Today is a great day for me. I’m moving on to the Webb family in my Family File Cleanup Project. This is a big deal because at this portion of the tree, all the research is my own. I will still have to properly source everything in a consistent way with the rest of the tree. I wasn’t so consistent with the sourcing. The great news is that I shouldn’t have any super crazy verifying to do at all. Everything from this point on is my own information, so hopefully I’m able to get this section knocked out quickly. That’s not to say that I won’t be doing a little research here and there, because I’m sure I will. For some reason, I’ve always loved researching the Webb family.

The original paragraph

I think maybe it was the mystery of them when I started. It all goes back to the paragraph written at the beginning of the tree my Grandma gave me. While there was information in the beginning to guide, most of the research was corrected and filled in when I first started and beyond. For some reason, I didn’t cite census records well, but I made sure on everything else to make citations. At least there’s that!

The original Webb oldest generation

It’s hard to see the sad pictures of Grandma’s original tree because the pages are fading. You might not be able to see that the only second generation children were those of my 3rd Great Grandfather, George Washington Webb. In my research over the years I’ve added George’s siblings, up from the known two siblings to a total of at least nine. That means the original paragraph mentioned a possible five children but I found mention of at least five more. I only wish my Grandma was still alive to share in the find. She was so set on that paragraph, but she wouldn’t have minded knowing how many more members of the family there were. Besides, I still have some mysteries she mentioned that I can search out, so I haven’t dashed all the family myths yet, just one!

Or at least, what I’m calling a glitch. I have no idea if this is something I’ve done or if it’s a bonafide glitch. I just know I add my stuff the same way every time and I don’t have 8,345 instances of Johnsville, Bracken County, Kentucky in my file.

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For some reason, I had a LOT of Beith, Ayrshire, Scotland this morning. It’s probably been there awhile since I don’t usually check the places tab. I was curious today though and wanted to try something new. I got to do something new alright!

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I went through the process of merging all the instances of Beith together. Since they are all identical I didn’t think Resolving would do anything, but I wish I had tried now because that might have been quicker. Next time I’ll try. I feel like I was working on it for 8 years, but it really turned out to be a half hour. Okay 45 minutes, but I did get distracted and walked away from it a few times. It was pretty monotonous.

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Eventually I was down to enough that they fit the screen! An end was in sight!

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I have no idea how I ended up with at least 76 different listings for Beith but I hope it never happens again. That doesn’t seem to be my luck though. I’ll just keep an eye on it and maybe Google it.

Can you guys tell I’m procrastinating yet? Thank god it’s Friday! I hope everyone has a good one!

In a completely unrelated note, I’ve got to revisit the rules on capitalizing letters in a title. This fly by the seat of my pants approach doesn’t work well for me anymore. haha!

So today is the day my blog turns 3 years old, and I evaluate the goal I set for myself about six weeks ago. I knew it was a tough task but having goals to work towards really helps me. A lot of obstacles were thrown in my way. I spent a lot of weekend time helping out my neighbors who had a family emergency, and I spent a week sick as a dog. So all in all, my goal was really doomed from the beginning. Trust me, I’m laughing at myself as I wrote that. I have a weird sense of humor.

Anyway, I didn’t complete the goal. I wanted to finish my cleanup through Mollie Jane Webb’s parents. I want to fill in one more set of those 3rd Great Grandparents. It didn’t happen, I made a LOT of progress though.

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So I didn’t make a ton of visible progress on my goal. I did however make progress and really that was the main goal. I think I might have even met my goal without having the plague for a week and a half. For a solid 4 days all I could do was stare into space. So I’m wimpy enough to take that excuse and run with it!

I might not have finished everything I wanted to but I did move past the Taylors. I had originally wanted to go ahead and add past Bartholomew Taylor in but when I started looking at my “documentation”, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it just yet when I had a goal in mind. The purpose of the new cleaner file is so that I once again have a strong base to work from. My old file was such a mess from trying to combine numerous things, and switching software numerous times. I hadn’t taken proper precautions when doing those things and it made a mess of my file. So I’m in a much better place now! I might not have everyone added back in, but it’s been so much better researching, since I know that I’ve got everyone sourced in the new file. If someone asks me about anyone in the new file, I can tell them exactly where my information came from. It’s a good feeling!

