Geeking Out - Tree Analysis, evaluating, and 'What's Your Number?'

In 2016, there was a brief social media craze in the genealogy community around the question: "What's Your Number".

It was a lot of fun as I recall, and the origin point for finding some of my favourite online genealogy friends (though some have later proved to also be extended family).

Naturally, as I'm a human researcher, and given to bouts of being human, my notes from the first round of taking part in this exist only in the hard drive of a dead computer that's living in our spare room, as dead computers are wont to between death, and that point where you skin your shins tripping over it enough to admit defeat and let go of whatever was on there 'now that all these years have passed' with as much grace as you can muster, so unfortunately, I don't have my original notes anymore to make for a handy comparison piece.

However, I did, very recently, identify my last remaining mysterious 3rd Great-Grandmother (GGM) Elizabeth Collicott, to fill out a whole generation, and that tripped the memory for me.
Meanwhile, for those among us who just love a good comparison series to read, I can highly recommend Julie Tarr's blog series, which starts here. She had a go in a first post published 17 Aug 2012, then revisited again in 2015 and 2017 ...and you'll get no spoilers from me.

In looking back, I was reminded of Christa Cowan's episode of 'The Barefoot Genealogist' from 15 Mar of 2016, which built on her Ancestry blogpost of the same name, from 16 Aug 2012.
At time of writing, this video has received 30,420 views (including my re-watching of it in preparation for this), 470 likes (no dislikes), & 66 comments.
This episode delves into all the how and why of this particular method of analysis of your research way better than I ever could, so though I'll touch on a few bits here, that's mostly where I learnt from (with a few additions), so I would still highly recommend giving it a watch when you have time.

In celebration of having filled out that 5th generation (I don't personally count my generation for purposes of this one), especially as last time I did this, there was a whole 1st Great-Grandparents (GGPs) branch who were essentially 'lost' to us, so the landscape is very different now (to say nothing of the advances in DNA for genealogy since), I thought I might revisit this analysis game and bring you along for the fun. Who knows, maybe between us, we might be able to chip a little at each others' brick walls slightly?

Disclaimer: Since I don't start with 'me' as a base for this type of analysis, my numbers will vary slightly from what you might see elsewhere. I'm still a big advocate for do whatever works for you in your research.

First of all, let's start with what we know:

In analysing my master tree I want to also incorporate genetic genealogy (more on my recent experiments with Leeds Method et al in the next while). To do that, I need to get typically to 9th cousins at the outside (so 8th GGPs)  which gives me a nice, tidy, 10 generations to play with. Your mileage may vary.

For those 10 generations, theoretically, I should have 2046 'slots' for an ancestor (to borrow verbage from various gaming systems), as follows:

Next, for the slightly daunting bit: How many have I collected so far?
One thing I do know, courtesy of GedMatch, is that so far as currently able to be read, my parents are genetically unrelated, so we're not expecting to find anything in the way of endogamy, so that's the full 2046 individuals I'm chasing. ...sounds about right for this family to be honest. Never do things by halves!

Another thing I know is going to come up, some of the women of these higher up generations, I only have a first name to go on so far, so I'm going to be strict with myself and only include relatives I know a first and last name for.
Well, here goes nothing...

Top Tip: Ancestry shows 5 gens comfortably, so the way I did my counting was, I made a list of all 32 of my 2GGPs (working on the basis of 'an ounce of preparation...'), and made each of them the person whose ancestors were showing, and then for the few who had someone in that last generation, I just used one unfold of the wee arrows by turns.

Okay, so overall, pleasantly surprised. At least something into double figures at every level.
I was expecting the odd one, as I have one line leading from each parent that goes ALL the way back into oral history*. I had no idea that I had quite so much of those upper generations filled out though. Especially the 4GGPs. To have nearly 3/4 of those slots full is fantastic!

However, there's that sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so let's look into it further.

To make it easier to manage, I went back and split the table into my maternal and paternal sides, and colour coded it:

The first thing that's quite interesting, is how close it is. It's really close at first: 25 found Mum's side, for 21 Dad's side for 4GGPs, and thereafter it falls away with Dad's side trailing.

Part of that is that for a range of reasons, in the last couple of generations, there hasn't been an abundance of contact, to the point where, until recently, there were a couple of lines that were looking like they might have been 'lost'.
On the plus side though, some of Dad's lines have been extensively researched by a team of family genealogists, headed by the epic cousin Russell in Indiana. Other lines though, there's some interesting situations, and in some cases, records are somewhat thin on the ground. Still, we persist. 

