Monday, January 13, 2014

A New Year

After a taking a brief hiatus from blogging for the holiday season I decided a good first post for 2014 would be a review of accomplishments for 2013 and a list of goals for 2014.

I was very excited to get back into working on my genealogy in 2013 after several years of not working on it.  In March I attended the Genealogy KC conference and attended some fantastic sessions on subjects ranging from brick walls to DAR genealogy.  After attending that conference and talking to my mother about what I learned, she mentioned that we should be able to join DAR and that lit my fire.  I began researching DAR chapters, located the patriot I could connect to, chose a DAR chapter to work with and began the process of proving my lineage to Guian McKee.

In June I married my husband.  D1 has not only been tolerant of my genealogical craziness but he's encouraged me every step of the way, from getting paperwork for my DAR application to traipsing through cemeteries to take pictures of unknown gravestones for Find-A-Grave to stopping at out of the way cemeteries to just walk through and look at the old tombstones.

In July I took the big leap and started TBG.  It's been a lot of fun writing about different genealogy items.  It wasn't a goal of mine in 2013 to start a blog but it's definitely been an accomplishment.

My big accomplishment for 2013 was completing my application for the Daughter's of the American Revolution.  I'm very excited about having made my goal of completing the application, obtaining all the required documentation and submitting it to the chapter I selected by the end of 2013.  I'm currently awaiting a response from National about the acceptance of my paperwork!

Looking forward to 2014, here's a list of the things I hope to accomplish:
  • Continue the research I've begun on D1's family and start collecting proof of lineage (on a side note, it's pretty amusing to me that I discovered D1 and I share a common ancestor around 8 generations back, LOL!)
  • Once my application to DAR has been accepted, start work on adding one additional patriot to my file, submitting paperwork for the additional paperwork by the end of 2014.
  • After acceptance of my DAR application, obtain my first DAR pin.
  • Make a genealogy trip to Danville, Illinois to see the grave of my third great-grandfather and visit the genealogy library to see if I can find any information on my family there.
  • Make a trip to North Dakota to visit family and obtain more genealogy information on my paternal family.
  • Increase my participation in the Billion Graves transcription project.
  • Get a new copy of my great-grandmother's obituary
  • Get the genealogy document hard copies sitting in piles around my house organized.
  • Print and organize all electronic copies of genealogy documentation
  • Finish attaching electronic copies of records to applicable persons in my genealogy database.
Wow, that's a large list.  I realize I probably won't get all of that accomplished but if you can't shoot for the stars, why bother right?

I hope all my wonderful readers and followers are having a great year so far.  Tell me, what's on your genealogical to-do list this year?