WikiTree Progress

Ensuring that our relations have a profile on WikiTree has eaten up most of my research time recently. Direct Ancestors have been my priority. 

Following are ancestor trees on RootsMagic. The yellow bars on left of names indicate that the person has a profile on WikiTree. The Orange dots on the right indicate that there is a hint on Ancestry, MyH, FMP or FamilySearch.

My Tree

My ancestors in the Emerald Isle have created some research challenges. I've had more success on the husband's lines.

My Husband's Tree

Looks like I have to do some more digging on Joseph Brooksbank - the red arrow suggests an issue. 

Future Proofing with Wikitree

In a post on this day last month I said"

"WikiTree I am committed to Wikitree as a collaborative tree. I am working to ensure that my ancestors' and forebears' stories are not lost so I aim to give them all a profile on this platform. It's a future-proofing exercise."

Although they have promised to maintain my website after I am gone my descendants may not have time for this task. My ancestors will also have a home on Wikitree. 

I've spent many hours in this last month ensuring that my direct ancestors and those of my husband have a place on Wikitree. There's a lot more work to be done on these but at least they have a place.

100% complete for five generations on Wikitree

I am now working on their siblings and descendants (my cousins). Where possible I am also linking the ancestors of our living DNA matches into our lines. I rely on my database in RootsMagic on my home computer for my master list from which I currently work.

I found a recent webinar delivered for the Society of Australian Genealogists by Veronica Williams most helpful. Veronica was a guest speaker last Saturday at The Lake Macquarie Family History Group, I learnt a few more Wikitree tips from that excellent presentation.

On April 22 I had 3317 CC7 Connections on Wikitree, on May 20 I had 3765. This is pretty good as during that time I had to unlink a branch to remove connections that had been made in error. This will grow slowly as I spend more time on enriching the current profiles on my lines. 

Navel Gazing and Future Proofing

We need to evaluate our practices regularly. The catalyst for my recent navel gazing is the presentation I  prepared for Connections2025, The Thoughtful Ancestor: leaving a large footprint for future generations. I have a big footprint but need to ensure that it's easy for my descendants to follow.

I've been reviewing my practices, the products I use and my genealogy budget and trying to make my genealogy assets easy to access for future generations. Following is a summary of my recent thoughts and actions. 

I am looking at my assets in three categories: Digital, Physical and Cranial and using as a prompt this process.

My process for future-proofing my genealogy assets. 
Evaluation is vital at each stage of the process

Social Media

X formerly Twitter - I am no longer posting there but have kept my account. I have replaced this product with Bluesky where many of my genimates have accounts.  I am @geniaus.bluesky.social.

Instagram - I set up an Instagram for family history purposes after Twitter became unattractive. I'm still on Insta but not actively posing since moving to Bluesky

Facebook - I have a huge investment and history so won't be ditching it at the moment. My GeniAusPage is my main vehicle for sharing family history news and views. 

Family Tree Software

Family Historian. While I still retain Family Historian for my main database I have resisted upgrading to the latest version.

RootsMagic  I started using RootsMagic to manage the people in my CareyBay2283 One Place Study. Although I don't have a handle on its sourcing system I appreciate its fairly seamless syncing with Ancestry, FamilySearch and FindMyPast. This may become my primary tool in the future.

I now have several projects in RootsMagic 10. I find it good for managing the DNA matches of some of the kits I manage. 

TNG  I use The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding to maintain my family website. I can upload a gedcom file from any other product to TNG. 

I am concerned that when I turn my toes up no-one will keep the website going.  Over Easter two of my offspring committed to this task so I won't be ditching TNG or my website in the near future. 

GeniAus Website This is where I host my family site. I will keep it going while I am able but I need to have insurance lest my descendants run out of time or money to maintain it. 

WikiTree I am committed to Wikitree as a collaborative tree. I am working to ensure that my ancestors' and forebears' stories are not lost so I aim to give them all a profile on this platform. It's a future-proofing exercise.

Other Activities

Blogging I am committed to blogging about family history and to record my personal history. I use two free platforms, Blogger and Wordpress.com although I prefer Blogger because it is much easier to tweak their templates and they don't sprinkle my posts with ads as is the Wordpress practice. 

I see that several of my genimates have moved to Substack. I am not convinced that this is the platform for me. I will sit back and see how it progresses. I have seen too many Bright Shiny Objects come and go to move platforms when I am satisfied with what I have. 

FindaGrave In addition to adding details of ancestors' final resting places to the FindaGrave site I have set up several virtual cemeteries on that site. I have one each for biological relatives of  my husband and me. I also maintain one for a Cousin and one to support my One Place Study.

One Place Study I'm not sure I can do this justice but as no-one else was recording the history and  stories of the place where I live I commenced this project last year. 

Surname Study I now realise that I have bitten off more than I can chew with this project I commenced in 2014. I did not realise that Curry, my maiden name, was such a common surname, I should have chosen Pusell, my grandmother's maiden name which is not so common. Currently this project is stalled with a database of several thousand persons in Family Historian. The study blog is still active and will remain so. 

Cranial Assets or What's in my head I'm working on this. Some are things I am not yet ready to share. I keep a diary in an Excel spreadsheet and blog at jillballau but need to do more. 

Money Matters I need to give this some thought and will report in a future post. 

440 New or Updated Entries

Sometimes I despair that I don't have enough time to devote to my own family's research.

