melvin? Leighton? Ida? Those are common family names! I jumped on Ancestry and a quick search revealed a 1920 census record showed up with Bernard, Melvin, Ida and Robert as children. Their father? Leon J. Pierce...son of Robert Melvin Pierce, one of the eight brothers! Bingo! Julie is a relative!

Julie and I friended each other on Facebook and then things got really interesting. I invited Julie to join the Descendants of Eight Facebook group. Before I could even welcome Julie to the group, she added 20 of her family members to the group! A couple of hours later, one of the people Julie added to the group, Mary Miller, added another 14 people to the group and another one submitted a request to join. For months, the group has had only 20 members and in one day it is now 61 people strong!

The challenge ahead? I have no idea how the 35 people that joined the group today are connected to the family. I may get some help from one of the new members that is a genealogist, but I still think I have a lot of digging ahead of me. What fun!

Spending Quality Time with Dead People

2011-04-17T22:28:00.000-06:00

I've been spending quality time with dead people lately. And it's been productive and exciting to say the least. I was doing some Google searches, trying to find a site I've used to research Ontario County family history in the past and stumbled on a new site in the results that I hadn't seen before: Woodlawn Cemetery Burial Listing. My Pierce family, for many generations, stayed in the Canandaigua area so many of them are buried at Woodlawn. I opened the burial listing and saw row after row of Pierces, Farnums, Fullers and many other names in my family tree. The burial listing has a ton of valuable information for me, including death date, death location and burial date. I worked the list for several days and found over 100 people from my tree amongst those listed.

And the windfall doesn't end there. A quick email to the superintendent, Doug Stone, confirmed that the cemetery has additional information on file. The cost? Free! There isn't anything better in life than free treasure. So I sent my list off to the kind folks that take care of the cemetery. Hopefully, sometime soon, I will have some incredibly valuable information for my research. Things like, names of parents, cause of death and much more. I can't wait to see what I can learn from all of that information.

And to top it off, having the additional dates and information for these people is making it possible to unearth some additional generations for the Descendants of Eight project! How cool is that? I can only imagine the growth in the tree once the additional information comes through.

William Clark Pierce - New Generation

2011-04-11T22:55:00.000-06:00

1920 Census Record

I've been spending a bit more time with the tree lately and tonight I was able to add another generation to Daniel Webster's descendants! I previously had William Clark Pierce as one of Daniel's children, but I didn't have any spouse or children. Thanks to Ancestry's shaking little leaf, I found his WWI draft card, his SSDI entry and several census records. In 1910, he was still living with his parents Daniel and Madeline, next door to his uncle James Hamilton Pierce. But in 1920, he was married to May E and had 2 sons Everett P and William M living at 209 Davidson Ave in Canandaigua, NY. Interestingly, in 1920, William C was working as a clerk for his brother, Perry R. Pierce. Later he was a salesman in a dry goods store and, ultimately, my father remembers him owning the Esso station on the outside of town. Everett and William are my first cousins 2 times removed. It's nice to find another generation and some completely new names...now I have to start digging for Everett and William's offspring...

My Grandfather's Yearbook

2011-03-20T21:43:00.002-06:00

Elvin Henry Pierce

A couple of weeks ago, after many years of searching, I finally found my Grandpa Pierce's college yearbook from his senior year! I've had an automated search running with eBay for years and I've tracked down yearbooks from his freshman, sophomore and junior years. But the one from his senior year just never showed up. I was able to learn a few things about my Grandpa Pierce through those early yearbooks, but only the senior yearbook has individual photos of each person. And then, finally, it was there. A 1936 Cayugan from Ithaca College. Thankfully, the person posted the yearbook with a "buy now" option, so I didn't have to go through the worry and anticipation of an auction, I was able to secure it right away.

One of the most interesting things I was able to learn was my grandfather's degree. He received a BS in Oral English. He was also very busy. He was on the student council, participated in 2 honor societies, Adelphi and Oracle. He was also on the newspaper (The Ithacan) staff. And that wasn't enough, he was a stage manager and participated in the dramatic productions. I feel like such a slacker!

The best part of all was sharing the find with my father. He spend quite some time going through the pages and commented that he learned some things he never knew about his father. The magic of genealogy!

Where have you been?

2011-03-19T23:16:00.000-06:00

Wow, I can't believe that it's been over a year since I've done any research on the family tree and posted anything here. Spending too much time working is to blame. Some recent events, however, have motivated me to get back into the swing of things. First, after many years of searching, I finally found a copy of my Grandpa Pierce's senior college yearbook. And then, while watching an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, I got an email from a distant cousin of mine. She had just started her own family tree research and, it turns out, she's a descendant of one of the 8 Pierce boys! I invited her to the Geni family tree and she loaded a bunch of her relatives, all of them descendants of James Hamilton Pierce. Very cool!

So, I spent time tonight copying her information from Geni into my local tree. Now I finally have some information for James Hamilton's descendants!

I hope to scan a few pictures out of my grandfather's yearbook tomorrow...

iTouch-ing My Tree

2010-01-16T20:03:00.006-07:00

Since I seem to be enthralled with all things Apple lately, I'm feeling the need to put my research on my iTouch. At the moment I don't feel the need to actually work on my tree with my iTouch, I would just like to carry my information with me and be able to review it easily. Here's what I think I want in my iTouch app:

The app needs to work with Family Tree Maker, the tool I use to maintain my tree. I doubt there will be a direct connection, but at least an ability to import a GEDCOM file
The app needs to display all of the various facts I have stored in my tree
Ideally, it will also display the notes and other information I have in the tree
If it's really good, source information will be brought over as well

Choices

Doing a quick search for "genealogy" in the App Store found these apps:

MobileFamilyTree ($4.99) by Synium Software GmbH
Reunion ($14.99) by Leister Productions, Inc.
GedView ($3.99) by David Knight
FamViewer ($14.99) by Aster Software
MobileTree ($4.99) by AppTime, LLC
Shrubs ($9.99) by Benoît Bousquet

My initial hopes of finding a great app for 99¢ are immediately dashed; for $14.99, those apps better be awfully good!