The most recently found 3GGM, Elizabeth Collicott, is on Dad's side too, and part of me is leaning towards that 'shiny object syndrome' of having a nice, new (to me) relative to get to know.

Mum's side, it's interesting. Mum's family have always been extremely close, and it's only in the last generation or so that the family has really started to spread out to any great degree. The stories are still told and there are more photos, which definitely helps to keep them 'alive' somehow. That side are also keen users of a variety of communications methods to keep up with each other that bit more regularly.

So, there's this odd equilibrium: Dad's side are heavier (with a couple of exceptions) on genealogical record, but light on the DNA side of things (other than me, only one relative that side within the immediate family has chosen to test so far).

On Mum's side, there are more situations where the genealogical records are more spotty, but we do have the benefit of not only more relatives who have chosen to test, but also, the identical twin factor is very close in to the people who are testing, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The good thing however is, of all the female born offspring of the twins, we have tests for a daughter of each twin and a grand-daughter of each twin, so we cover three out of 4 of the twins' downlines currently.

Interestingly enough, most of our cousin matches are 3rd cousins (4GGPs) or further though, so it's probably worth trying to plug those 7 missing 4GGPs, so as to be able to narrow it down, though in the meantime, given the twin factor, I'm hoping some recent experiments in adapting the Leeds Method may pay off soon (more on that at some stage in the coming months).

* I include it. I'm a huge history nerd and my main job deals in telling stories. I like it. I'm annotating it as far as I can at every turn. I am comfortable, pre-mass literacy, to include oral only sources as tertiary sources. If that doesn't work for you, that doesn't work for you. We're all going to come at this slightly differently, even within the lingua franca.

Celtic Nations Day & St. Piran's Day 2022

 Gool Peran Lowen Onen Hag Oll! (Happy St Piran's Day One and All!)

It's Celtic Nations Day on 5th March, and for those of us in the Cornish Diaspora, it's also St Piran's Day. For us at home here, it's also our third consecutive one cocooning (we've been cocooning 2 years and a day today). Last year we went digital. This year we had hoped to maybe get together in a safe way with some friends, but it was not to be, so it's just us. 

We've had most of the afternoon in the garden. Our rescue hens now have their sandpit spruced up and topped up, as well as their swing re-strung ready for the summer, and one of our two potato planters is ready for us to plant up (we'll do that on St Patrick's Day as per). 

This morning, however, was all about the cooking preps.

My flaky pastry is chilling in the fridge, and my saffron buns have been proving most of the day.

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough of my own saffron this time around, but I'm hoping that, if they do as well this winter as they did last winter, I'll be able to do them with all home grown saffron next year.

Our family Saffron Buns recipe has two modern branches. One here, and one in the States (carefully collected into the family's mixed Cornish and American Cookbook as collected by cousin Dorothy B). I love looking at the two alongside each other because you can really see which bits stayed the same and which evolved slightly and that kind of lends the voices of our ancestors and makes it feel even more like they're right there, despite having been cooking sometimes hundreds of years ago and opposite sides of the Atlantic.

To my knowledge, we don't have any in-family variants for vegan/coeliacs, but it's such a forgiving recipe (yours truly may have been known to use a little extra butter and make up the liquid in water when the milk went off once), I can't imagine it would be hard to adapt.
If you give it a go, shout me (dglaity1 on Instagram) and let me know

On the off-chance you're peckish and want to try your own, here's the Cornish, 'stayed at home' and the American variant recipes:

SAFFRON BUNS

* 1/2pt (300ml) Milk (Whole Milk)
* About 2tsp (.5g or thereabouts) Saffron strands
* 2oz (50g) butter

* 3¼oz (90g) clotted cream (I can do you a nice line in a clotted cream recipe if you're stuck for one)

* 1lb 4oz (550g) Flour (Bread Flour. We use mainly white if we have it, but wholemeal doesn't hurt it)

* 1 heaped tsp salt

* 2oz/50g sugar (I like brown sugar, but whatever you have to hand is fine)

* 2tsp (or 1 sachet) quick-yeast.

* 3oz (75g) raisins/currants/similar

* 1oz (25g) mixed peel

- I tend to just knock the oven on slightly if it's a really cool day as you'll need a really warm place for it to rise, so a low-lit oven from starting out until you set it to prove usually does the trick.

