Genealogical resolutions for 2007?

[CBHagman]

What does everyone have planned for the year 2007? What brick walls must you break through? What research dragons must you slay?

Any trips planned to cemeteries, hometowns, ancestral villages? Dish on your genealogy research here.

And a happy, safe, peaceful, prosperous 2007.

:hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

1. I'm going to march through County Galway records until I find my ggg-grandparents

and my gggrandparents' ancestral homes and sibling names. I won't be able to go there in person but I have enough info to query the local history centers.
I have excellent lineages on most of my other lines but the Irish ones have always been tough because of common surnames AND forenames. At least two of my gggrandparents were Joyces, and that's the Smith of west Galway. Add to that the fact that VRs aren't centralized and tend to be restricted to church records prior to the mid-19th century and it's a heckuva challenge.

[fudge stripe cookays]

2. Am going to try...

to head to Western Pennsylvania and Western Maryland, plus various stopovers. I have a cousin to visit in Hermitage, friends to visit in Cleveland, records to look up in Pittsburgh (and a possible cemetery stop).

Then, I'll need about 4 days in Frostburg to finally try to find an obituary for one of my original Smiths. On to Baltimore, where I have two more cousins to visit in Cockeysville. But one turns 89 in June, and I just found out she is having health problems. So I hope she'll be OK long enough for us to have a visit. She knew some of the original people I am researching.

PLUS, I just found more information on the parents and siblings of my original Smith up in New York. I REALLY want to try to take this new information back further. If I can find his mom's maiden name, I can use it to help me ID WHICH Henry Smith I'm looking at in Pennsylvania (where they lived before NY), and perhaps begin the task of tracking the line back to Germany, when they were Schmidts.

[sybylla]

3. Besides fleshing out a thin line here and there

I will probably seek my immigrant lines overseas. The lines with the more recent immigrants (last 150 years) are about the only ones I have left. I have plenty of information right up to the point of immigration and then nothing - except for the one or two where I've stumbled on a cousin who knew somebody who's aunt did the research 30 years ago.

I've been putting off the foreign searches long enough. It's time I bite the bullet. Especially since my grandmother is 81 today and her parents were the first on her side to come here from Switzerland in 1907. I think she would enjoy knowing who her ancestors were so I'll start with her.

Any advice on foreign genealogical searches and dealing with archivist in other countries is welcome.

And I suppose I can work on my inlaws' families, too, since it seems my SiL is giving up on it.

[CBHagman]

4. Details, details, details.

I'm still on the trail of further details of my great-great-grandfather (born in 1828 in Ireland, probably in County Mayo, emigrated in 1864, died in 1900 in Scranton, Pennsylvania). I've got copies of his obituary, death certificate, naturalization papers, his Census records for 1870 and 1900, and what is likely his Castle Garden arrival record. The rest, as they say, is silence -- no pictures, no deeds, no will, no baptismal or marriage records. And he's been one of the easier relatives to track down in that branch of the family. :banghead:

So I resolve to find more stuff, whatever that is. I've done all the usual things, such as using message boards and the local genealogical society. Someone's also plugged him into a family tree on the Ancestry site, but I don't have access to that particular item.

[Kindigger]

5. I'm resolved to

get over the trauma of losing 5,000+ Quakers in a computer crash 3 years ago, and begin reconstruction!

I must do this before June, when I plan to travel to Dilworthtown, PA on a tombstone hunt, pic trip.

P.S. My Dad's first name is Dilworth.

P.S.S. I need a kick in the butt, because I'd like to get this done before he dies (not that he plans to any time soon :)

[CountAllVotes]

6. I guess I'll keep looking for my missing Indian relatives

They are very difficult to find being many were hiding out in caves c. 1840 or so. :(

I'll look anyway as many changed their names, etc.

[fudge stripe cookays]

7. It really amazes me how cyclic this hobby is.

I went like two months with very little cold hard data coming in to help find Smiths or even to beef up the book. Because of this, I got a little bit of inertia, I guess. I hadn't really done much in a couple of weeks. Plus, we've had home renovations going on, so real life was getting in the way.

For some reason, this weekend, I got re-inspired. I guess I needed some downtime. I made a RAOGK request, and the guy is on crutches so couldn't get out to do it right now.

HOWEVER, he sent me something he found online for a wedding date for a couple I'd been looking for for several years! So it was even better than the request I originally MADE!

Yesterday, I cold-called another cousin who lives outside Tulsa, and WHAT A FIND! She was such a great source of information, and had 9 kids of her own--so has her own little mini dynasty. We were on the phone for 2 hours!!! So I was able to add quite a bit to the book just yesterday afternoon. She told me her son recently got into genealogy, so we should be able to fit our data together to dovetail, and what one person doesn't have, the other should.

I may be making another California trip soon, and while there, I'm hoping to visit at least 2 more cousins while I'm out there. Downtime is good. I feel totally re-energized now, and ready to rock.

How are everyone else's resolutions coming?
:hi:
fsc

[sybylla]

8. The foreign research is seriously unappealing to me

only because of the added hassle and cost. Fortunately, if I start in Switzerland, they speak English so no translation necessary.

I did find some information out on my Loyalist ancestor who joined the other side during our revolution. I had always known my Abner Wolcott/Woolcott/Wilcott was a loyalist from documents I found in Canada. For some reason, when I saw he was from New Haven, I assumed Connecticut. Turns out it was Vermont so I began my first excursion into the records.

The good news is that I sat down and ordered a couple of publications from Vermont that might provide more info. The publications cost $5 each and was I surprised when they arrived. They were old hardcover editions - surplus I assume - and in Volume VI of the State Papers of Vermont: Sequestration, Confisction and Sale of Estates, I found the motherlode.

