Goals Met —> Results Gained

 

If meeting goals means gaining results, how did my research goal for this month's DNA matches turn out? Since this is the time for my biweekly count, I have the answer: my mother-in-law's tree gained a lot.

Face it: connecting those DNA cousins to a family tree means verifying their position in the family. And that's not just by taking a lab's word for the connection. I need to know how these matches connect to the family tree. That requires collaboration by documents. Adding DNA matches to the collateral lines in a family tree can really make that tree grow quite bushy.

Reviewing the seventy eight DNA matches who connect to my mother-in-law's family through Nicholas Snider's son Jacob was just the first hurdle. Now, with the exception of two ThruLines candidates whose suggested tree includes a name twin instead of the right ancestor, I've completed the second goal: to verify the twenty eight DNA cousins who descend from Nicholas' son Lewis.

All that work has added up to one fact: I wouldn't have gained 485 more individuals in my mother-in-law's tree in the past two weeks if it hadn't been for that goal. A lot of work, yes—it feels good to know the job is done—but a significant addition to the family tree that might not have happened without the guidance of DNA testing and the tools available at the testing sites I've used.

My mother-in-law's tree now stands at 37,852 individuals, all documented by multiple records connecting them to the family. But even though my focus this month has shifted to my mother-in-law's family, don't think my own tree has languished in the meantime. Since I needed to close out the previous month's project, I did manage to add another seventeen individuals to my own tree from that project. That tree now includes 40,223 documented people. Until I return to working on my family's tree with my Twelve Most Wanted goals for the last three months of the year, I suspect that tree will not grow much more over the summer.

Gaining nearly five hundred new entries in my mother-in-law's line in the past two weeks, though, is a massive research pace. I doubt I'll keep going at that same rate, although I do have 155 more Snider DNA matches to review this month. We'll check on progress in another two weeks—and then, it will be high time for a well-deserved break.