Still Good to Connect With Cousins

The deceptive pitfall of online research resources is that their ease of access tempts us to think we can do it all, ourselves. No matter how fast those genealogy giants digitize documents, however, there is still more to be found out there in the real world than out there in the ether. So you can imagine my delight when I was finally contacted, in real life, by an actual cousin.

Well, make that a third cousin, once removed. Of my husband's family. But that's still a contact worth making. Especially on a line in which I've been missing the fellow researcher whom I used to regularly share notes with, over the years.

With this new contact, I discovered I hadn't wandered down that way on my mother-in-law's Gordon line for a long time, so I had to go back and add some newly-found documentation, plus spruce up some missing branches. And I thought it might be a nice touch to add this particular newly-found cousin into the mix, so I worked my way down her line of descent and made sure she was part of the family tree.

All that to say my general intent, from last summer until the SLIG class I'm taking on southern research this coming January—to stay focused on my own mother's tree—had a necessary detour so I could be equipped to adequately answer this newly-found cousin-in-law's email. And, since today is my biweekly count day, you'll see that number reflected in the slight uptick in the head count in a tree other than my mom's—twenty four more names, to be exact. That brings my mother-in-law's tree up to a total of 15,761.

All the rest of the work, in the past two weeks, centered on my research goal for next January's class. My mom's tree advanced by 214 to reach a total of 15,876. My dad's tree stays put at 516, and my father-in-law's tree remains at 1,514. Next year, we'll see changes when I settle on a new research goal for 2019.

Admittedly, there are a lot of details to clear up in all those trees. Every time another record set gets added to the collection at Ancestry, I find another "hint" to catch up with. Unless the hint is in the domain of my mother's tree, however, it doesn't get attended to, which means I have a lot of leaves shaking at me. They will have to wait 'til new growth in the spring. I have a research goal to accomplish before this year is out.