Back to the Count

It's been a long four weeks since I last counted my research progress. Perhaps I've had too much fun, out attending conferences. But now that I'm home, settled back into a vanilla state of mind, and have re-tabulated my progress, I'm ready for a genealogical accounting.

All told, over the past four weeks, I've added 159 researched names to my mother's family tree of 18,744 individuals, but what else I've managed to accomplish is the real story, as I've shifted from focusing solely on my maternal side for this second half of 2019. Thanks in part to discoveries of recent obituaries of distant relatives and part to the arrival of new DNA matches, I'm now back to adding information to the other three trees I've been keeping on hold. Now, my mother-in-law's tree has advanced 87 to total 16,416. My Irish-American father-in-law even gained 27 to total 1,541.

But the real news is that I'm finally finding names—and the documentation to support them—on my father's side of the family. That, if you recall, was the mystery for the longest time, with a paternal grandfather who insisted he was Irish, when he really was born somewhere in Poland. With my latest DNA discoveries, I've found 35 more people to add to his family tree, which now has made it to 573 individuals—a feat I never thought I'd achieve.

The biggest result of making those discoveries—and building a tree to connect all these genealogical dots—is that I now have created a new private, unsearchable tree which totals 90 people. I likely won't continue counting my progress on building that tree, for its use is only to inform me (and my matches) how we connect on paper in support of the tale told by our DNA. But in the process, I've finally realized how some other mystery DNA matches connect, adding two more people to the "finally answered" column in my tally. That it turns out to be a breakthrough on this paternal grandparent's side of my family is nothing if not awesome. I'm so appreciative of this set of DNA leads that pointed me in the right direction.  

Speaking of counting, on another account, I did make it through the SLIG registration process this morning. Of course, it would be the very class I chose which closed after less than ten minutes of live registration time, but thankfully, I'm in. Next January, I'll be heading to Salt Lake City to take in Barbara Vines Little's course on "Virginia from the Colonial Period to the Civil War." But don't despair if you missed out. SLIG 2020 is offering fifteen other courses which might be of interest to you. Learning comes in so many different flavors!