Welcome End of Another Two Weeks

It's the end of another two week cycle, traditionally time to check my research progress. I already know, however, just how my progress went—at least for this past week. It went nowhere. I was, in case you have already forgotten, totally immersed in learning more about genetic genealogy at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. When you're having that kind of fun, who has time for cracking down on wayward ancestors who refuse identification?!

For the sake of new year's resolutions intentions, though, I'll go through the motions. I may not have made much headway these past two weeks, but at least I made some progress.

Perhaps I'll hear a snicker when I admit I only added fifteen documented names to my mother's line in the past two weeks. I know you can probably do that in one sitting—with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back. Fine. That's the way I felt, rushing around to upload all those great new programs I was going to need before my SLIG class started. At least I got fifteen more people into the database despite all those other obligations. My mother's line now stands at 9,456 people.

A little better was the progress made on my mother-in-law's line: seventy four additions. Yeah, most of them came yesterday evening, when I finally sat myself down before my desktop computer and realized that number would have been zero if I didn't take matters into hand right away. Thankfully, it was just a matter of picking one of those good Catholic families to add another generation to, then finding that branch in an 1800s census year to glean the big numbers. That line now counts 9,818 people.

A little bonus surprised me one evening when I was too mind-numbed to think any more, after class. For whatever reason, a new DNA match called my attention to the fact that it didn't come from my mother's line—the usual case—but from my father's. I had no idea who this new match was, but I was determined to figure out just where the connection was. Of course, two hours later, I still hadn't found the answer, but along the way, I managed to add forty three new entries to my father's tree. I now have 389 there—small, but after nearly a half year of standing still, that's welcome progress.

My only regret is that I didn't make any progress on my father in law's line, where the count remains at 1,080. Not to worry, though, as I'm now working with one of my husband's cousins to check out matches in our mutual DNA results. A little crowdsourcing may help jump-start the action on this line.

On the DNA side of the progress equation, I'm beginning to see the wave of results wash up on our Family Tree DNA accounts' shores. In the past two weeks, I've gained thirty eight new matches to bring my total to 1,578. My husband's results jumped up by twenty one for his total of 1,001. We are still awaiting his two sisters' results—which they had sent in to the company before Christmas. Apparently, there's quite a backlog. But that is good news, if the increased numbers result in more matches for their current customers, too.

Gains at AncestryDNA were more modest, but still just as welcome. My count of matches is now at 435 (up eight) and my husband's is at 200 (up nine). No significant discoveries there, but we can be patient. They, too, are experiencing increased numbers, due to the holiday sales. It is only a matter of time, and those results will sort themselves out and trickle down to those of us already in the AncestryDNA customer database. Hopefully, that will lead to more informative matches for everyone.