My New Year's Resolutions - Eight Months Later

It has been a few months since I've posted an update to my New Year's resolutions, and I thought I would give everyone an update as to what I have been able to accomplish so far. So, what have I accomplished? Well, here is what I have been able to do since April:

1. Look up and print other probate records of ancestors who lived and died in Saint Joseph County, Michigan. As of April 1st: I still have not had the chance to look up any more probate records, but I am still hoping to do so this year. As of August 19th: I have not done any research in the probate records of Saint Joseph County, Michigan, and I am unsure as to whether or not I will be able to do before the end of this year.
2. Order more microfilms of Trippstadt, Germany's civil records. As of April 1st: I have ordered two microfilms of death records, and so far, only one has come into the Family History Center. I am still waiting for the second one, and after I have obtained all of the death records, I will be ordering birth and marriage records. As of August 19th: I have looked at book the microfilms that arrived earlier this year, and I found the death records of my ancestors and their siblings. I did not order marriage or civil birth records after the death records arrived. Instead, I ordered a microfilm of the church records to look for the births. I probably should order the civil records for those births and marriages, but I will have to put off that research until I have more time.
3. Order naturalization records for my German-Russian ancestor Anton and his siblings. As of April 1st: I have not ordered any naturalization records, but I still hope to order some of these records. As of August 19th: I have not ordered any naturalization records to date, and I will probably have to wait until I have the time to do so.
4. Obtain the Civil War Pension files for Benjamin and William Oswalt, and try to strengthen their relationship to my ancestor, Adam Oswalt. As of April 1st: I haven't ordered any more pensions files although I would like to do so. As of August 19th: I have not ordered any Civil War Pension files, and I am not sure if I will be able to do so before the end of this year. I might still order them, but I have not decided yet as to whether or not to do so.
5. Find more information on my ancestor, Irene Havens. I am hoping to figure out who her parents are, and what her connection is to Rhoda and the Mandigo family. As of April 1st: A man named Jim, kindly looked up two newspaper notices for a couple of marriages in Rochester, New York and shared the information with me a few days after I posted my resolutions. Of course, I still need to do further research to figure out the exact relationship between my ancestor, the Mandigo family and Rhoda (Havens) Lang(e). As of August 19th: So far I have not focused any attention on or researched my Havens branch. I did obtain Rhoda's death certificate from the Seeking Michigan site, but I have not pursued any of the leads that I have. I do not know if I will be able to do any research into this branch before the end of the year, but I hope to do so next year.
6. Find more information on my WWI veteran great-grandfather's family and ancestors. As of April 1st: I am doing a little research on my great-grandfather's family, but I haven't finished looking at records in Scotland. As of August 19th: I have had someone help me by looking up records for my ancestor's siblings in Scotland's vital records, but I do not believe I am ready to start researching in Irish records. I think I still need to continue looking at Scottish records before I do so. (The person who has been looking up the records for me has been doing so since I started to research my great-grandfather in Scottish records.)
7. Order birth, marriage and death records of ancestors from the United Kingdom. As of April 1st: I haven't ordered any vital records from the U.K., but I hope to order some microfilms of church records the next time I visit the Family History Center. As of August 19th: I have ordered a few microfilms of church records from Lancashire, but I have had limited success in my research. I was able to obtain the baptismal record for an ancestor, but I have mostly had setbacks as I ordered the wrong microfilms for a couple of locations. As for ordering civil vital records from the U.K., I recently attempted to order a couple, but I have encountered some difficulties in trying to do so. (I will explain later in a future post.)
8. I hope to make more connections and to find more ancestors and relatives. As of April 1st: I've contacted a man who had information on a branch of my British ancestors, and he kindly shared the information he with me. Outside of that, I haven't made any other connections. As of August 19th: I was contacted by a woman from Argentina who was also descended from my Kees and Cotta ancestors, and we have been exchanging information over the past few months by e-mail. Outside of those two instances, I have not made any new connections.
9. Publish posts listed in the "Coming Soon" box in a timely manner. As of April 1st: I am still working on this resolution, and I am still behind in publishing the posts I have listed. As of August 19th: I think it probably safe to say that I have failed so far with this resolution. I have not posted articles in the box in the time frame that I set up. Many of the future articles listed have been on the list for months, and at the moment, I am unsure as to when I will get around to posting some of the articles or topics listed in that column. Since I am now back at school, I am afraid that I won't improve in this regard.
10. Improve the writing quality of my posts. As of April 1st: I am still working on this resolution as well. As of August 19th: I am unsure as to whether or not I have improved my writing or accomplished this goal. Has my writing improved? Please feel free to leave comments on my writing skills. Thanks.

