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 I’m at day two of the Advanced Research Methodology course, led by Thomas W. Jones, in Pittsburgh!! So happy to be here! I’m blogging abou the week at A Well Lit Path. You can follow that blog here :-) Share: You might also like:GRIP 2013 Day TwoAmerican State Papers GRIPLearning DeedMapper at GRIP 2013  One of the things which drove me to create this blog was the desire to share my own research with others connected in some way with my British ancestors. Although I originally planned to upload static pages exported from my favorite genealogy software, Rootsmagic, I soon discovered a much more flexible and dynamic option – The Next Generation (TNG). With this software, I was able to upload my Rootsmagic gedcom file and the resulting database created a seemingly endless array of reports based on the user’s search filters. I’ve been researching my family history for 30 years, so I had a lot of information to upload Then, I took the Boston University Online Genealogical Research course, and I learned all kinds of things that took my research to a new level: I learned there is a right way to cite; and I was introduced to good research techniques, standards, proof arguments, etc. (…more)  I can’t believe March is here…where did the winter go? (The shortish answer is….we never really had winter, just an odd snow fall or two and a couple brisk weeks of temps in the teens….altogether VERY STRANGE for our little corner of Northwest Pennsylvania) Genealogically speaking, time has flown. Although I made virtually NO progress on my personal research, I accomplished quite a bit: EDUCATION:  Attacking the Brick Walls in my Turner Collins Research Organizing 30+ years of genealogical research is a daunting task. If I’d known in 1976 what I know now, I’d have done so many things differently. I’ve always used pedigree charts and family group sheets but, in my teen years, my citations, when I made them at all, were minimal at best and most are useless. Since taking the Boston University course, I’ve been aware of how shabby my early citations were, and I’ve been working [at a snail's pace...] to update them. This process has forced me to revisit a lot of my old work and it’s clear that for a good part of it, whatever thought process I went through, in terms of inference and proof argument, has long been forgotten. Again, if I’d known then….. My plan for 2012 is to tackle one family line a month, organize the brick (…more)  on the genealogy front that is…but no worries – the noise and chaos in the rest of my life has been more than making up for the silence of the dead. The here and there moments when I have been able to steal away to my new genealogy desk, tucked into a tiny alcove upstairs, have opened some doors but resolved nothing, leaving me with the mostly unsettling feeling of being more than slightly fragmented. As if the general merriment of the season, the wild and wintry weather outside, and the joyful bedlam which ensues whenever my kids are on school holiday weren’t enough, come Thursday morning, painters will descend on our household because of a what-the-heck-was-I-thinking, lost-in-a-moment-of-whimsy kind of decision to re-paint the basement media/play room before the impromtpu New Year’s Eve party we decided at the last minute to host this Saturday (the color is Great Barrington Green in case you’re wondering). OMG. (…more)  Research Professional Development  And will it help my Denchfield problem? Having exhausted parish registers and probate records, and followed the land records as far as they could take me, I’ve got a much better sense of who was who among the many Denchfields of North Marston and surrounding villages; however, there are still some holes. As active in the community as this family was, with lives quite well documented, there are still a couple of elusive characters who seem to have mysteriously fallen from the face of the earth, or at least Buckinghamshire’s corner of it: • Richard Denchfield, baptized in North Marston on 13 February 1637, eldest son of Mathew. Richard was alive in 1660, when Mathew wrote his will, by which Richard stood to inherit half of the family’s homestead. He is mentioned again at the probate of brother John’s estate in 1689, having been asked by his brother to help (…more)  Recently I wrote about using land records to help sort out a confusing family here, and this week I’ve been applying that approach to try to sort out, once and for all, the kinships between the various Richard and John Denchfields of 17th and 18th century North Marston, Bucks. Here’s what I did: Here’s a printscreen snapshot of that chart: I love color-coding! Laying the land transactions out chronologically made everything much more cohesive and confirmed a lot of what I believed to be true based on parish records and wills. The biggest problem I have with the Denchfield kinships has to do with John Denchfield, iremonger, and his wife Parnell, whose union produced two (…more)  The Church of England began requiring the recording of baptisms, marriages, and burials in 1538 although most parishes did not begin adhering to the rules until around 1600. Still, for a family like the Denchfields of North Marston, who stayed put for the next couple hundred years or so and were important members of their community, those early parish registers are a treasure trove of genealogical gold. The registers for St. Mary’s, the established church in North Marston, date back to the late 1580s, but they are in bad shape. Before the FHL had a chance to film them, the books sustained water damage, molding the paper and smearing the ink. If that weren’t bad enough, for reasons known only to the culprit, enormous chunks were torn from each of the books, leaving one to wonder what on earth someone was trying to hide. What remained was filmed and (…more)  I’m way late to the party with the 15th week of Tonia’s 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog series but it’s such a good topic I couldn’t pass on it. The task at hand is to write a post which solves a problem that your readers (or potential readers) have. Tonia discusses six ways to identify such a problem: I didn’t even have to look past #1 to find something to blog about today My main genealogical problem these days is finding time to solve my own problems, at least ancestrally speaking! I’ve got no end of excuses. Lately, aside from the general joys, trials, and tribulations of every-day life, my time has been spent on: |
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