Category Archives: Personal Research

A few days ago I ran across an Instagram post from Cathie (@ancestordiscovery) that brought me back a few years. She posted an image of an ancestor birth place chart she created based on the one that J Paul Hawthrone (@jpaulhawthorne) created back in 2016. […]

Week 4 of the 12 Week Research Challenge is about documentation. The goal was to add or fix documentation. I actually started a “fix citation” project many years ago. I started with myself and moved backward on each line, fixing the (really terrible) citations I […]

Week 3 of the 12 Week Research Challenge focuses on growing your tree, particularly the most recent generations. Because we typically know these people, we tend to neglect them in our tree. So the challenge was to make sure that these folks (parents, grandparents, aunts, […]

I seem to get around to the every two years. It started in 2012, with follow ups in 2015 and 2017. Now it’s 2019, so I thought I’d provide another update.

Week 47 Prompt: Soldier This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is”Soldier.” I have many soldiers in my family tree. I thought I’d use this opportunity to create a list of them by war. Not only is this a way to honor each of them, it also […]

Week 46 Prompt: Poor Man This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is ”Poor Man.” I decided not to go the monetary route. Instead, I’m going the emotional route; a sad story about my second great-grandfather—poor Philip. As I’ve stated in this blog before, Philip Rottman is […]

Week 45 Prompt: Rich Man This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is”Rich Man.” My fifth great-grandfather, Captain Robert Parks was rich with kids, and had some money to boot. Of his total fourteen children, only two died as infants. So when he set out for Michigan […]

Week 44 Prompt: Trick or Treat This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is”Trick or Treat.” Thinking along the lines of Halloween, I remembered one of my favorite cards. It’s a cute, yet simple Halloween card, that my dad gave me, probably a year or two before […]