Reviews

MobileFamilyTree 2.0.1 has some nice graphics and a decent looking tree format for such a small screen. There is a very strange three dimensional graphical tree that looks to be pretty useless. It also brings over photographs and has a nice looking media browser. Unfortunately, it only works with MacFamilyTree 5 or higher. Rules that one out immediately.

At first look, Reunion 1.0.2 looks great. It's a nice, clean interface that looks like it belongs on an iTouch and makes good use of the limited screen space. A nice surname index, bookmarks, a page that looks like a good Family Group view and a decent tree view. But, like MobileFamilyTree, Reunion is a companion application that only works with their Mac application, Reunion 9. Cross that one off the list as well.

By its name alone, I'm hopeful that GedView 2.6.1 will be my first real option to evaluate. And I'm right! GedView is specifically made to work with GEDCOM files only and isn't tied to any particular desktop applications. It looks like you can manage multiple GEDCOM databases that you simply download from a file location on the internet (Google Docs here I come...) or push to the iTouch using a WiFi connection. You can find people by an overall surname index or by a family index. It says it supports all standard GEDCOM event types and there are notes as well as source information! Wow...I'm almost ready to just purchase this app and I haven't even made it through all of the screenshots. You can view and edit the information on the iTouch and either export an entirely new GEDCOM file or just changes since a specific date and time. The graphical tree view isn't the greatest looking thing, but appears to be functional. And it looks like there are 2 useful "reports" you can view; a descendant outline report and a family group report. Did I mention that there's also a map view? It also says that it supports both portrait and landscape view on the iTouch.Very nice! And the cheapest application on the list. A definite contender.

FamViewer 2.1.2 is another GEDCOM viewer that isn't tied to a desktop application; I feel like I'm on a roll now! It also allows you to manage multiple GEDCOM databases that you download from a web site or via WiFi. You can view individuals in the tree, families by a nice family group view as well as notes and sources. The details page for an individual look slike it displays any standard GEDCOM event. Most of the screens in the app look very Apple-ish and the information is displayed very nicely. Except for the tree view, that is. It's a very "stick figure" tree view with a heavy black background; that's the one feature of this app that I don't like very much. Overall, looks to be a good application.

Right off the bat, MobileTree 1.0 is immediately a cut above the other apps in its presentation. The graphics are fantastic. And also, right off the bat, it's only available for registered members of the LDS or Mormon Church...so it's useless to me. No sense digging any further into the features.

Shrubs 2.2 is the last app in the list. On the surface, I like its icon the best we'll see if the functionality follows. Thankfully, Shrubs is another GEDCOM app and like FamViewer is a view-only application. It lets you import GEDCOM files from a web site or via WiFi. It has the same, standard Apple-like screens of the other apps and makes interesting use of colored text to increase the amount of information displayed on the screen (pink for women and blue for men). There are family group pages, surname indexes and marriage pages for finding people. Although you can't update the GEDCOM data itself, it has an interesting note pad feature that lets you enter notes about people or families in the tree, which you can later manually email to yourself to get them off of the device. The app seems to be a little thin on features, but the description in the App Store hints of a new 3.0 version of the app.

Decision

In the end, there are only 3 viable choices for me: GedView, FamViewer and Shrubs. One final concern I have is that the application is actively supported. GedView and FamViewer appear to meet that final criteria. GedView's version 2.6.1 was released just a few days ago (1/12/2010) and FamViewer's version 2.1.2 was released November 2009; Shrubs most recent release was in April 2009 and is not yet iPhone OS 3.0 tested. Lastly, GedView's feature list is much, much longer than its competition and it has the lowest price of the bunch. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Stay tuned for a review of the GedView app once I've had a chance to use it for a while...

Becoming Stagnant

2010-01-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

So I've been stuck in the same quagmire for the last several weeks. Well, that and buried with a bunch of work through the end of the year. I'm venturing down the next stage of the Descendants of Eight project by using Ancestry searches and resources to bolster the information in my tree. I'm focusing mostly on source records, especially the census. Family Tree Maker makes the process of finding, merging and "sourcing" records so simple, I'm just ending up confused.

Unlike doing this manually, FTM operates on one record, one individual at a time. So, despite finding Daniel Webster Pierce, his wife Madeline Rogers, living with Daniel's mother and 2 brothers all in one spot on the census, FTM just records the fact that Daniel was there.
FTM thankfully saves a copy of the census page locally, which is great, and incorporates it into FTM's medial library.
Unfortunately, FTM makes that copy for every person in the family. So when I follow the same steps for his wife, Madeline, another copy of the image is made.
Also, unfortunately, because this process is all driven by the little "hints" leaf in FTM, it's driven by those search results. What about brother Leighton that is also listed, but as "Layton?" The hinting and search process isn't going find him as easily, but I already know he's there! I don't see an easy method of connecting what I've already found to other family members.
How do I easily capture other information that I discover while viewing this census record? Like the fact that "Layton's" parental birth place is listed as Massachusetts. If this is brother Leighton, that's wrong! And also, the Gilbert family that is listed 2 households later? I believe the daughter Ida B listed there is the future wife of Henry Leighton Pierce. Where/how do I record this fact or at least mark it for future follow up?

More than anything, I hate being victim to tools. And that's what I am at the moment. I'm not in command of my research process and, therefore, the tool is driving me. And shortcomings of the tool are sending me into a tailspin. As much as I like to think I understand genealogy in concept, now is when I realize that application of the concept in practice is a very different thing.