- Warm your milk through until hot, but not boiling. Stir in the saffron, butter, and cream. Set this aside for 15-20mins until it's hand-hot and properly yellow (should be proper sunshine in a jug)

- Put the dry ingredients (not the fruit) in a bowl. 

TIP: I tend to put the salt in first and the yeast in last. That way the one can't affect the other.

Make a well in the middle and gradually mix the now hand-hot milk mixture into the dry ingredients.

- When it comes together, knead it in the bowl for about 10 mins, adding in the fruit about half way through so that it incorporates.

- Set to rise in a warm place for about an hour (until it doubles).

- Knock back the dough on a floured surface per bread.

- Divide into 8-10 (if you've several children to feed, I sometimes go to 12) pieces and roll into balls.

- Leave to rise again on a baking tray for about half an hour.

- Preheat the oven (I heat it all the way then drop it down) to about 200C (at a guess, high-moderate for gas, but I'm not that experienced with gas).

- Bake for around 20mins until they're golden.

- Make the syrup while the buns bake. For the syrup, I use about 20z (50g) sugar to 3-4 tbsp water. Dissolve the sugar completely, then bring it to a boil for about a minute until it goes glossy

- Set the buns to cool and brush immediately with the syrup.

Serve: Either fresh and still warm (as is, or with clotted cream or butter as desired), or let them go cold and toast and butter them later.

~

1tsp saffron soaked overnight in 1/2 cup warm water

2 cups lukewarm water

1 yeast cake

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup lard or shortening

smidgen salt

1 cup raisins or currants

1/2 cup candied fruit (or more, as desired)

Flour (enough to make a soft dough)

In a bowl, mix together the lukewarm water and yeast. Add sugar, lard, salt, raisins, and candied fruit. Mix well, and then add enough flour to make a soft dough. Let rise until doubled in size. Knead down and fashion buns and place them into a 9 inch square baking dish or pan. Let rise. Bake at 325 degrees until done.

~

ANCESTORS

Our Celtic Family Lines we're remembering today for Celtic Nations Day (if any surnames match, do get in touch. I'm always up for comparing notes and DNA!):

CORNWALL (mostly South-Siders)

LAITY/LAYTY/LAYTYE

COLENSO

PERKIN/S

HOSKING

KITCHEN

ALLEN/ALLAN

EDDY

WOOLCOCK

COLLICOTT

PHILLIPS

OLDS

RICHARDS

WESTCOTT

THOMAS

WEBSTER

HARRIS

WATERS

CORNISH

SYMONS

MARTIN

WOOD

SENNAT

ROSEMORRAN

BATTON/BATYN
BERRYMAN
VEALE

CHURCH

WALES

de CLARE

de BEAUMONT

le ROGER
GRIFFITH
ap GWILYM

ap GRUFFYDD

Verch LEUAN

Verch MADOG

ap GRONWY

Verch ROBERT

IRELAND

McMURROUGH

Ní TUATHAIL

MAC MÁEL NA mBÓ

MAC DIARMATA

MAC GILLA PÁTRAIC

MAC DONNCHADA

MAC CELLAIG

Ní MORDA

Ní CAELLAIDE
MAC CARRACH CALMA

6 Years Blog Anniversary, Looking back and Forward, Back to Early Medieval Europe & Forward Planning

 

Daffs on our mantlepiece this evening

Well, I'm customarily late in writing this. In fact, our first daffodils of this year are in flower before I got this out. Ah well, I've always loved tradition...

The last while has been a lot, hasn't it?

I confess, 2021 has not been my busiest year for genealogy. I had a couple of commissions in the background, and I'm still pursuing my German descendancy project, which is technically, I think, as finished as it's going to be, but there are just a couple of 'not found' individuals that I'm still pursuing in the hopes I can fill out the set for my lovely client.

At home though, on our side, things have been fairly quiet. Mostly because keeping working, and a family together in body and mind under C-19 while cocooning throughout (this is day 700 cocooning for our family - and we still managed to catch 'Omicron' while we've been here. I became symptomatic on Boxing Day and have been poorly ever since. Spouse felt a bit tired and 'under the weather' for a few days, but is doing much better since) is... well, a lot of things from the relatives who lived 100 years ago is beginning to make more and more sense.

