I returned from the Unlock the Past Genealogy Cruise all fired up. During the cruise I spent a lot of time poring over my database on Family Historian and realising how much of my early work was unsourced.
I made a commitment to go through my database and to start adding sources where they were missing, I would not look for additional information to add to my database until I'd made a reasonable effort with this task. I proceeded to look at my Australian family groups one at a time and start by adding birth, death and marriage references. All was going swimmingly until I was forced to indulge in a bit of tangential genealogy while going through my Kealy cousins. It struck me that many of their BDM events were registered in Dungog NSW and that I hadn't yet done a Trove fishing trip using the terms Kealy and Dungog.
I have a set of searches I regularly do on Trove to see what I can find out about the ancestors by combining a surname with the name of the country towns in which people of that name lived. I hadn't done Kealy because that is my Great-Grandmother's maiden name and I have concentrated on the Grandparents' names. Silly Me.
Pauleen Cass in her talk on the cruise told us to cast our nets wide and I sat there and nodded thinking "that's what I do". Well after I strayed and did my "Kealy Dungog" search I realised that I hadn't spread my net out far enough. Trove came up trumps once again by serving up a host of articles about the Kealy family some of which mentioned my direct ancestors. I had a picnic downloading articles to read and dissect for family facts.
My father used often speak of his Uncle Herb who "had the pub at Byron Bay that burnt down in suspicious circumstances". There were many references in Trove to Herb and his visits to Dungog but as some of the articles are not yet on Trove but are coming soon I will have to wait until I get an email from them to tell me they are available.
So just four days after the cruise I broke my resolve and it's all the fault of Trove.
I made a commitment to go through my database and to start adding sources where they were missing, I would not look for additional information to add to my database until I'd made a reasonable effort with this task. I proceeded to look at my Australian family groups one at a time and start by adding birth, death and marriage references. All was going swimmingly until I was forced to indulge in a bit of tangential genealogy while going through my Kealy cousins. It struck me that many of their BDM events were registered in Dungog NSW and that I hadn't yet done a Trove fishing trip using the terms Kealy and Dungog.
I have a set of searches I regularly do on Trove to see what I can find out about the ancestors by combining a surname with the name of the country towns in which people of that name lived. I hadn't done Kealy because that is my Great-Grandmother's maiden name and I have concentrated on the Grandparents' names. Silly Me.
Pauleen Cass in her talk on the cruise told us to cast our nets wide and I sat there and nodded thinking "that's what I do". Well after I strayed and did my "Kealy Dungog" search I realised that I hadn't spread my net out far enough. Trove came up trumps once again by serving up a host of articles about the Kealy family some of which mentioned my direct ancestors. I had a picnic downloading articles to read and dissect for family facts.
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| Cast your net wide |
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| I will have to wait to read this article about Uncle Herb |
+Jill Ball you aren't not alone in becoming distracted from your task. As more information becomes available online I find I really need to use a research log and stick with a task.
ReplyDeleteThe thrill of finding something new is so much more tempting than the satisfaction of having a well sourced database.
Ultimately it is up to date us whether we want to leave a legacy or a starting point for are family. We can collect all the information we want but it is only going to be truly useful if we analyse it and extract all those clues contained within the documents.
I am reorganising the media in my project then I will use Evidentia to go through the evidence and include the analysis in my project. A long job, but I will only be satisfied when I have a record which will meet the genealogical proof standard.
Jill - I find that there is so much to research - and so much information available - I have nearly 2000 references to check in the Illawarra Mercury on Trove for my Hicks and Callcott ancestors. I've participated in #genchat and was inspired by it to be more organised and set up SMART goals - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. It needs focus but also flexibility like when I discovered Callcott's at Unlock the Past at Parramatta last week - I had parked that part of the family for quite a while too. And then Scotland has a big year for 2014 of Welcoming the Diaspora Home. I participated in the Reflections by the Diaspora project - so again it meant putting emphasis on my Isle of Skye McKenzie ancestors research which I had parked.
ReplyDeleteSo it is a balance really - focus and flexibility
It's a treasure Trove, one should allow oneself to enjoy its jewels! :))
ReplyDeleteAh, a Trove binge. I think resolutions like that should have an exclusion clause for Trove.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say your resolution was broken, just bent a little. :-)
Ditto for my Rootstech trip. I'm going back to do sourcing. The only thing that has saved me from falling back into bad habits is work and some volunteering work that has been rather time busy since returning.
ReplyDeleteNow that's what I like - a blog post that elicits some great comments. Thanks all - it seems that others share my affliction.
ReplyDeleteI can so relate to heading off on tangents! Trove will do it to you every time and isn't that why we love Trove!
ReplyDeleteWe are so lucky to have Trove. I get totally distracted and just end up reading the paper........Love it!
ReplyDeleteYes, I know what you mean about sources. In my earlier days, I did not correctly record the sources and now I am also going back and updating them. Not a quick job!
Jill, you may have been distracted from one objective but you responded to another challenge and it looks like it's been helpful. Sometimes family history just doesn't want to be linear!
ReplyDeleteI like the concept of a Trove binge...after all it turned up jewels for me ;-)