Connecting Across Generations

2010-01-03T00:22:00.001-07:00

For me, it has been a sense of connection. Growing up an only child, genealogy gave me a sense of connecting to much bigger. A predominantly Irish family that in its zeal to become American forgot what it was to be Irish. Tracing my family roots has been a push to regain some of that lost heritage. Growing up, we never lived anywhere more than 3 years; family history literally gave me a sense of roots, a sense of belonging somewhere. Lately, however, the connections have been more immediate and intertwined.

It all began with a letter. My Grandpa Pierce shared a letter with me from a family member in Canandaigua that gave an overview of the Pierce family back to the early American settlers in the 1500s. Wow, an only child in a nomadic family that connects back to the earliest settlers in this country; talk about an immediate sense of grounding. It completely changed the way I thought about my family. That letter inspired my family history research. The author of that letter was Terry Hayes, my second cousin (our grandfathers were brothers). Terry and I ended up working together many times over the years, sharing information about our common Pierce family.

What I never understood was what that connection meant to Terry. And, as is often the case, you find these things out after the person has passed away. Unfortunately, that was the case with Terry as well. I'm sure he's pretty happy about recent events around our family tree. His brother, Scott, was reviewing Terry's notes on the family tree and stumbled on the information I had entered into our family tree on Geni.com. It inspired him to start adding his own tree based on all of Terry's notes. The next thing he knew, it was 4:00 a.m. and he was still going strong. We ended up joining our trees together and starting to exchange messages. Another connection made and the inspiration to research our family's history has come full circle.

One of the people added Scott added to the tree helped remind me of the many, many ways families can connect; across time, geography and generations. Scott invited one of his nieces, Tera, to the tree. In fact, she was the one to find me on Geni first. Tera had a daughter recently and uploaded a few pictures of her to the tree. I couldn't help but notice that her daughter's name, Mallie, was awfully close to my own daughter's unique name Maille. I eventually asked the question and Tera said that she was waiting for me to notice and she told me the story.

About 10 years ago, while Tera was at her grandmother's house, Terry was excited about a connection he had made with a long lost family member. He gathered the family together and read the email out loud to everyone. That email was from me. I talked about my life, my family and my children. Tera, in her late teens at the time, remembered me talking about my daughter's name. It's Maille, the Irish Gaelic spelling for Molly. Terry's research into the family's Irish roots struck a chord with Tera and she loved all things Irish; my daughter's name struck a chord with her. Now, ten years later, Tera had her own baby girl and remembered that name. Unfortunately, her uncle Terry had passed away and she wasn't able to ask him how the name was spelled. She also didn't want to completely copy the name we had used, but wanted something close: Mallie. Just moved one letter around and adjusted the pronunciation slightly. But the connection is there. My daughter, who is growing used to the curse of having a unique name, was proud beyond belief to learn that someone in the family was named after her!

Families. They are a growing, evolving, ever changing thing. And yet, across time and distance, there are connections. Inspiration to research family history. A shared name. I'm sure Terry is still thrilled that the family is finding itself again and rebuilding connections.

Searching for the Living

2009-12-22T09:09:00.001-07:00

s I've completed the big comparison and merge process to gather all of the information about the Pierce descendants on Geni, my head is full of the things to do next. Again, holding back the urge to just randomly start searching and chasing various leads, I know that I need to take a methodical approach for this project to be successful.

While digging through Geni, I had several ideas about where to go next:

Ancestry Hints. As I've been loading information into Family Tree Maker, a large number of hints to information on Ancestry.com have been popping up. Going through all of these, at a minimum, will provide additional sources for the information I already have. If I'm lucky, they will point to some new descendants!
Ancestry Tree. I also have an old copy of the tree loaded on Ancestry.com. The one nice feature this has is the ability to connect with other folks researching the same people. A concerted effort to update the online tree (there's no feature to update automatically from FTM, grumble, grumble) should help identify other researchers and/or descendants of the eight.
Facebook Searches. I've been successful a couple of times trying to find folks with random searches on Facebook. Focusing on this for a bit, and using the friend connections that already exist there would be a quick way to find some of the living for a change instead of our ancestors. And growing the Descendants of Eight group on Facebook can only help get things moving.
Other Researchers. I have, over the years, come across several descendants and fellow genealogists. It's been a few years since I've compared notes with any of them, they may have a bunch of updates by now. Plus I may be able to recruit them to help me in the search!
Letters. When all else fails, resort to old technology. Years ago, when I first thought about tackling this project, I drafted a letter to send to people as a means of gathering information about themselves and their families. Time to dust that off and start sending it out.

Many, many routes to pursue, time to choose. Regardless of the path, I need to be methodical in the approach so I don't end up retracing my steps or bothering the same people over and over.

Now I just need some time to do it...

Done with Geni

2009-12-19T13:20:00.001-07:00

I've finally completed the process of comparing information on Geni against my family tree information. Phew! Although George Washington Pierce was the largest branch on Geni, most of the information matched what I already had so the process went fairly quickly.

So let's see where I stand:

Brother	Descendants
William Eugene Pierce	12
Robert Melvin Pierce	32
Daniel Webster Pierce	101
Thomas Benton Pierce	2
William Henry Pierce	50
James Hamilton Pierce	26
George Washington Pierce	204
Henry Leighton Pierce	8
Total	435

Now on to the next step in the process...wonder what that will be.

Tackling George

2009-12-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

So tonight I begin to tackle George. George Washington Pierce. The last of the eight brothers that I'm updating with information from Geni and, by far, the largest branch of the tree at this point. There are already 192 descendants of George in my "official" tree at this point and 181 people in the geni.com tree. This is going to take a while...interesting to see where we end up!

Another branch loaded

2009-12-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

I just finished going through the descendants of William Henry Pierce on geni.com bringing that branch up to 50 people so far. That leaves 3 more branches to go: Henry Leighton, James Hamilton and, the big one, George Washington.

