Pursuing Project Goals: The Tally

Now that I've zeroed in on some specific research projects—preparing an application for membership in the Mayflower Society as well as applying some elbow grease to my sadly-forsaken paternal family lines—let's see how much progress I've made in the last two weeks. I figure my bi-weekly count will come in handy in providing a snapshot of regular progress.

As can be expected since it's my maternal line which will grant me membership as a Mayflower descendant, work on my mother's tree moved along at a decent, though modest, pace. In the past two weeks, I managed to add information on 157 family members to bring the tree's total to 11,336.

The flip side, of course, is that I neglected my mother-in-law's line—though even that didn't stand stock still; I managed to add twenty two to the count, for a total of 12,579 in that database.

However, it's those two paternal lines I'm curious about. The going is rougher there, with a father-in-law who had three immigrants among his four grandparents, and my own father, whose father was a complete mystery—or at least a well-kept secret—to everyone who knew him. Even so, I managed to squeeze in enough research to garner thirteen additional names for each of those paternal lines. As it stands now, I have 450 in my father's tree and 1,321 in my father-in-law's database. This may seem like a painfully slow advance, but any forward movement here is welcome in my eyes.

Progress on connecting with DNA matches slowed in these past two weeks, partly because of the devastation hitting the hometown of one genetic genealogy company, but mostly because my focus was on other projects. Understandably, despite August sale results normally pumping up numbers this far into the subsequent month, Family Tree DNA's pace was less than otherwise expected: twenty two new matches for me (now totaling 2,362) and only eight new matches for my husband (bringing his match count to 1,525).

AncestryDNA and 23andMe—neither company impacted by the ravages of the recent hurricane—contributed six and seven new matches, respectively, to my husband's tally, with 23andMe interestingly reversing their trend of losing matches for the first time since the gain on July 2. On the other hand, my standing at 23andMe didn't enjoy such a blessing; I lost by a count of one match at 23andMe, yet gained six at AncestryDNA. That leaves my husband with a total of 339 matches at AncestryDNA and 1,223 matches at 23andMe. I'm currently at 709 and 1,170, respectively.

All told, tallying this past fortnight's accomplishments seems to correspond to the goals I've set for my current research projects, and that's a reassuring thought.