In other 'at-home' and social/family history news, my spouse discovered in April last year that it turns out that he/she (his/her preferred pronoun) is non-binary. This has given us some fairly unique things to think about in the context of our family history and genealogy, not least, we had to work out how to express his/her life in a way that online and computer based genealogy 'understands'.
we also welcomed two new members to the family this year, with the babies of a first cousin, and our nibling (is anyone else always tempted to write 'nibbling' too? ...or is that just me?).

I did also very nearly finish my 4 gen study - twice! First time round, our computer died and took my project with it. When I recreated it, I found that, in my sleepy, late nights approach (when will I learn?!), I did, recreate the project, but completely forgot about the research log, so I'm currently about half way through just re-doing it over again, as guessing on the log feels like cheating, so I'm starting from scratch. I've also changed my focus person from my maternal Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother (yes, I have been on this assignment so long, that a whole new generation is eligible). With any luck, I will have that finished pretty soon (famous last words) and then it's just that licensing exam to sit. Perhaps this year. If our country ever becomes more realistic and less eugenicist in its outlook, so that it becomes safe to go out.

In recent activity though, we found another genetic cousin through one of the various facebook genealogy & DNA groups. It's looking like he and I are very probably 6th cousins once removed, but that depends on us tying my Catherine (only ever Catherine in her docs so far, and I'm not 100% settled on her parents yet), to his 'Kate', who is similarly always 'Kate' everywhere that he's found. It seems like a sound logical progression, but our DNA holds us closer (around the 4th cousin range), so there is an interesting thing to investigate there, because on our side at least, there's a possible sideways, double-related thing going on in this area of the tree, so that also requires some closer investigation.

There was also the very cool finding of all 4 of my grandparents (for the first possible time) in the 1921 census, and more information on their families (especially one GGF's extremely cool job!).

As with other years, my enthusiasm is high again. What remains to be seen is how much time there will be for genealogy & family history this year among other work. I still would rather be a slow and steady genealogist for the most part, than rush, because I know where that gets me (and we're not one of those families who can dash something off and it just works. Some of us, me especially, are cursed when it comes to anything administrative).

26th January was my 4 year blogiversary. Since I didn't do my customary look forward and back recently, I figured it's best to look cumulatively across the whole lifetime of the blog and see what's still outstanding, plus I have a couple ideas of directions I want to take the research this year if time allows.

Previous & New Targets (Oldest to Newest):	2022 and beyond...
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	Yeah, that's probably a never-never task, though I did at least design a frame I could keep it in, so that we could wall mount it and still have access to make updates, so that might be somewhere in the next couple years' projects.
Sit Licensing Exam	Still working at that. Fingers crossed!
The 'Bad Billy' Book Solve the Spencer-side mystery NEW: I want to aim for at least one post a month this year, but it's a compassionate goal, so I'm totally claiming this one for January (because who's to say we're not part Timelord anyhow?!). Push forward with the DNA side of things. Try and place some more relatives.	That second draft didn't work out either. I did, with the help of a lovely researcher in Australia, and a very helpful gentleman at 'Trove', plug one or two holes in the story, but really, what's needed at this point is: I either need to come up with an Edition 1 and just get it done, or I need to find some (legitimate!) way to access the Windsor Castle Archive and look over a particular document that exists only there. It feels like one of these is more achievable than the other, but in all honesty, I'm not sure which just now. Still no nearer on that one. Hopefully something gives somewhere soon. I've learnt that despite the best of intentions, I'm not great at follow through on the consistent blog challenges (not least because the platform shouts at me and makes threats at me periodically, and I don't have a clue how to placate it), so compassionate goals are going to have to be the order of business. That said, claiming this one, I have 1 out of 12, so that's 8.3% success, right? ...Ever an optimist! I also have a few ideas up my sleeve for future posts, but if anyone has some fabulous inspiration they want to share (with credit of course), I'd love to hear them! I've learnt over the lifetime of the blog so far, that coming up with something that would be interesting to anyone outside of our family (and in all honesty, sometimes only the fellow genealogy-nut relations) is the biggest challenge. I am currently working on a non-traditional version of the Leeds method to try to crack some of spouse's DNA matches, so perhaps there's a post in that, if it won't bore the pants off people? I currently have all 32 3rd-GGPs identified, so locating relatives up to 4th cousins is doable, and in most cases, there's a fair chance at placing a 5th cousin (though of course, our twin factor on certain lines does create some interesting effects). Out of 64 4th-GGPs though, I currently only have a firm handle on 40, plus 2 halves, so that makes the 6th cousin range a little more spotty, which is a shame when most of my matches coming up are smack-dab in that range. If we're talking 'faerie wand' type year, I'd love to firm up and figure out who the other 22 and 2 halves are.