Focus, Focus, Focus

2009-12-12T10:09:00.001-07:00

When it comes to the family tree, I think I have ADD. There are so many avenues to pursue, so many stories to uncover. While working on one, I trip across ten others. When I get on a path of discovery time just disappears and the next thing I know, it's o'dark-thirty in the morning and I should have gone to sleep hours ago. And wasn't there something I was supposed to do to remember all of these discoveries...sources, or something like that?

Now that I'm neck deep in the Decendants of Eight project, I have many other project floating around my head that aren't getting any attention.

Finding the Steeds. My mother's father, James Patrick Steed. His mother and father came from Ireland and his father died before he was 5. Nothing much is known about the Steeds and I'd love to connect them across the pond to Ireland. I also want to find out more about his life. A street-smart person that did many things in his life. He owned a grocery store in Brooklyn, was a milk man, butcher, and a leader in the Knights of Columbus. He died when I was young and I'd like to know him more.
Ireland Trip. A large portion of my tree is Irish, almost all of my great grandparents except for the Pierces. Unfortunately, all of them did everything they could to assimilate into America and nothing much is known. In contrast, my wife's grandmother is from Ireland, a Mooney, and many of the living relatives are known. I would love to find some relatives in Ireland and then take the kids over there for an extended trip, meeting distant relatives, doing some research and just be a tourist. Spending the afternoon in a distant relatives local pub sounds like a dream come true.
Peterswell Connection. Peterswell is a very, very small town in County Galway, Ireland. While sitting at our wedding reception, my grandmother and my wife's grandmother start talking about their Irish roots, both leading to Peterswell. Are you kidding? Peterswell doesn't show up on most maps. And here we are thousands of miles and several generations away and both families go back to Peterswell? Wow. I'd like to confirm the connection on both sides and find some records, church records, gravestones, something that connects both families to that little town. I wonder if any distant relative is still living in that little town?
Canandaigua Research Trip. Canandaigua, New York is a central location for the Pierce family. Generations of people are centered in that city and the surrounding county. Although I can do a lot of the research remotely, I'm sure there's a wealth of information to discover by going there. The Ontario County Records and Archives Center is an obvious choice. I'd love to meet some of the Pierces that are still in the area. The local cemeteries (Woodlawn for the Pierces, St. Mary's for the Fullers) have many, many ancestors. Visiting former family homes. Feeling the history; walking where my ancestors walked for many generations.
Gravestone Road Trip. My wife's family helped settle the great plains, coming through Cincinnatti, Indianapolis, Furnas County Nebraska, Wray Colorado. Traveling through the various locations close to Colorado with the culmination would be Stump Cemetery, a portion of the Stump family farm where family was laid to rest.
Finding Albert. My grandmother's uncle Albert Fuller, so the family story goes, went to Colorado during the silver rush and owned part of a silver mine in Leadville, Colorado around 1929. My own backyard! Not much is known about him, however, once he went to Colorado. I would like ot find him and his final resting place and, if it's here in Colorado, pay him a visit.
Veterans Tribute. Like most families, many of my family members have served our country in a variety of ways. Some have paid the ultimate sacrifice. The one I've spent the most time with is Joseph Charles Farnum, a private during the Civil War, Company H, of the 9th Vermont Infantry. I would like to figure out some way to document all of the veterans in the family and the contributions they have made.
DNA Research. I'd like to see what kind of information this new research method can produce. But there are so many options, none of which are cheap. Which one is right? Is there value in doing this at this point? Should I get other living relatives to complete one as well? I know there's a Pierce DNA project, can I find additional connections there?

There. I feel better. Although I can't work on them much at the moment, at least I've written them down. And yet, I know I'm forgetting a few projects. Now I just need to find a genealogy sugar daddy that will pay me a ton of money to sit here all day and just research my family...

Connection Made!

2009-12-08T00:20:00.000-07:00

While working on the Descendants of Eight project this weekend, I was digging through some old emails and came across a fellow researcher/descendant of the eight: Mike Askins. He's a descendant of William Eugene Pierce, through Harley L. Pierce.

I sent off a quick email letting him know about the project and asking for his help. He has information on a handful of folks in his direct line. But he provided some additional information that I think will be a very valuable time saver. He told me that his mother and grandmother are the single line of descent from Harley and that his mother, her 3 children and their 6 children are the only living descendants of Harley. I can tell already that knowing information like this will save a bunch of time searching for descendants that just aren't there.

I also realized tonight, while replying to Mike's email, that I need to spend some time thinking about the final destination for this project. What will "done" mean for me? What will the final outcome be? A reunion of all living descendants? A website showing were we all are? A really, really long Christmas card list? I need to spend some time thinking about where this will all lead. It will not only help shape my efforts, but enable me to better ask others for help along the way. I sense the topic of a future post here...

Just about halfway through Geni

2009-12-06T17:20:00.002-07:00

I just wrapped up going through the descendants of Robert Melvin Pierce on Geni and merging the information with my documented tree in Family Tree Maker. That means I've finished 3 of the 8 brothers and I'm almost halfway through the brothers. I can say that because I know the next brother, Thomas Benton, didn't have any children. So the optimist in me says I'm halfway done! The realist in me, says that the first few brothers had the fewest descendants and I still have a bunch of work to do combing through Geni.

I think it's time for a tally to see where I stand:

Brother	Descendants
William Eugene Pierce	12
Robert Melvin Pierce	32
Daniel Webster Pierce	101
Thomas Benton Pierce	2
William Henry Pierce	11
James Hamilton Pierce	26
George Washington Pierce	192
Henry Leighton Pierce	5
Total	381

The math says I'm just shy of 40% complete. Let's call it one-third of the way there since I know I'm going to be adding additional folks. Phew. A lot more digging to do before I sleep...