As you can see, I have not made too much progress in accomplishing the goals I set out back in December. As to whether or not I will make any more progress before the year ends, I don;t know because I am back at school. If I am able to accomplish another one of my goals before the end of this year, I will be satisfied with my progress.

63rd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The 63rd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted! You can read the edition here. The topic for the next edition is :

A Winter Photo Essay. Show us those wintertime photo(s) of your ancestors
or family members and tell us the story that goes along with them. Winter is
here! Let's record it and celebrate it! The deadline for submissions is January
15th.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year's Day!

I just want to wish everyone a happy New Year's Day! Enjoy!

My Genealogy and Blogging Resolutions For 2009

For this carnival, I am supposed to list my New Year's Resolutions for genealogy and blogging, and as you may remember, I created my first New Year's list last year. I posted my results for last year, and I did fairly well. So I'll now post two lists for resolutions. For my research, here are my resolutions for 2009, and hopefully, I'll do just as well in 2009 as 2008:

1. Look up and print other probate records of ancestors who lived and died in Saint Joseph County, Michigan. As you may remember, this resolution was one of my resolutions from this year that I did not accomplish, so I am carrying this resolution over to this upcoming year.
2. Order more microfilms of Trippstadt, Germany's civil records. I only ordered one microfilm from Trippstadt this year, and I hope to order a few more microfilms in this upcoming year.
3. Order naturalization records for my German-Russian ancestor Anton and his siblings. I am hoping the naturalization records will list where he and his siblings were born, so that I can trace Anton and his family back to the Russian Empire.
4. Obtain the Civil War Pension files for Benjamin and William Oswalt, and try to strengthen their relationship to my ancestor, Adam Oswalt.
5. Find more information on my ancestor, Irene Havens. I am hoping to figure out who her parents are, and what her connection is to Rhoda and the Mandigo family.
6. Find more information on my WWI veteran great-grandfather's family and ancestors. I do not know very much about his side of the family, and I hope to uncover more information on his family.
7. Order birth, marriage and death records of ancestors from the United Kingdom. This resolution is the same from last year, and I hope to be able to continue doing research on all of my ancestors from the U. K.
8. And last, but not least, I hope to make more connections and to find more ancestors and relatives. Of course, this was a resolution from this past year, but I hope to continue to be able to find more relatives and make some more connections.

So, those resolutions are my goals for doing genealogy research in this upcoming year. I did not mention any blogging resolutions in the list above because I am going to list them below. So, here are my blogging resolutions:

1. Publish posts listed in the "Coming Soon" box in a timely manner. As some of you may have noticed, I have listed posts that I plan to post in the future but I do not always post those posts at the time that I say I will. I hope to improve on my timing in this upcoming year.
2. Improve the writing quality of my posts. As always, I hope to write posts that are more eloquent and more professional, so I would appreciate it if you could give me feedback on how well I am writing my posts.

So, those are my two blogging goals. I have only made two because I am not sure what other goals I want to create. I did come up with a number of posts to publish for 2009 because I do not know how much time I will have to blog in the future, and in addition, I want to focus more on quality than on quantity.

So, as you can see, I have come up with some more goals for 2009. I hope I am able to accomplish as many of my goals for 2009 as I was able to for this year. As 2009 progresses, I will post updates on my progress every couple of months. Please stay tuned for this coming year, and enjoy the holidays!

My 2008 Resolutions - My Results

Over a year ago, I created my first resolution list, and over throughout this year, I updated everyone on my progress on completing my resolutions. So, here are my final results a year later:

