A Painfully Slow Crawl

Sometimes, progress races by us so quickly, it nearly sucks the breath right out of our lungs. Other times, we slow to a glacial dawdle.

Right now, as genealogical research progress goes, I'd say I'm currently stuck at the rate of a painfully slow crawl. I haven't stopped entirely, in making research progress. But I'm nowhere near where I'd like to have been.

In the meantime, though, I've been spending this week at an informative and energizing conference—the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree. While I'm holding at a virtual standstill in my paternal tree count—still at 148 in my tree and only 22 DNA matches, same as two weeks ago—I have picked up some wonderful leads on new online resources for researching Polish descendants, just the thing I need for puzzling over my "Irish" heritage in the "McCann" line.

The progress in my maternal line has been microscopically better: DNA matches for this line increased from 833 to 845, as of the most recent additions on June third. I managed to nudge my tree for Davis and associated lines up from 3,727 to 3,744 in that same two weeks. See: I only promised microscopic increases. But this is the line I keep on tap on my iPad; while some people combat down time by pulling out an electronic game of solitaire, I pull up my Ancestry.com account and add Davis ancestors to my tree. Amazing what can be accomplished, one minute at a time.

Since we've lately been revisiting my husband's Irish lines, it's not surprising that this focus provided the most handsome results, as far as increases go. My husband's paternal line now has 847 in his tree, up from 768 two weeks ago. DNA matches increased by eleven to 473. Incremental, but moving in the right direction. Though absolutely nothing was added to his maternal line—the tree still sits with 967 individuals entered—this is another tree to keep an eye on, for I'm convinced that, with time, this old line will produce more confirmed matches.

Just as Jamboree had provided me with fresh ammunition to tackle my Poland brick wall, the conference also redirected my attention to resources for ferreting out manuscripts and papers from the many private collections hidden away in university and local archives. Particularly regarding my husband's maternal line—especially considering that family included a professional photographer from a previous century—I'm hoping to unearth some collections that may just plain ol' be fun to discover.

While the numeric progress was abysmal during these past two weeks, the benefit of qualitative learning more than offset the lull in quantitative progress. After our six hour return trip back home later today, this new week will bring renewed energy for tackling these numbers again. Not regretting what's been gained in exchange for that loss, I'm looking forward to more encouraging numeric progress soon.