Well that was fast...

2009-12-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

The process of extracting information from Geni that took many, many hours to complete for Daniel Webster is now complete for the eldest of the eight, William Eugene Pierce. Unfortunately, this means that I have very little information about William Eugene: 12 people including William and his wife. The good news is that the one line of descendants I have is for a fellow researcher, Michael Askins! Hopefully an email off to Michael will provide some more information and leads.

Two down, six to go...

Daniel Webster done, the hard way

2009-12-06T07:04:00.002-07:00

Daniel Webster Pierce
(1852—1929)

After the debacle of trying to merge information from Geni into my Family Tree Maker database, I did it the old fashioned way: by hand. I walked through the tree on Geni person by person, updating and adding information into FTM. It was slow and tedious, but now I have the information I want and it's sourced so I know that I just didn't dream it all up. I also know, if I find better or more accurate information, when to go back to update Geni.

The key lesson here, is that it's going to take a while. Right now, there are 101 descendants in the Daniel Webster Pierce branch (including Daniel and his wife Madeline). And Daniel isn't one of the larger branches...George Washington is going to take forever! It's nice to have one branch complete, though, it gives me a sense for the magnitude of this effort and just how many people are going to be out there.

The toughest part of this manual comparison effort is holding off the temptation to delve into researching each of these individuals. I know FTM is coming up with matches to census records, other family trees and additional historical records. That little leaf that FTM puts on virtually every node in the tree...taunting me with the information that is just a mouse click away... But if I start doing that, I'm going to get lost wandering aimlessly through the maze. There will be a time for doing all of that research and updating the tree with the wealth of information that awaits.

For now, the focus is extracting information from Geni...

Pulling Data from Geni

2009-11-29T11:44:00.002-07:00

I pulled a GEDCOM file from Geni the other day in an attempt to pull data for the Descendants of Eight project. The file was for Rowena Truman Carpenter and contains all of her ancestors and descendants. As a test, I merged just a portion of the file into my primary Family Tree Maker file: Daniel Webster Pierce and his descendants. The merge process worked pretty well with one major flaw: FTM's import process doesn't create any source references. Ugh. So now there is a bunch of data in the tree and I don't have any sort of source reference for it. Geni is a great source of information for this project; a lot of people have been invited to the tree and provided updates. But I have to figure out a way to keep the sources straight otherwise I won't be able to keep track of my confirmed data versus the stuff from Geni.

For now, I'm going to have to march through Daniel and his descendants to figure out what data was updated so I can attach the appropriate source. Oh joy.

Update:
A total mess. I had to revert to a backup copy of my FTM file and start over. It turns out, Geni's GEDCOM and the FTM merge process don't play nicely together. Other than a bunch of unsourced data, all of the photos on Geni created corrupted media references in the FTM file. If you tried to do anything to them, even delete them, FTM just crashed. So it looks like I'll be comparing Geni the old fashioned way...by hand.

Full of Fullers

2009-11-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

I spent some time this morning going through the 150th anniversary yearbook for St. Mary's School. There are a bunch of Fullers in there! Starting with my great grandfather, Benedict William Fuller in 1904, and continuing on for several generations. It appears many Fullers spent their early years in St. Mary's:

Benedict Fuller, 1904
Benedict's children:

Albert Fuller and Katherine Fuller, 1926
Mary Fuller, my Grandmother, 1927
Benedict Fuller, 1929
Anna Fuller, 1931
Robert Fuller, 1939
Eileen Fuller, 1941

Benedict's grandchildren:

Albert's children:

Charlene Fuller, 1946
Beverly Fuller, 1949
Albert Fuller, 1951
Jane Fuller, 1952
David Fuller, 1954
Catherine Fuller, 1957
Ray Fuller, 1959

Mary's children:

James Pierce, my father who was spending a year with his grandparents, Roy & Julia Pierce, 1951

Anna's children:

Richard Wild, 1951
John Wild, 1952
Patricia Wild, 1959

There are a few Fullers in later years as well. I think I know who they are, but I need birthdates to confrim: Bob Fuller (1967), Benedict Fuller (1970), John and Paul Fuller (1975) and Lori Fuller, 1978. In addition, there are a number of other surnames in the book that will take further digging to confirm a connection: Pierce, Fox, Finnerty and Coyne.

Here's to 8th grade graduations!

2009-11-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

311 and counting...I spent this afternoon entering information from a report provided by Pam Weaver that lists all of the Pierce descendants that she had researched, as of 26 Oct 2002. Pam is a descendant of George Washington Pierce, so that's the branch that's most thorough. And I'm really just scratching the surface. Just based on the ages of the people entered today, I'm sure there are a ton of marriages and babies missing. Not surprising since the report is 7 years old.

And this is just the start. A lot of the information needs to be validated. I need to use the FTM/Ancestry hints to gather more information. And I'm sure a lot of information can be gathered from the RAIMS site (birth indexes, etc.). If I can get a copy of Tracy Fitzgerald's GEDCOM, that would be a huge help as well. Oh, and the ton of information that's been loaded on Geni.com...if I could figure out how to extract a GEDCOM of just the data I'm looking for right now instead of the thousands of people it extracts by default. So...much...data...

And that's just to track down the old stuff...let alone actually locating everyone. Yipes!

Decendants of Eight Project

2009-11-27T16:28:00.001-07:00

So today is the day to officially kick off the Decendants of Eight project. That's the working title of the project for now...I'm having a tough time coming up with a creative name. The only other name that's jumped out so far is "Eight Pierce Boys"...but that just doesn't work too well. So Decendants of Eight it is for now.

