The start of each month has me facing forward, looking at the plans from this year's Twelve Most Wanted for the upcoming month. When that starting date falls on a Sunday of my biweekly count, it also has me looking backwards at what I've accomplished in family history pursuits for the past two weeks.
Since February had me examining colonial records to see what could be discovered about my fourth great-grandfather Job Tyson—hint: it wasn't much—I didn't think I had made much progress on my family tree. Surprise: the numbers told a story that was a bit more encouraging.
Though progress wasn't galloping forward at my usual two-hundred-plus rate of the past few reports this year, in the past two weeks, I did manage to round up records for an additional 148 ancestors and their collateral lines.
Much of this was thanks to examining DNA matches linked to the Tyson line of descent, as I brought several lines down to the present time through solid documentation. There is much more work to be done on these Tyson descendants, despite my inability to identify Job's parents yet. Hopefully, in a future year, I'll narrow the possibilities from the three locations which were under consideration this month, possibly through inferences, as actual documentation has, so far, eluded me.
Bottom line in looking back is that I now have 41,722 documented individuals in my family tree. It's growing slowly but steadily. Research attempts like this month's quest to find Job Tyson's origin may have gone especially slowly, but future months may fare better.
For this upcoming month, we'll turn our attention from the coastal Georgia home where Job Tyson spent his adult years to another southern ancestor. For March, that featured research project will involve finding the roots of yet another Georgian ancestor, my third great-grandfather Thomas Firth Rainey. Again, this will be a man whose adult life can be documented through records in Georgia, but his connection to the past will involve finding colonial connections, this time possibly in Virginia.
Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at what has already been found concerning Thomas Firth Rainey.