Every year, Jill Ball, aka Geniaus, encourages us fellow geneamates to do a review of our year in genealogy focusing on the positives. It’s a great idea that I recommend everyone does, even if not as a blog. It’s very heartening to realise that we have all made achievements in 2021 from the countless hours we have spent slaving over a hot keyboard!
So here is my contribution…
1. I got the most joy from…
…finally identifying the last of my 3 x great-grandparents. This was the father of an illegitimate son who became my 2 x great-grandfather. It’s been decades but finally, I have a name…and it’s not the rumoured name that made it down through several generations. An entire complex cover story took several years to be systematically disentangled and disproved. Now I realise why it was constructed. This was absolutely one of my biggest achievements for 2021.
More to come on this one, I can’t NOT blog it, but it may take a while to find the time to devote to the telling of this saga! it could even end up as long as the Vaughan story…
2. The Covid situation gave me an opportunity to…
…get more involved in local family history societies that weren’t at all local to me. Most of them opened up Zoom meetings instead of their usual face-to-face ones 12 000 miles away from me. Often the timezones were challenging, but it has been especially nice to put faces to names of members that I’ve heard of but never seen for up to 35 years!
3. I managed to attend a face to face event…
…nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Everywhere I had booked for this year cancelled their face to face events and for much of the year, we were in lockdown. Luckily, they were often replaced with online versions!
4. My main focus this year was…
…my Dad. Getting him home from Ireland after an ill-timed holiday in early 2020 was a 14-month marathon effort. He left just before Covid struck and international borders closed while he was away. That was followed by 5 months this year living with him in Tasmania on his return. I packed up his home and life around him whilst providing the 24/7 care he needs and brought him back to Victoria to be closer to family and quality care. This was a single-handed task and is definitely my greatest achievement of 2021. He’s now settled and happy again. Family is everything. It evens trumps family history, though I couldn’t abandon that entirely!
5. A new piece of technology or skill I mastered was…
…I don’t know if this counts as ‘mastering’ or just ‘discovering and making use of’! But I’m gradually working my way through the list of things to look up if I’m ever again in an FHC affiliate library by using the new FamilySearch Record Lookup Service.
Have you found an index entry for your probable ancestors but need to see the original image? This fits the bill perfectly. I’ve found it especially useful for my Worcestershire ancestors while I continue to wait for Ancestry to put the Bishops Transcript images online. It’s free, it’s fast and it’s a whole lot cheaper than paying 16 pounds per image to get it emailed from the Archives!
6. A geneasurprise I received was…
…the sudden and almost simultaneous purchases of the two main French genealogy sites by the big guns! MyHeritage purchased Filae, and Ancestry purchased Geneanet. In a year when my Huguenot heritage was confirmed this is perfect timing! I’m already a Geneanet subscriber but was tossing up whether to join Filae. Now I don’t have to, the records are appearing where I already have access!
7. A Facebook Group that helped me was…
…The Genealogy Squad. I learn something new on a regular basis from the friendly conversations amongst the 45 000 global members (the Squad’s achievement for 2021!)
Confession – I’m also a moderator there and this is a shameless plug for people to come join the party!
8. My 2021 social media post that I was particularly proud of was…
…the one where I unravelled the mystery of where my Morter family came from before arriving in London, I knew it was likely to be East Anglia somewhere given the surname distribution, but it’s been a needle in a haystack until DNA knocked down the brick wall.
Since then I have had more and more DNA matches also turn out to be descended from the Norfolk family a further generation before my London ancestors. The hypothesis just keeps on firming up.
9. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was…
…‘Spitalfields’ by Dan Cruickshank. As someone with significant ancestry from that area of London, it was a great read, adding plenty of context to my family’s lives and even mentioning a couple of addresses that my ancestors were linked to.
As for fiction, Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s ‘Chester Creek Murders‘ was the beginning of a great new series to get hooked on!
10. I was impressed by…
…so many of the speakers at webinars watched throughout the year, either through conferences that converted from live events to virtual ones (such as RootsTech Connect and Family History Downunder), various family history societies, Scottish Indexes, Family Tree Webinars, etc.
I love how technically the subject of genealogy is finite, but there was never a presentation that I didn’t take away something useful from.
11. A great journal or newspaper article I found…
…was not a big one, not a particularly complex one, but a very enlightening one. It reported the 1844 death of James Underhill, father of my newly identified 3 x great grandfather Samuel Underhill (unnamed father of Frederick George Seal). This newspaper article added a layer of context that linked the Underhill and Seal families directly, not just by locality and occupation, but by specific workplace and hierarchy.
12. I got the most value from this subscription…
…oooh, this is a tough one. There are very few subscriptions I have that I would willingly give up. They all provide value in their own way.
Naturally, I am subscribed to the major sites for accessing records – Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, TheGenealogist, but I’ve also increased my society memberships to 10 (doubled!) to cover the main geographical areas of research, and I am a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.
More niche sites such as DNAPainter, Genetic Affairs, the Talking Family History Virtual Lounge, Geneanet, IrishAncestors, RootsIreland, Fold3 and Family Tree Webinars are invaluable, and of course, I save EVERYTHING I find to Evernote for easy accessibility and searching. I’d rather go without shoes than lose any of my subscriptions.
A little hint though…check each of your society membership benefits, they may offer significant discounts to other subscription sites which will save you some significant outlay!
13. I progressed my DNA research with …
…a return to network graphing after a couple of years break from it. I always loved how visual it is, but I needed to familiarise myself with all the new DNA tools appearing on the testing sites as well as 3rd party tools continually popping up. With limited time, network graphing was shelved for a while. But I’m pulling on my wellies, wading back in and finding clear confirmation of conclusions drawn as well as some further intriguing ‘clumps’ to explore.
14. A DNA discovery I made was…
…a couple who are repeatedly popping up among US DNA matches, and are clearly connected to one of the branches of a certain pair of great grandparents. I must find time to build out the tree of this couple and see where and how they fit in. It could set a load of dominoes falling to parse this branch more effectively.
15. A newly found family member shared…
…photos of her family members that showed we were definitely of the same line. Then the same thing happened on another branch of the same line, from another relative who didn’t know the first. We’re all so similar, the Seals definitely have a ‘look’.
16. I splashed out and purchased…
…a package of 40 courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies which will keep me busy for the next year or two! The perils of being the ‘lifelong learner’ type, it keeps you poor!
17. Another positive I would like to share is…
…a really helpful side effect from what has been such a tragic and challenging couple of years is the number of records that have been digitised and indexed and are now available to us via home access. So many long-term projects sped up, so many ongoing projects were completed. This has to be the greatest global achievement for 2021 in the genealogical world. I am so grateful to all those who have made this possible.
So how about you? What will you remember as YOUR genealogical achievements of 2021?
Thanks Samantha for participating in the challenge. You certainly had a rough year, so pleased you found some genealgold to sustain you during your annus horribilis.
PS a Good offer for The Genealogist came through last night. I’m subscribing.
Enjoy, i find them especially useful for finding people in the censuses that can’t be found on other sites!
Hi Samantha. What a great year you have had. Particularly getting your dad home safely. I have opened up so many tabs after reading your post! I too am very interested in the Spitalfields so will see if I can get Dan’s book from the local library. No, I don’t know about the Genealogy Squad. Yes, I’m in ! And thanks for the hot tip about the Family History Library lookup service. Why did I not know about this ??? I’m embarrassed! Thanks heaps.