The goal of this project is going to be to find all of the descendants of the 8 Pierce brothers that really have been a focal point for a lot of the research I've done:

William Eugene Pierce
Robert Melvin Pierce
Daniel Webster Pierce
Thomas Benton Pierce
William Henry Pierce
James Hamilton Pierce
George Washington Pierce
Henry Leighton Pierce

Many of the other genealogists I've come across over the years are connected to one of those 8 Pierce boys. The picture of the 8 brothers, with their mother Rowena, was the first "old" photograph uncovered in the research. The first time I was able to put faces with names. It's not just names and dates; it's people. The connection to these 8 brothers is the reason I chose their photograph for the masthead of this blog. It just seems to keep coming back to them.

This has been an idea of mine for quite some time but it seemed to be such a huge undertaking. And then I drifted away from my research and forgot about the project for a time. An article in this month's Ancestry magazine, When Down and Out is a Good Thing rekindled my curiosity. Author Crista Cowan wanted to track down the descendants of a seminal ancestor, Samuel Mulliner, in time for his 200th birthday celebration. Five years and 6,174 descendants later she has "completed" the project culminating in a family reunion (4,931 of the descendants are still living) for his birthday and she is also publishing a book of her findings. What an inspiration! I wonder how many people descended from the eight brothers...

So, today it officially starts. I have created a Facebook group (an idea from Crista) to hopefully find a few other folks out there researching the Pierces. The next step is to load descendant information that I have into FTM. The first source I'm going to use is a list of Peter Percy's descendants from, I believe, Pam Weaver. From there, the digging will begin.

Family Treasures

2009-11-27T11:45:00.001-07:00

While at Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, my Dad gave me a few family treasures...you never know when these things are going to show up!

The first was a book that belonged to my Grandpa Pierce. The book itself isn't too exciting: Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. What's interesting is that it was a gift that my parents sent to my Grandpa for his 53^rd birthday in 1966. I guess Grandpa had later loaned the book to someone around town and it never made it back to him. Just a few weeks ago, though, the person's daughter was cleaning out her parent's home after they had both moved into a nursing home. She saw the name on the inside cover "E.H. Pierce" and contacted a friend, John Evale, who brought it to my Dad. Amazingly, the note card my Mom wrote when she sent the gift to him is still in it!

The second thing was a 150th anniversary yearbook for St. Mary's School in Canandaigua, NY. It's the Catholic elementary school that my father, Grandma Pierce and her father, Benedict William Fuller all graduated from in eighth grade. The book covers the years 1849 through 1999. It has photos of both my Grandma Pierce's and my father's graduating classes. My Dad got this book during his last visit to Canandaigua from Jane Fuller (Fathergill), my Dad's cousin.

And the last is one of the best. For some reason, the anniversary yearbook didn't include a photo for the Class of 1904, my great grandfather's year. But my Dad's cousin Jane had another surpise. She had a copy of the 1904 class photo! So now I know what my great grandfather looked like when he graduated from the eighth grade!

Thank you Dad!!

The Shaws are done

2009-11-26T14:10:00.003-07:00

Well, at least as far as I'm going to get with them for now. The book has a ton of information in it, but since these aren't direct lines for our family, I have to cut it off somewhere. Some of the connections were pretty old and notable:

John Shaw, born in England and died in Middleborough, Mass in 1694; 11^th great grandfather for the kids. Several descendants fought in the American Revolutionary War.
James Chilton, born before 1556 in Canterbury, England and died in 1620 in Cape Cod Harbor aboard the Mayflower before setting foot in Plymouth. His daughter, Mary Chilton, is supposed to be the first female to set foot in Plymouth. He's the kids' 13^th great grandfather.
Valentin Alt, born in 1710 in Germany and became a US citizen in 1738. He died in 1756 in York, Pennsylvania and is the kids' 8^th great grandfather.
John Alden, born in 1598 in Southampton, England and died 1687 in Duxbury, Massachusetts. He was also aboard the Mayflower and is the kids' 11^th great grandfather.

Now to move back to our direct lines and figure out what to work on next...

Finishing the Shaws

2009-11-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

There's a ton of information in this Shaw Family History book. Last week I didn't realize that there was also another line connected to the Shaws that went back quite a ways, the Alts. William Shaw Jr., Paula's 4th great grandfather married Eve Ault. The Ault/Alts trace back to Valentin Alt who was born in Germany around 1710 and came to settle in the Pennyslvania area where he died in January 1756. Valentin is Paula's 7th great grandfather. Four of his sons fought in the Revolutionary War with the York County Melitia and one fought with the Washington County Militia. Some additional ties to the Revolutionary war that I didn't know we had.

Today, it's back to the Shaws, ultimately leading to John Shaw who was born in England and died in Massachusetts in 1694. Some more early settlers!

Back in the saddle again...

2009-11-15T10:39:00.003-07:00

I've been away from the family tree for too long. So now I'm getting back into the swing of things. I'm facing several challenges. First, I have a bunch of stuff piled up that I need to work through. I'm also having a tough time figuring out where I left off, what needs to be done, etc. And, lastly, I have a ton of things I want to do. This is probably the hardest thing to deal with, the excitement of chasing down a bunch of things...which would lead me right back to the first two problems. Ugh.

So, for today, I am focusing on the Shaw family history book so that I can return it. There is so much information in this book, I'm just going to have to stick to the information that is directly related to Paula's family. And then, maybe I can get a copy of my own for future reference.

Then it's going to be time to crawl through the Pierces and validate the documentation I have, see what I need, etc. Almost like starting over...

Pierce photos

2008-02-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

One of my distant Pierce relatives sent me copies of some great Pierce pictures. They included:

Perry R. Pierce, my great grand uncle
Charlotte Madeline Pierce, Perry's daughter and my first cousin 2 times removed
A potential picture of Daniel Webster Pierce, my 2nd great grandfather

Thank you to Katie Galarsa, my third cousin for these great pictures. I loaded them to the Geni tree for now.

Pierce Sites

2008-02-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

A few Pierce sources to review...