So, that's about the shape of it at the moment.
How about you? How's your new calendar shaping up for this year's genealogy adventures?
x

Spring Weddings!

As it turns out, today is a special day.

Do you have that happen when you're researching? - You're sat looking at a random ancestor and the date corresponds with something that happens in their life too?

I wonder if anyone has ever worked out the odds of that? - I know I wouldn't want that job. Coo, just think of the variables!

For me, I'm more struck with how often it seems to happen.

Today, of course is no exception, but it started yesterday.

Yesterday was one of those days that just reinvigorates the spirits and just gives a little fan to your genealogy flame. 

Out of the blue I was contacted on facebook by a woman with a mutual surname of interest (LOMBARDI - for those not in the know, Lombardi is to Italian Genealogy, pretty much what Smith is to English. ...only unlike Smith, there aren't really many folks looking into disentangling the family lines). 
She encouraged me to return to a facebook group and ask for some more help (since I've been sat stewing on that particular brick wall on paper for about 18 months and with DNA since roughly last October).
That led me to encountering a lovely lady named Faith, who was able to dig somewhere out of the bowels of Antenati, not only THE document to smash that brick wall, but documents to make light work of the next 2-3 generations too. 
It was a great day!

In the back of my head though, I still felt a little guilty. I've been mulling on a blog post for a while, but an approach would not be easy. Firstly, because I couldn't think of a way to tie a few things together, but then also because of a key issue of the moment.

Ten days ago my sister and her boyfriend of ten years got married, so I knew that I wanted this month's post to be a tribute to that. After all, why celebrate, track and record what went before if we don't equally celebrate the now and the yet-to-come?

Just one problem. Sis is a school teacher and in this digital day and age, we have to be particularly careful about anything online that relates to her, so unfortunately I can't share with you loads and loads of photos though it was a really beautiful wedding - very them. Right down to the ground though.

However, she did look amazing ...and this is my baby sister - and anyone who has a baby sister knows how ridiculously proud you always are of them, so while I acknowledge and celebrate my bias, I do want to show you this one shot that one of their guests was able to snap (it feels weird not to credit them, but we can't risk an accidental reveal) this lovely shot which should be safe:

Isn't she a beautiful bride?!

The skirt was her own and our Mum made the bodice piece for her. I saw the look on his face when she came in. It was all very much worth it.


I needn't have worried though. Inspiration struck this morning.

April 16th has always been a bit of a seminal date in my mind anyhow. Ever since we moved to the first house our parents owned on 16th April 1986 (while Mum was expecting my baby sis who just got married!).

Being only little at the time, lots of my memories jumble around that couple of days, but one of the handy little side effects has been that I've never forgotten that Mum and Dad's own wedding anniversary is the next day:

Keith S Laity & Ann Riches

17th April 1976

Central URC, Sheffield, Yorkshire

Marvellous - two events, both marriages, in the one month. On the way to a blog post I guess, but still...



...and then this morning I received a batch of messages on MyHeritage.
I don't know if anyone else gets this periodically or if I'm just the lucky one, but every now and again, I'll log in for something, typically after a few quiet weeks and find a string of messages from folks that I never got alerts about.
On this occasion this morning it's letting me have a clutch of messages dated back to mid-February. 

Among them, there was one from a lady I'd been speaking with back around Valentines day. She'd reached out because we have a DNA match of some flavour between about a third cousin point to something vague out from there (originally it was 3rd-5th, but oddly on there, as they've brought in all the awesome new features over the last several months, that guide has got to being a bit less handy than it was I reckon).

Anyhow, she and I match about 3% of our DNA and crucially, she also has a match with my mother, but not with my female second cousin who also tested (that side of our family having very handily placed identical twins along the line that really helps with narrowing the field!).

So we set out looking for a match around about second great-grandparents - fourth great-grandparents in the first instance. There was nothing immediately obvious, but we did seem to share a common surname: Brown.

