Last Tally for '22

 

Around this time of year, I find myself saying, "that's the last time I'll do that this year." With the year rapidly coming to a close, there are quite a few tasks which qualify for that "last time" statement. For my biweekly tally—my way of encouraging myself over my family research progress—this, too, will become a "last time" exercise for '22.

Since I've spent the last quarter of this year working on my father's side of the family, it probably isn't much of a surprise to learn I added 244 names to my family tree in the past two weeks. I'm closing out 2022 with 31,305 people in my family tree, each one well documented and researched. Considering I started this year with 27,270 in that tree, you can see how encouraging it can be to keep such a tally. Progress may seem to move at a snail's pace if we look at it from a day-to-day perspective. But over the long haul, that means a boost to that tree of 4,035 individuals in 2022, all added a little bit at a time.

Same thing goes for my in-laws' tree. Granted, I haven't worked on that tree much in the last three months. However, the other day I thought that recent changes at Ancestry.com's DNA configurations warranted some attention. Specifically, I wanted to visit the fourth category in Ancestry's current beta offering—sorting DNA matches by side of family—to see whether the "unassigned" category might include some easy-to-solve matches.

It did. Enough, in fact, to add eighty nine additional family relations in the past two weeks, all just from examining that "unassigned" category at AncestryDNA. Now my in-laws' tree is up to 30,359 individuals. Since this year began with 25,124 names in that tree, a little bit here and there added 5,235 people along the way in 2022.

So, what's up for next year? Now that I've gotten into the habit of this biweekly tally, it's become something to look forward to. It helps to feel like progress is being made, especially when the going gets tough on a messy research project. And who couldn't use a bit more encouragement?! That biweekly exercise has become part of my routine. When last tallies for the old year morph into New Year's resolutions for the new, I'd say this habit is a keeper.