After uploading the latest version of my database (which I store in Family Historian on my laptop) to my family site www.geniaus.net I did a quick calculation on the number of records I have updated since my last upload and it appears that 440 records have been updated. Some of these are completely new records while some existing records had dates and sources added and in a few cases some inaccuracies were corrected. I didn't realise that the half an hour here and there I devote to my database could realise such a good result.

My Family Site

I am keen on adding as many distant cousins as I can to my database as I find having this information available helps me when I am trying to work out where my new DNA matches fit into my tree. So often these matches will know the names of their grandparents or great-grandparents but haven't a clue about earlier generations. 

I find that if I can put forward names of some potential ancestors in my communications with DNA matches I am more likely to get a response like "XX is my Mother" or "XX and XX were my parents. Good Luck." or "XX is my Father. XX was my Grandmother".  For this to happen I need lots of names in my database.

Once I get these responses I can write back and give the new DNA Cousins information on the earlier generations of their family and the ancestors we share thus adding to their family stories. These connections are usually over the moon when they receive this help.

Now that I have penned this post my despair has disappeared.

Back on Deck

On deck with Mr GeniAus

After my trip to Salt Lake City for Rootstech and the immensely successful Congress_2018 in Sydney I fell in a heap due to an unwanted souvenir I must have brought back from Salt Lake City.

I went down with the Influenza B bug and spent ten days in bed before Mr GeniAus and I took off on our recent Asian adventure (8 countries in five weeks). I usually schedule a a few blog posts to cover the time I am away on holidays but this time, because I was feeling so poorly I neglected to do so. So this poor old blog has been dormant for a while.

I did manage to keep in touch with genealogy news while I was away and posted something nearly each day on my GeniAus Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/geniauspage/). I use this medium to share  interesting announcements, news and posts that I encounter in my geneareading each day. If you have not yet liked this page you might find some useful gems here and get a dose of GeniAus when I am unable to blog.

Now I am playing catchup and am replying to emails and messages I received while away. I have found several new cousin connections via DNA and some have found me via my website. A few www.geniaus.net. folk have reached out for help and I have tried to assist them.

Once I have cleared my commitments I hope to resume regular blogging.

DNA Progress

I feel that I should reflect on my progress (or lack thereof) periodically.

This post is an evaluative exercise for me. There are just not enough hours in the day to do justice to the amount of $$$ I have invested in DNA research.  So how am I going?

To date I have tested several family members:

Myself at Ancestry, FTDNA (autosomal and mtDNA) and MyHeritage and uploaded to Gedmatch
My mother at FTDNA and uploaded to MyHeritage and Gedmatch
My daughter at Ancestry and uploaded to FTDNA (Must upload to MyHeritage)
My grandson at FTDNA and uploaded to Gedmatch. (Must upload to MyHeritage)
My granddaughter at FTDNA (Waiting on results)
My double first cousin at FTDNA and uploaded to Gedmatch
My paternal first cousin at FTDNA and uploaded to Gedmatch
My mother's second cousin at FTDNA.
My husband at FTDNA and uploaded to Gedmatch
My husband's first cousin at FTDNA
My son-in-law at FTDNA (waiting on results - tested because granddaughter wants to know about both sides of her tree).

As an only child with no living aunts and uncles my options for testing close family members are limited but I do have some more distant cousins on my radar. I take kits in my handbag when I visit potential victims.

So far I have confirmed just 65 matches to myself, 53 of these are via Ancestry the remainder from FTDNA, Gedmatch and MyHeritage. Of the matches from people unknown to me I have 1 second cousin, a few second cousin's once removed and the majority are in the 3rd and 4th cousin range. It is interesting to note that I have only had 4 new matches at FTDNA in 2018. I had 84 new matches in my top 2000 on Gedmatch in the past month. There were so many more on Ancestry.

Testing my mother, first cousins and Mum's second cousin has lead me to other distant cousins who do not match my tests but match theirs so I am committed to having others test.

I have been lax with my husband's side but aside from his first cousins and our descendants I have confirmed only a handful of matches for him.

I record my communications with and details of matches in spreadsheets (one for my side and one for my husband). I will start up one for my granddaughters' paternal side when those results come in. I am happy with this method. I also make notes in the notes section of Ancestry and FTDNA matches).

After attending umpteen lectures, reading loads of articles and joining online DNA groups I feel I have a good basic understanding of DNA and could even give an introductory talk on DNA.

I am still dabbling with tools to help me investigate chromosome matches. I just need to hide in a padded cell for a day or two to concentrate and learn. I have had a little play with DNA Painter and think I can handle that. Shelley Crawford's Visualing Ancestry DNA matches enabled me to identify more Ancestry matches but I did find the setup challenging even though Shelley's instructions were excellent. I must redo that as I have many new matches.

I try to keep up with new matches.  but find it easier to do with Ancestry's Android app than by firing up my PC. I am aware that I can check the MyHeritage results on their app so will start doing that as well. It's so easy to pull out the phone and check a few new DNA results when I am waiting for the doctor, dentist or plane or train. Revving up the computer takes longer.

I contact all promising matches, ie those that have  matches in common and I can identify a family line and those who have some sort of online tree that gives me a clue as to where our match may be. I would estimate that around 1/3 of these folk respond. I probably only receive about one enquiry email per week for all the kits I manage.

The good news is that I have confirmed matches to all of my Great-Grandparents lines, some of my 2x Great-Grandparents and a few of my 3x Great-Grandparents. It is comforting to know that my traditional research is confirmed.

Although I purchased my first kit from FTDNA in 2013 I didn't submit my sample until early 2015 so I have been on the DNA trail for three years. It's been slow progress.