The only problem was, 'our' Brown was Sarah and she was my Mum's 5th (and therefore my 6th) great grandmother. Given the shared DNA, that's really a couple generations out for a straight <any degree of> cousin relationship, but it does give us clues that we possibly descend through siblings. At that point though, all I had on Sarah's upward family group was a father's name: Thomas Brown. 
I don't know if you've ever tried looking for entries for a Thomas Brown, or a Sarah brown for that matter - or, indeed, for a Sarah Brown daughter of Thomas (or vice versa) in England, but if you ever have two-three hours to kill and no paint to watch dry...

I had thought the trail gone cold since we couldn't at that point be sure, but then, through the two messages that arrived this morning (which would have been the next day had we received them sequentially), it turns out that her nearest Brown ancestor, Grace Brown, also had a father Thomas, for whom the dates looked good.

A few hours on, across multiple platforms, and it looks as though we have a strong contender. What's even more astounding is, it was 273 years ago TODAY that Thomas Brown, the possible father of the sisters we seem to descend from, married Mary Frith.

Sadly there is no extant document currently publicly available online that covers their marriage, but they are indexed in the Nottinghamshire, England, Extracted CoE Parish Records, 1538-1837:

Thomas Brown & Mary Frith 

16 Apr 1745

Farnsfield, Nottinghamshire England.

He was 26, she was 24.

Now how's that for a coincidence?! ...and as himself just pointed out, my horoscope for today did say to look out for surprises in love. I'd say that qualifies.

So there we have it. Three different couples from the same family, over a span of 273 years, all choosing an early April wedding.

There must be something in the air!

2018 Looking Backwards and Forwards.

Happy 2018! 

Did you know we get a blue moon this month? I just love the idea of that. I'm fighting the temptation to go looking for who in our tree might have seen one before (though no promises over whether or not they were interested). 

2017 was a very big year at our end (and it somehow feels so long ago already) and pretty much nothing went as it should have, which makes for some strong memories, but in all honesty, I'm hoping this year's adventures are ...shall we say 'different'?

On Sunday 5th February we had trouble reaching Tof's Mum for our usual Sunday check-in with her. In the end the local sapeurs undertook a welfare check and established that in fact her doctor had admitted her first to the local clinic and then the hospital on the Saturday. Ironically, after having had to make a forced entry via the first floor living room window and searching the house, they found a note on her dining table asking the doctor to please inform us 'or else he will call the fire brigade who will come and break my windows getting in'. We were able to establish contact with the hospital and started to make plans to go out to her in a few days when they anticipated discharging her home.

The following afternoon we checked in with her hospital doctor who had been running tests. He wanted to run another the following day before advising on when we should come.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Within an hour he rang us back to explain that she had suddenly got very much worse and had died at 18.20 local time. He and a nurse had been with her at the end.

We spent most of February in France dealing with the funeral and related administrative things. It was difficult of course, but to be among the family is always a special treat, so that was nice.

Once we were home and settled, it was downhill all the way to our wedding in the summer.

Even with doing virtually all of it ourselves (and with the help of the family and our amazing Best Man, Best Woman and her lovely hubby), as well as taking the first two weeks of August off from everything, we just barely made it by the skin of our teeth (and that's before my darling husband got a spontaneous nosebleed requiring an ambulance in the early hours of the morning of our wedding day). 

We were gifted a two-nights honeymoon in Connemara by some lovely friends of the family and that was a very welcome break and ensured that we did see something of the end of summer - and we got to see the sea!

We had hoped that the tail end of 2017 would be calmer. Tof had booked himself onto some continuing professional development training as he wasn't feeling up to much work-wise (to say nothing of him going down with Shingles for his first time in late September) and we thought that was that, but sadly his brother Fabrice passed away unexpectedly on Sunday 8th October. Having his shingles Tof was contagious at that point, so unfortunately we were not able to go out for the funeral.

In late November and into December we started to get the first results in from the DNA tests that a group of family members took. We're really enjoying the whole voyage of discovery and seeing where it takes us. 

To date, Tof's has been the most astounding. Previous to the big MyHeritage update of a couple of weeks ago, he had exactly four matches. The very first one we looked into, we found a wonderful new cousin (of some sort) in lovely Vito. Our first person of interest is his Great Grandmother Rosina CARBONARO, who was born Rosina LOMBARDI. Based on her date of birth, she could well be a sibling of our brick wall Genaro LOMBARDI b. somewhere around 1880 (roughly). He's giving us some trouble though as it seems that he may have moved from somewhere else to Minervino Murge to be with Francesca CATALANO after they were married (there seems to be no record for that marriage in Minervino Murge), so until we can locate their marriage lines, we're a bit stuck there.