Shortly after Vermont organized as a state, a court of confiscation was established on Marcy 26, 1778 in which evidence would be provided demonstrating the approximately 100 people listed had aided or joined with the enemy and their estates confiscated. My Abner was listed as, possibly, was his father in law.

On February 26, 1779, the Vermont legislature passed a law listing about 75 persons (unconstitutional now) - all of whom were on the confiscation list, who "have voluntarily left this state, or some of the United States of America, and joined the enemies thereof. It proscribed punishment if they returned - after a judicial hearing, of course - "to be whipped on the naked back no more than forty nor less than twenty stripes" and to be deported. If they returned a second time, the punishment was death. Anyone caught aiding and abetting them was fined.

Tough stuff - but great historical documents. Luckily, it came with a bit of a government document bibliography so I'm now hunting down anything else I can find.

[fudge stripe cookays]

9. Oh wow!

Very cool paperwork! Whipped nekkid? Well, I'll be! How did you finally figure out that you needed to look in Vermont and not Connecticut?

The foreign part is unattractive to me too, only because there are SOOOOOO many places to look in Germany, so many province name changes and ownership changes between countries, and so many places named the same thing.

And looking for Schmidts in Germany is no more appealing than looking for Smiths here (except in North Dakota-- Smiths stick out like sore thumbs there among all the Swedes....)! But I like a challenge. And it would be wonderful to finally be able to see Der Faderland. 3/4 of my roots are German, so I'm fated to go there someday.

Good luck to us both!
:hi:

[sybylla]

10. I finally figured out the right New Haven poking around on the internet

I bought a book printed by the Connecticut Historical Society from a discount bookseller on a lark really. When I sat down to look for any information on loyalists in it, the book talked about Benedict Arnold (the most famous of them all) and mentions the fact that there was a New Haven, Vermont and that he had ties to both places at some point. It also discussed a bunch of Connecticut New Haveners settling in New Haven, Vermont. That got me thinking that I could have been looking in the wrong place all this time.

So I googled New Haven, Vermont and Abner Wolcott and loyalist and a bunch of other related subjects and got some confirmation that it was indeed Vermont he had escaped from and where his farm and property were confiscated. I found the Vermont Department of Libraries where they sell the books I mentioned. And, looking back through some of the old documents I already had (while I waited impatiently for the books to arrive in the mail), I found a reference to New Haven, Vermont. I probably discounted it the first time I saw it thinking those silly Canadians wrote down the wrong state.

As for the Germans, I've been lucky with one line in particular in that once I found their passenger list transcripts (accidentally) that actually listed a city of origin, the Mormons had microfilm church records on them. I had already found an "internet" cousin eager to do the footwork so he slogged through the film, made copies, scanned them and shared them with me. Translation was a nightmare - old German script, latin both written and abbreviated, some French during Napoleon's era - and we trudged through it together both of us having some experience with the languages. Before we got very far, we once again lucked out and were contacted by a German cousin who found my post on the Rootsweb "Zimmermann" bulletin board looking for the family members who came to the US. He helped us with the more difficult translations as well as finding more info about the family on his side of the ocean. Finding that family line was all about kismet. But for so many of my other ancestors I don't even have the city they came from. Their documents all say Prussia or Wurttemberg or Switzerland. Borders changed so quickly in the 1800's I think they all gave up and eventually just said Germany. Without a city/municipality I'm told you can't do much in Germany or Switzerland.

I have joined Rootsweb's Wurtemberg list, Switzerland lists and other surname lists related to my German ancestors so I can get my feet wet slowly. Wurtemburg is very active and very helpful. They also have tips for research, information on the history of the area and all sorts of goodies.

The only problem with the lists is that even in digest mode they fill up the inbox pretty quickly.

[Montauk6]

11. Go beyond the 'Net

It's just now hitting me that, while there is a treasure trove of stuff on the WWW, I'm going to have to beckon actual records offices for some of the juicier stuff. Since Connecticut is a stone's throw away, maybe I should think about a day trip to the Godfrey.

[fudge stripe cookays]

12. I SECOND this!

I have just begun to fathom the wonders of wills and land records.

I recently began to work on lateral lines so I could get farther back. I could NEVER have found this one family if it hadn't been for one man's will.

His daughter's name was Katherine Smith. I would NEVER have found out what happened to her with no other information. But the will named her son, who had an unusual name.

I now have another cousin from that line that I found through a query looking for "Mr. Unusual Name" (thanks again, Google!), and we've been e-mailing like mad. I'm going to try to meet with her in NY in another month or 2. She's helped me fill in all sorts of info!

WILLS AND LAND RECORDS, people!!

[CBHagman]

13. My research was jump-started by mail.

I had almost nothing on my paternal grandmother, aside from a funeral card listing her name and date of death. I knew her birthplace and month of birth, though not the day and year, and I knew her parents' surnames.

Since I was aware that she died in Florida, I wrote to the state for the records and, with what I assume is uncharacteristic efficiency -- at least as compared with how they deal with voting down there -- I had a death certificate in no time at all. It furnished her full birth name (somewhat different from what I had been led to expect), birthdate, and parents' names. Those last two items were absolutely essential. From there I started contacting the local genealogical society and public library in the city where Grandma was born, and eventually wound up with her birth record, her parents' marriage license, death certificates and obituaries for various family members, and even cemetery records.

Of course, the Internet was a help in locating all the right places to look, and FamilySearch.org was a godsend when it came to digging around for Grandma's parents and grandparents (They're all listed in the free 1880 Census records at FamilySearch.org).

Surname message boards put me in touch with several cousins, too, in various states.

I also spent a fair amount of time at the Library of Congress (periodicals room, genealogy room, and city directory room) and at the National Archives. Sometimes you've just got to crank the microfilm viewer, you know.