Friday 13 January 2017

2017 Looking backwards and forwards

Happy new calendar.

Wow - 2017. The year that not so long ago felt like it would never get here. Don't you just love time? It fascinates me endlessly.


Up until only very recently, I've had something of a funk with my genealogy pursuits.

That whole wikitree struggle I was having in the summer - that sapped a lot of my enjoyment and desire to do anything genealogical in company for really, most of the summer and autumn if I'm honest. 
However, with the help of a really lovely chap who's one of their senior bods, I managed to get things on the road to sorted out, so that's awesome.

One thing that's definitely come out of that whole experience: If your ged.com fights with their system the way mine did (and seemingly, several others too), then it turns out the important thing to know is, that the proper advice is: Don't panic and put everyone up then go back with sources, they'd much prefer if we all add up single individuals with their sources one at a time, even if that means it could take forever to get anyone up there.


Then, later into the Autumn, following a tip, I treated myself to a copy of the subsidies of land grants in Cornwall made by Henry VIII (I will definitely do a post on that resource at some stage this year - it's awesome). Together with cousin Russell (who's a 'proper' genealogist and one of my favourite relatives in the extended family) and a couple of others, we managed to push our Laity family lines further.

Up until now, the earliest we'd managed to find was Richard Laytye, whose son was baptised in 1563. Over the last three months we've managed to flesh that out with some sibling information, worked out how some of the main sections of the family intersect AND we've found and confirmed some information on his parents, so allow me to introduce my newly found 11th Great-Grandparents:

John Laytye b 1500 & Elizabeth 1505 - 1 Aug 1570



Given how the summer and autumn went, there hasn't been much new action in other lines. We're still searching to prove out or not the theories for the Hawley and Spencer lines, and my search for the missing time with William Hobbins continues to be unfruitful just now...
...and then, in a 'funny five minutes' as my Grandad would've said, a couple of nights ago, I started playing with one of those ''which in/famous person are you (vaguely) related to'' things while killing some time waiting for himself. That threw out a gateway in amongst Mum's Heeson branches that connected to the HOWARD family. Interesting in itself as we seem to have more direct Howard links in a different line that I was aware of. Since I was messing around killing time, in light of recent discussions with genealogy friends around where searches of branches can/do/must end, I thought I'd take a quick few minutes and (I must stress this is NOT sound genealogy and I don't recommend it as a methodology - it was fun though...) click around to see *POTENTIALLY* where could that line lead me.

Turns out, there's truth in that saying about never ask a question unless you're ready for the answer. My clicking adventure wandering through time along that potential line took me first to Rollo of Normandy.
- For those who, like me, don't watch ''The Viki
ngs'', he was apparently the one who ended up taking his boat up the Seine (as you do) and demanding land from the King of the Francs. ...okay, so that puts my ''Bad Billy'' even more into perspective. 

It seems that things don't even stop there. - I estimate it'd take me at least 35 years to get all that lot properly researched and traced ...and that would be assuming I have a total personality transplant and don't get distracted with anything else at all, but if I were to be on-task enough that far, it seems that there may even be sagas etc that would take us back to roughly 100 CE. Weird huh?! - I can't decide how I feel about that potential yet. 

Back to 2017 then and there's just so much going on. Our wedding is set for later this summer so there's A LOT of new relations (to say nothing of whole new language and culturecoming along not so far over the horizon. Also, a first cousin just got married and my little sis got herself engaged to her lovely fella over the holidays, so our little bough of the family Oak is set to sprout madly!

There's just so much, so I figured I'd joi
n up for 2017's 'blog a month' and have another crack at it, starting with a look back to this point last year and see what I can come up with for this year.

2016 Target:
2017 and beyond...




2016 Monthly blog challenge
Signed up again for 2017.
Already have a post for Jan, so already doing better this year!


Sort out why my GedCom isn't being 'liked'/accepted by certain platforms.
Have that pretty much sorted out. It’s just TOO huge for some systems. I see more manual data entry in my future this year.


Continue working to copy all the existing ancestors across to all platforms (I currently have fragmented information spread across RootsMagic, GenesReunited, Family Tree Circles, GeneaWiki and various other places). In an absolutely ideal world, it would be great to have everything match absolutely, so that I can really work on pushing out to new generations.
Getting somewhere with WikiTree finally. So glad I made a note of the other places I’m behind on.


Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed
Yeah. Whenever that happens.


Figure out some kind of nice mounting system for the current paper tree so that we can display it properly.
I have this figured out too. To make it happen though, any one of three things needs to happen:

* I get cast in something that makes serious money
* I find a craft or genealogy customer prepared to pay me in a custom size piece of perspex
* I meet an art or woodwork student prepared to take on the challenge as part of their coursework.


Finish off my four generations project for my licensing exam. - Shooting for sitting the May level 1 exam if at all possible.
I REALLY have to sit down and actually write this up. I’d love to shoot for the May sitting again, but realistically, that’s coming up FAST, and we’re getting married in August, so I guess I’m aiming at the November sitting.


Craft something involving my genealogy.
The MKAL for my shawl design on ravelry last year was really cool.
This year I have to either finalise or kill the design idea I started last summer. I’d also like to do something else crafty that’s genealogy involved.

Start to write a book on Bad Billy


What are your genealogy targets for 2017?