Descendants of William H Pierce and Rowena Truman Carpenter - by Helen Fox

Newspaper Gleanings from a Tree Trunk - by Robert Hanley

Carpenter site

2008-02-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

While looking for some information on Rowena Truman Carpenter, I came across this site:

YatesEasyWeb - Rowena Truman Carpenter

It looks like it has a lot of information on the Carpenters, including photos, gravestone photos, etc. I can't see any source information listed, but that may be buried in the site.

The site is also built with PhpGedView. The site has a lot of features and functionality, including charting, timelines, reports, GEDCOM downloads, etc. Might be a tool worth looking into...

Ontario, Canada resource

2008-01-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

This may come in handy for researching the Renos through Ontario, Canada:
http://www.ogs.on.ca/index.php

Parker Genealogical Society

2008-01-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

I happened to be in town for the monthly meeting of the Parker Genealogical Society (we were originally supposed to go skiing this weekend) and decided to go to the meeting. There was a presentation on researching with census records that was good and I picked up a few tips. Also connected with a person that is working on some projects for the society to put Douglas County obituaries and census information online. I volunteered to help with that effort; maybe I'll get a chance to try out some web development stuff. Anyway, decided to join; could be nice to have some folks locally that are also working on their family trees.

genoom.com

2008-01-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Found another social networking / family tree site today, Genoom. It definitely started as a foreign language site (spanish?), but the english translation is pretty decent. Although the window title remains "Arbol Familiar". :-)

From the basic tour, the graphics look pretty slick and they have a GEDCOM upload feature. For now, don't want to divert engery away from geni, but might be worth evaluating in the future.

GRAMPS

2008-01-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

A free genealogy program available for Linux and Windows. Screenshots make it look pretty robust. If I keep having troubles with FTM 2008, I might have to look into it. The cost is right...FREE!

http://www.gramps-project.org

Distant Relatives

2008-01-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

Here are the folks that I'm trying to connect through my Geni tree:

Jennifer Floyd (Schwalb) - first cousin on the Pierce side. If this email address doesn't work, will have to press Andy for her current address.
Michael Mahaney - connected to Dorothie and William Keyes, need details. One email address of 3 bounced back; hopefully one of the others makes it through.
Megs Stump - connected to the Paula's Stumps. Ralph Ervin Stump is Paula's first cousin thrice removed. Ralph was Levi Samuel Stump's nephew. Unfortunately, Megs' email address bounced back. Have to search elsewhere.
Betty Popiwny - my third cousin once removed, a descendant of the 8 Canandaigua Pierce boys. She is related to James Hamilton and Keyes line.
Kelly Crane - first cousin on the Pierce side. Unfortunately, his email address bounced back, so will have to find him through other means.
DelStee1@aol.com - A potential Steed connection. This person is a Steed and is from Jersey City.
Kenny Reno - Paula's second cousin, connecting back to Adrian Paul Reno. Kenny is Adrian's grandson and lives here in Littleton, CO!
Ron Hanley - May be some connection through the Canandaigua/Bristol Pierces, but uncertain what it is.
Katie Galarsa - Katie is the great granddaughter of Perry Pierce and granddaughter of Charlotte. Need Katie's parents to connect her to the tree.
Merle Shaw - Compiled the Shaw Family History book and is connected through the Mueller and Shaw side of the family. Email address is no longer valid.

Reaching out to distant relatives

2008-01-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

I've spent a good portion of the day expanding the tree on Geni. I dug up my old email file from my old computer and found a number of people that were also doing research on various parts of my tree. Mostly the Pierces, Stumps and Renos. I've sent emails to all of these people to confirm their email address and then I've sent an invitation to join from Geni.

So far, I've been successful with one person, Charlene Hall (Fuller). She's joined the tree, but no response or updates yet.

Hopefully some of these will take hold and the tree will start to grow a bunch!

Taking inventory

2007-12-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

I went through a bunch of documents last night that I had piled up before going on my family tree hiatus. Wow...there's a bunch of stuff to go through. A lot of pictures, newspaper articles and documents. I need to re-thank all of the people that sent that stuff to me.

But the lure of Geni and tracking down current family members is strong...difficult to break away from that! :-)

Anyway, today I need to spend time with the Shaw Family History book that I borrowed from my father-in-law. That will bring a bunch of Mueller history into my file. I've already added that history to Geni to make it accessible to the family, but now I need to go through it as a genealogist, capture sources, additional information not captured on Geni, etc.

Geni growing!

2007-12-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

The tree on Geni is now up over 500 people! I’ve added a bunch, but key to the success is my cousin Brent Pierce. He joined this week and started adding a bunch of stuff, especially on his mother”s side (Hellinger). It”s nice to finally have someone else contributing to the tree!

I was also able to add a bunch of my Mom’s family, the Sullivans and O’Sheas (can you tell I’m Irish?) :-) The Osbornes were always close to Dottie Cahill and knew she was a distant relation. They were never really sure what the exact relationship was, however, so I figured that out with my Mom and added her to the tree. Geni does a good job of showing your relationship to other people in the tree. For the Osbornes, and me, Dottie is a second cousin once removed.

Also, my Mom told me that “Cahill” is pronounced “Cale” by the Irish...

Lt. Christopher P. Sullivan Remembered

2007-12-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

While working on my monther's side of the family (Sullivan and Steed), I built my connection to Christopher Sullivan, one of the heroes of 9/11. I haven't read much about him since the time of his death, but came across a few tribute pages that are worth noting:

http://journals.aol.com/mosie1944/MYCOUNTRYLIFE/entries/2006/09/09/i-remember-christopher-sullivan.../1811

http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=2574

300 and counting

2007-12-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

I cleared the 300 mark in my Geni tree today! I borrowed the Shaw/Mueller family genealogy from my father-in-law yesterday and entered several more generations of the Muellers. I was also able to nail down the connection to the Shaws and I'm working backwards through that family. For now, I'm just loading all of the direct ancestors to our family. I think the rest will wait for the GEDCOM import!

