Monday, March 21, 2016

Spring Cleaning


You may have realized that fifty-fifty spot in the calendar has already arrived: the point at which the amount of daylight is balanced in each twenty four hour rotation by its absence. (Well, that's what seems the convenient explanation; around here, the actual equivalents were attained last Wednesday, March 16, when the sun rose and set—obviously, twelve hours apart—at 7:14.)

Whenever that time arrived in your neighborhood, it likely was accompanied by gradually warmer temperatures, less storminess, and a bit more greenery on the local shrubs and trees.

For whatever reason, those occurrences also seem to prompt a feverish spring-cleaning response in many. I am generally immune to that, but this year, it oddly affected me in one respect: I've set to, cleaning up my family trees.

With the constant addition of new record collections at Ancestry.com, there are little green leaves springing up all over the place on my trees—family trees, that is. I've followed those prompts to connect a few more records to the right individuals, add a few descendants, remove a few duplicate entries (oh, those distant cousins who end up marrying each other!), and generally spruce up everything.

My main focus has been on those elusive DNA matches whom my intuition insists may have something to do with specific family lines. For instance, the Kelly line in my husband's paternal tree, where we have a match at Family Tree DNA—but no specific mutual ancestor on which to pin the connection. These are items on a long-lost to-do list that need to be revisited—but how can that be accomplished until further documentation provides the clear picture of how the match can fit?

Another focus this week—thanks to the celebratory prompting of Saint Patrick's day (week, in our book)—has been on tracing the arrivals of those Irish immigrants. In particular, despite documentation on the Declaration of Intent of my husband's second great grandfather John Stevens that he arrived in the United States on a ship from Liverpool via New Orleans, I have yet to locate the exact passenger list verifying this. Yes, in past years, it has been a bear, slogging through such material, but now with searchable lists easily accessed on Ancestry, I've run out of excuses. I'm hoping I've located the right listing, which of course, encourages me to also search for John Stevens' wife's family and their arrival in the U.S., too.

While this is nowhere near the amount of effort expended by those well-meaning adherents to the real Spring Cleaning routine, it is a type of "cleaning house," as well. Just as real trees need pruning from time to time if they are to bear any fruit, our family trees need some attention, as well.



Above: "At Binsey, Near Oxford," 1862 watercolor by British landscape painter George Price Boyce; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

7 comments:

  1. I have been cleaning up my Sheehan tree. An old old old family tree passed along to me had some incorrect names and missing names that I have been able to add or correct in my database. After all these years, I am making progress on this side of the family at last. Feels pretty good.

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    1. It does feel good, doesn't it, Wendy? And it doesn't need to be a task we set aside for our "old old old" trees. Every time Ancestry or FamilySearch add more records to their collections, I'm reminded that they can be the very things that allow me to add or correct items in my database, too. Some of those folks we were simply stumped over in past years we can now find the answer to, if we just go back and look.

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  2. I like your idea of spring cleaning! I have been working on some parts of our family tree also, there are not enough hours in the day! :)

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    1. Oh, Far Side, you know there will never be enough time! But I'm a firm believer in the 15 minute principle. It's surprising how much can be accomplished by doing a little bit here, a little bit there, on a regular basis during those brief down times during the day or week.

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  3. I enjoyed this post! ( as I do all of them)

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    1. Thanks, Margie. It's always nice to hear that :)

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  4. I washed the kitchen floor - I don't know what came over me.

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