I’m not setting a new goal yet because I have a lot going on here for the next few weeks, even a vacation! So when all that has settled down, I’ll set a new goal. Maybe it will be to finish this once and for all, or maybe it will be a smaller, more specific goal. Who knows!

I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling. The feeling where you just can’t seem to focus on one topic enough to form coherent sentences about said topic. I’ve been jumping around a lot this week, so I haven’t been able to think of a specific blog topic this week. I’m trying to keep myself reasonably active here. I’m doing that not only because of course I’d love for people to read what I write, but because I also use this blog as a research log of sorts. I don’t go into the specifics, I do that elsewhere. However, I do use this blog to really think out topics sometimes, in addition to cousin bait of course.

So here’s what I’ve been jumping around with this week:

Bartholomew Taylor’s family

1. I’ve finally finished the Joseph Taylor section of my cleanup and I’m moving on to Solomon Taylor.  Joseph and William were the major lines that I had researched already, so now I’m getting into the leaner lines. I should start moving a bit quicker on the adding in and sourcing now. Only, I’m just realizing now I didn’t “prefer” the birthdate of William’s with a state in it. Oops! I always forget to do that. It’s always when I’m looking at a screenshot as I write blogs that I realize my errors. Sheesh.

Kentucky Birth Index source citations

2. All 278 of my Kentucky Birth Index citations are uniform. Before this week, these citations were in 3 different forms. Now they all have the same format.

Yes, still working on the redesign

3. Very sporadically, I’ll get in the mood to work on this design. I get quite a bit of motivation that this May 39th will be 10 years since I started this domain! I only started blogging 3 years ago, but the website has been around for 10! I can’t even believe it! I’ve come a long way and I’ve learned so much. I can only hope I can get this redesign finished once and for all. I’m not going to stress about it though. It’ll get done when it gets done.

My Block of the Month quilt

4. Quilting. Oh how I love quilting. My cousin in Ohio pointed me in the direction of Craftsy’s Block of the Month online classes. Every single block you see, I learned for the first time while making it! While I had already had experience with half square triangles, I hadn’t made those particular designs yet. Now I’m 5 blocks from finishing the 2012 quilt (behind I know!). Then I plan on doing the 2013 one too! Like genealogy, quilting allows me to challenge myself and keep learning at the same time.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their week so far. I know I sure am getting a bunch accomplished!

For the last few weeks I’ve planned to have genealogy weekends. I would spend as much time as I could working on my blogiversary goal. Of course that means that each weekend I made those plans, other things came up and required my attention.

I’m going to try again this weekend. Even if I’m only able to get a few hours in, I’ll call it a success! I’m being really casual about this goal, because I know that even if I don’t finish the exact goal I’ll have made a huge amount of progress. The goal of entering and verifying the next two of my 3rd Great Grandparents isn’t an especially hard one. I’m not going to the lengths of fully researching these individuals. I’m adding them in, based on our passed down family tree, and then I’m verifying the sources I’d already had in my old file for them. In the case of my Kentucky family, I’m even able to use Ancestry.com’s Kentucky indexes to add in birth dates and marriage dates for couples I didn’t previously have them for. This is presenting me with a much cleaner, more accurate file. With the way I’m doing this, I’m able to find small errors and correct them very easily. When I think that this tree was compiled without the help of the internet, it blows my mind! To imagine the hard work and amount of correspondence that had to have gone into it.

2013 Pedigree

So essentially, even though that next set of 3rd great grandparents doesn’t look like much in the view above.

2 weeks left, yikes!

This is what I’m actually filling in. It feels like an insurmountable task right now. I’m still filling in Bartholomew Taylor’s descendants! That’s why I’m being so casual. We’ll see how far I get, and then I’ll make a new goal once this one expires! I’ve also made the decision that might seal my fate. I originally didn’t plan to go any further back than Bartholomew. He’s the one who moved from Maryland to Kentucky. I thought that would be a good stopping point. The more I thought about it though, the more it feel like an excuse not to to a harder section of the tree.

That means I have a lot more Taylors to add still. I’m going to need more Diet Dr. Pepper. Oy vey!