Weekly Recap – March 6-26, 2017 – Someone Peed In My Gene Pool!

Where I Started

When I started this website, I had already been working on my family tree on Ancestry.com for several years. The problem was that I started off as a beginner, and I did a few things I wish I hadn’t.

For example, I attached many personal family trees to my own, thinking that it was getting me further in my research. I guess you could say it was a shortcut. But it led to many inaccurate facts being attached to my own family tree, which has put up roadblocks (or brick walls) that I’m now trying to work through.

When I started this website, I also started a new family tree on Ancestry.com. I left the old one in place but started a new one to start from scratch. I didn’t want to lose all of my work, but the old family tree got to the point where it was overwhelming to work on because I had way too many hints and inaccuracies to work through. So, I started fresh, with a clean slate.

March 6-12

The person I started the tree with was Viola Mildred Beyl. I started with her because I have little information on the Beyl family. The Beyl family is very special to me, so I was anxious to learn more about them. Naturally, after Viola, I researched the next generation, starting with her father.

I researched the following people in order:

The problem I ran into was that I hit a brick wall fairly quickly, after only three generations back. I paused at that point to write the Unsolved Mysteries page, and I spent many hours reviewing the different records I had for Jacob William Beyl Sr. and anything that looked like his parents. But that didn’t get me through the brick wall.

March 13-19

Since I couldn’t bust through that wall, I also decided to start researching siblings and spouses. So next, I researched in order:

Unfortunately, those folks didn’t reveal any additional facts to help me break through the brick wall. But they did reveal additional people to research. As people marry and have children, this brings additional people to the family tree that must be researched and documented.

March 20-26

One thing I’d like to prevent this time is winding up with 7,500+ hints collecting dust. That overwhelms me and makes me feel like I’ll never get done. It adds unnecessary stress to my work because I can’t catch up.

Logically, I know that this project will not be finished in my lifetime. The stress doesn’t come from the pressure to finish it. What I do want to do, though, is get through all of the documented history so that I can start really researching and finding the deep, hidden stories of my ancestors’ lives—the kinds of stories that aren’t easily findable on Federal documents.

At the same time, there are several lines of people for me to research, so when I spend too much time on one line, I feel like I should be working on another. And the hints are starting to add up again. I already have over 300 hints to work through with this little bit of work that I’ve done.

So I started working through spouses and siblings this week and adding the initial person from a few other lines I’d like to research. I researched the following people this week in order:

Irvin Ben Smith
Charles Arthur Blake
Helen Marie Blake
Mary Belle Blake
Charles Beckett Buchanan
Flora Louise Black
Lester Otis Oliver

I haven’t written the posts for these folks yet, but as I do, I will return to this post and link it to them.

Plan Going Forward

I need to make a plan to research my lineage in a systematic way. I often struggle with deciding who to study at any given time, but now that I’ve started with a clean slate, I think I need to make a plan and stick to it.

So, my plan going forward is to build my new tree from the ground up. In other words, I will start with myself and build it back, one generation at a time. I’ve added myself, my sibling, my parents, etc., to my new tree and have added the basic details for each of us. I will continue to fill those in as I go.

In the meantime, I will start with one generation and research all the people within that generation. For example, I began with Viola Mildred Beyl. Once I’ve researched her, I will also research her spouse, children, and siblings.

Next, I will move on to another person within the same generation. Again, once I finish that person, I will research their spouse, children, and siblings, including the spouse and children of each of the siblings.

I will continue from person to person until I have completed that entire generation. Only then will I move back to the next generation. This way, I will be able to balance out the work and ensure that I am researching each line and nobody gets left behind.

That being said, since I started with Viola Mildred Beyl, I will spend this next week focused on Viola’s spouse, children, siblings, and the spouse and children of each of her siblings.

Extra Credit

This week, I did a few additional things to advance my genealogical experience a little bit further. While these tasks certainly aren’t necessary for every family historian, they are beneficial to me, and I would recommend them to anybody pursuing their own ancestry.

Ancestry Academy Courses
Find A Grave Memorials
Grave Hunting
Grave Tagging

Ancestry Academy Courses

I watched a few of the courses over at Ancestry Academy this week. Since I am not a professional genealogist or historian, I think taking some time out to learn about what I’m doing is essential. This may save me some time in the future. So I watched the following courses:

Getting Started on Ancestry: Starting Your Family Tree
Waiting for DNA Results? Start Your Tree Now!
When You Find a Brick Wall, Develop Foundational Thinking
State Censuses
The 1880 Defective and Delinquent Schedule
How to Customize Your Ancestry Homepage
How to Use Filters on Last Names in Ancestry Search
What is a Census Record?
Meet the Ancestry App: Your Family Story Anytime, Anywhere
Seek and Ye Shall Find: Become an Ancestry Search Expert

Find A Grave Memorials

I try to conclude each person’s story with their burial. I do this because the burial represents their resting place. Previously, it was quite difficult for family historians to find the graves and headstones of their ancestors…unless, of course, they had a lot of time and money to go grave hunting in various places.

I do not have that luxury. So, the Find A Grave website has been invaluable in helping me find where my ancestors are resting and obtain photos of their headstones.

In most cases, I’ve been lucky enough to have somebody already taken and posted a photo of my ancestor’s headstone on the website. In some cases, no such luck. When I find a memorial for one of my ancestors on the website, I double-check the accuracy of the information against the research I’ve done so far on that ancestor. If anything needs to be corrected, I submit the corrections so that the monument is accurate for other family historians and family members.

When I don’t find a memorial, I will make every attempt to get a photo and create one for them. Unfortunately, if I don’t know where the ancestor is buried, I can’t create a memorial. So, I do have a few family members who still need memorials, and I am working to find the appropriate information to create them.

Grave Hunting

Grave hunting may sound a little creepy. I go hunting in nearby cemeteries for specific graves. There are people, just like me, who are searching for the graves of their family members for various reasons. If they are unable to find them, they may submit a photo request asking for someone in the local area to take a picture and post it online for them.

Since I rely on this to find my own family members, I feel it is important for me to give back. So when I find photo requests for graves near where I live, I’ll take a trip to the local cemetery and try to obtain a photo for them.

This week, I requested a photo for Grover Thomas Beyl, as he was the only ancestor I worked on recently who didn’t have a photo and doesn’t rest close enough that I can get it myself.

I know there are mixed feelings about people photographing headstones of people who aren’t their own family. Unfortunately, some folks get offended by this, or when it causes unintended grief or heartache for someone.

From my experience, I can say that when I go out to a cemetery for this purpose, I pay the utmost respect to each grave I visit. When there is trash around the area, I pick it up. When overgrowth grows on the headstone, I pull it and clean it up. When the flowers and memorabilia have fallen over, I pick them up and set them right. This is my way of respecting our ancestors before us…whether they are my own ancestors, or not.

Grave Tagging

I found another website this week that is trying to provide services similar to Find A Grave. Billion Graves sends volunteers to local cemeteries to take photos of each cemetery’s headstone. As you take the pictures, Billion Graves attaches a GPS tag to that headstone. This allows people to find the graves of their family members online and know exactly where they are on the map.

This week I tagged 562 graves in a local cemetery.

They also have people transcribing the headstones so that they are searchable within the database. This allows family historians like me to find the resting places of their family members and obtain the dates of their birth and death.

This week, I transcribed 105 headstones.

Wow, so I did a lot of extra credit work this week! I feel good because I am able to give back in these ways to help others do the same things that I’m doing for their own families. It was a busy week, but I am pretty happy with what I accomplished.

With that…it’s time to start next week!

Take care,

~Kris

Weekly Recap – March 6-26, 2017