Reaching out

2007-12-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

Geni.com has been working so well, that I decided to reach out to many of my distant cousins to see if they would like to join the tree. These are several folks that I've come across while doing genealogy research. A couple of them are decendants of the 8 Pierce boys in Canandaigua. Another is a descendant of my mother-in-law's Reno family. Hopefully I hear from them soon and get them connected to the tree!

(Up to 267 people entered at this point...)

Social Networking and Genealogy

2007-12-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

Social networking has crept into the world of genealogy and I've decided to take the plunge. I'm hoping that the social aspect this brings to my work will help keep me motivated and, hopefully, get others involved as well.

When I first searched for "social networking" and "genealogy" sites on Google, I expected to find sites similar to LinkedIn. A place where fellow genealogists could identify their research interests and connect with other genealogists for assistance. Not so much. What I found was even better. What's coming together is the concept of "networking" with your entire family, much more useful!

First, I took a look at Ancestry.com. There's a great feature in FTM that uploads all of your information and creates a family tree website. It's very easy and painless. And the pages it creates are beautiful; I especially like the time line that it generates. There are multiple views of the information, including trees and individual pages for each person. There are also easy ways to upload photos and record audio clips via the phone and attach them to various people in your tree. The social networking aspect comes in when you invite other people to participate in your tree. Not only can they view the tree itself, but they can attach stories, photos, events and a lot of information to the tree. The trees are done in flash and look great, but a little clunky to navigate and slow to load. My biggest issue, however, was that the integration with FTM only works for the initial upload. If someone adds information to the tree, I can't automatically get the information back into FTM. Without proper source documentation, maybe that's a good thing. The biggest problem I had was that as I update information in FTM, I can't update an existing tree on the web with that information. The only thing you can do is create a brand new tree. Ultimately, a very comfortable place for people familiar with genealogy and has potential if they can figure out a way to enable updates from FTM.

From there, I decided to try Geni.com. This site is still in it's "beta" stage (an over used term these days) but has incredible potential. The entry point into the site is a flash-based family tree. It loads quickly and has some great features. The thing I liked immediately about the site is that it's intuitive to use, even for non-genealogists. The site is really good at making everyone in the family part of the site. Each person gets their own profile and landing point in the tree based on their own relationships. The site even provides english desriptions of each relationship (e.g. first cousin once removed), which are great for the non-genealogist. They can upload pictures, add information about themselves and others in the family. There are some great calendar features that encourage birthday and anniversary messages through reminders. It's integrated with Google maps to show where everyone in the family lives or where they were born. There are also great security features controlling not only what the public can see about you, but information within your profile can be limited to just your immediate family, if you choose. It really is about bringing the family together! There is one huge drawback to the site currently, though. They do not have an ability to upload information from your existing tree, no GEDCOM format or anything. That means re-entering everything you have in your current tree. Having almost 1,000 names in my current tree, that's a bit of a daunting task.

So, I thought about what my purpose was for using one of these sites. My biggest objective is to bring the family into the process and have a nice way to share my research results with them. Having them participate in the process, to the extent that they want to, is the most important feature to me. So, that means that Geni.com is best suited for what I need (and I've loaded over 200 people into the tree so far). I think Ancestry.com will be my place to publish read only versions of my research to take advantage of their great graphics and integration with their on-line archives. To bring the family together, from near and far, Geni.com is the best bet for me.

Goofing around

2007-12-16T09:48:00.001-07:00

Did some more goofing around with the new software this morning. Scanned a few documents (my birth and baptism certificates) and added facts to my record. I really need to review how to properly site these documents as well as understand how to better link the images with the facts. I still feel like I'm stumbling through the process; remembering how to do things as well as figuring out the new software. I feel like I'm getting frustrated with lack of progress, but I need to remember that this is all part of getting back into the swing of things.

Next time...I need to determine a purpose for my time and make sure I feel like I accomplish something.

Getting started

2007-12-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a pretty good night for getting back into my genealogy research. I bought the latest copy of Family Tree Maker, installed it and converted my old FTM file into the new version. I spent some time bounching around the tree getting used to the new interface; I really like it. Being able to see the name index, pedigree chart, family group and details about the person all on one screen is really powerful.

The new version comes with a place name database and I spent some time cleaning up random place names to see how that worked. It appears that my old approach of putting more detailed information in the place field isn't the best way to go. Now, there is a description field to hold additional information, like the name of the hospital where someone was born, etc. I need to check and confirm that this is the best approach for this. I'm not really sure what to do with street addresses, though. The place name database doesn't like them, but seems like that information should go in the place field for mapping purposes.

I also spent a little time working with some random information on Ancestry.com and searching other sites to try out the new Merge feature in the software. Pulling information from Ancestry is really powerful; it merges the information right into your tree (allowing you to control what and how each piece of information is merged), as well as copying in the actual source image. With other sites, there is a nice little web clipping tool that copies information from the page right into your person and maintains a link to the page as your source information. Combined with an ability to archive the web page as a media attachment to the person...it's pretty amazing.

All this power and flexibilty makes it easy to get lost in random research, though, and not make any real progress.

Tomorrow, need to start mapping out a plan!

Starting Anew

2007-12-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've been away from my family tree research for at least a year now. Work has been insanely busy and I've let important things in my life get away from me. Although I'm a little ahead of the the time for resolutions, I'm long overdue for digging back in.

My plan is to use this blog to keep track of my genealogy research. I'm going to track things I've discovered, resources I've found and anything else related to my family tree efforts. I doubt anyone else will want to read along, but I'm hoping that this will be a good tool for keeping track of what I'm doing as well as maintaining motivation when things get tough.

Here we go!