We are also slowly getting to grips with GEDmatch and are considering Promethease.

We closed out the year with a visit to my Mum's for the big double birthday and a family Christmas.

There were some cool things too last year. I was taken on as a volunteer helper in a few places including the Thursday Rangers and Adoption Angels team over at Wikitree and I've really loved meeting everyone at the British Isles Facebook group (among the far too many groups I joined, but then genealogy's never one for moderation) and even discovering I'm related to some of them! 

We took part in a really fun graveyard photography weekend for FindAGrave (highly recommend it as a great activity that all the family could join in on). I also recently got to help with tracing two WWI airmen for two ladies working on a book project in Australia and am providing genealogy and family history support for a commemorative arts installation in Devon later this year. 

We also feel that we're very close to reuniting the Sgt White photograph with his family. We're now as sure as we can be that it was Sgt White of the RAF, as opposed to the man from the Royal Signallers. We continue to look for modern relations (he had no children and his widow seems not to have married again).

We also acquired two new books this year. One was the personal book based on my Grandad's life story that I showed you a few weeks ago. The other one I picked up on the recommendation of a lady at the National Archives in Dublin, who called it "the Bible for Irish Genealogy". It's called 'Tracing Your Irish Ancestors' by John Grenham and while I'm taking it at a slow plod to read through, I find myself referencing it so often that it now lives within arm's reach of my desk.

In 2017 I acquired my first ever paying genealogy customers. Largely through Fiverr, but I also have one client on a longer-term private commission on a really cool project which I can't say much about at this stage, but it has me constantly challenged, baffled and sometimes incredibly excitable with some downwards genealogy from certain members of C19th Prussian nobility.

Last but not least, as of yesterday, I'm a member of the GeneabloggersTRIBE and I could not be prouder of that achievement. Thanks again to them for all their constant hard work in support of us all.

2017 Target:	2018 and beyond...
I did get a blog post in for January & in fact across the year I got 5 posts in, so that was an improvement of nearly 200% so I'm impressed with that all things considered	I have 2 posts so far in January (plus this one), so I'm claiming that as progress. I definitely want to keep to the one a month challenge this year, but I'm really hoping to actually hit all 12 this year.
HUGE amounts of manual data entry to cope with my GEDcom not playing on various platforms (or arguing with others' formats - I'm looking at you wikitree)	Yeah. That's a continued work in progress. It's a real challenge to fit in the time for it, but I am finding it works as an excellent check system for those daft little mistakes we all make and don't necessarily notice straight away. At least that's what I tell myself...
I was (and am) making some slow progress with wikitree, but there was also RootsMagic, GenesReunited, Family Tree Circles, GeneaWiki and various other places).	I'm still going on some of that. I do try to keep to the same handle across platforms (dlaity) so if you do see something on a mutual relative (or don't but think I might have it), definitely give me a yell and I'll try and help you out.
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	In all honesty, I never got to work on our paper tree at all last year. Hopefully later this summer?
Remember that nice mounting system for the paper tree that I dreamt up? I had three possible methods to make it 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.	I'm adding two new ideas to the 'how to make it happen' list: * Regain confidence with woodworking enough to make my own * Find and take some training in picture framing.
Finish off my four generations project for my licensing exam. - Shooting for sitting the May level 1 exam if at all possible.	With the way last year turned out, I didn't manage to get that all sorted (not that I'd have had the head-space to do a good job of it anyway). I did get it to somewhere between half and two-thirds written though, so I'm going to aim for the August sitting this year.
I wanted to create something else crafty (on top of my shawl pattern from the year before) and I wanted to start a book on Bad Billy.	I did start an outline on the book for Bad Billy, but it isn't really going as I'd like it too, so it keeps being sent to time out. I'm also frustrated by trying to work out if I can get a look at the Royal pardon for some kind of capital offence (hanging was the original sentence) that Billy was given shortly before his transportation. I also still can't resolve the ridiculously tight period between the trail going cold in Port Jackson and him being back in the West Midlands getting married. NEW: Try to work out how Tof and Vito connect by trying to work out how Rosina and Genaro connect.

What are your genealogy targets for 2018?