1. I hope to get a chance to go to the Grand Rapids Public Library this year. The main branch of the library has records of the Old Soldiers' Home where my ancestor spent the last two years of his life. I am hoping to find more information than I did at the state archive of Michigan. Results as of May: I have yet to visit the library and look up that record. (I have been to that library before, I just never thought to look up the record in the past.) I guess I can always send a letter requesting a copy of the records. I don't know if it will cost more to order it than to copy it myself, but it is an option. Results since I posted in May: I still have not visited the library or made a request for his papers. I'm still hoping that I might be able to get a chance to do so this year. Results as of now: I have finally obtained Adam's Old Soldiers' records from the Grand Rapids Library. I have briefly looked over the four pages, and I hope to post an article on those pages in the near future.
2. Order more microfilms of probate records for Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Results as of May: I have not ordered any microfilms for Huntingdon County. Since I still have plenty of time, chances are that I will do so. Results since I posted in May: I did order two microfilms of Huntingdon County records this summer, but for one of the microfilms, I wrote down the wrong number. The other microfilm is of Orphan Court records for the county, and I am still waiting for that one to come. Results as of now: The microfilm finally came into the local Family History Center in mid-August, and my grandfather took a look at the microfilm as I mentioned earlier this year. I have just recently looked at the record my grandfather printed, and unfortunately, I was not able to gain any more information on the family of Benjamin Oswalt and his wife, Mary.
3. Look up and print other probate records of ancestors who lived and died in Saint Joseph County, Michigan. Results as of May: I have not done this yet. Also, I can't seem to find the call numbers for those microfilms anymore on the familySearch website. I think I wrote down the call numbers, so I'll look and see if I can still make a request. Results since I posted in May: I still have not got around to looking up more probate records for Saint Joseph county, Michigan, and I have not looked for the film numbers I might have copied from the site. Results as of now: I have not ordered any film probate records or viewed any probate records for Saint Joseph County. I hope I will be able to do so in this upcoming year.
4. Order birth, marriage and death records of ancestors from the United Kingdom. Results as of May: I have ordered a microfilm of baptismal records for the church that was closest to my ancestors' residence. Hopefully, I'll be able to find my ancestors and their siblings in these records. Results since I posted in May: I was able to able to find baptismal records for my ancestors and most of their siblings. I did also order another microfilm of church records, but I was not successful in finding a baptismal date for another ancestor. Results as of now: I did order a couple of microfilms this year, as I have indicated above, but I have not ordered any other microfilms since this summer.
5. Order microfilms of Trippstadt, Germany's civil records. Results as of May: I have ordered one microfilm of death records for the time period that a known ancestor had died. Of course, I still plan to order some more microfilms, especially of birth records. Results since I posted in May: The microfilm of death records I ordered finally came in last week, but it turned out to be the wrong years for the person I was doing research on. Instead, I was able to find a death record for another of my ancestor's children. Results as of now: I have not been able to order any more microfilms of records from Trippstadt, Germany, and I hope I will be able to order more records next year.
6. And last, but not least, I hope to make more connections and to find more ancestors and relatives. Results as of May: I have been contacted by two more distant cousins. I haven't yet been able to find more ancestors, but hopefully, I will have done so by the end of the year. Results since I posted in May: I did receive an e-mail from someone who was also researching a possible Householder ancestor, and I did send a response. Unfortunately, I have not heard back for that person since I sent my e-mail. Results as of now: I still have not heard back from a possible cousin. I also have found another person who might be connected to one of my branches, but I haven't been able to contact him yet. I hope to do so within the next few days.

Well, as you can see I have been able to accomplish at least four or five of my resolutions. I think I did pretty well this year, and I hope my next year will be just as successful as this year was.

62nd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The 62nd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted! You can read it here. The topic for the next edition will be on "New Year's Resolutions! What plans do you have for your genealogy research next year? How about for your blogging? No groaning or whining now. Write 'em up and let us know! The deadline for submissions is January 1st, 2009." Enjoy!

Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The carnival of genealogy has been posted! You can read it here. The topic for the next carnival is on meeting or connecting with living relatives while doing research. Enjoy!

Yesterday ...

I hope everyone had good New Year's Day yesterday. I couldn't help but notice Jasia's article about the snow that she got over New Year's Eve, so I decided to write about my New Year's Day.

As most of you have probably figured out by now, I live in Michigan. I don't think I need to mention that a snow storm passed over Michigan the night before yesterday. Anyhow, where I'm staying at the moment, about 12 inches of snow fell over that night. The storm was pretty bad, so much so, that we ended up having several guests spend the night, since it was too dangerous to drive. Of course, that's not all ...

We also lost power at our house some time between and eight and nine the morning of New Year's Day. A power line fell down somewhere in the area that we lived. So, we were out of power until about 7:30 that night. So, in all, it was a pretty interesting day. ... And this morning, I woke up to see that another 2 to 3 inches had fallen last night. Ah, snow ...

Happy New Year!

I just want to wish everyone a happy New Year. Enjoy!

Genealogy Resolutions for 2008

Even though I did not come up with a genealogical list of New Year's resolutions for this past year, I've decided to come up with some for 2008. So, here's my list:

1. I hope to get a chance to go to the Grand Rapids Public Library this year. The main branch of the library has records of the Old Soldiers' Home where my ancestor spent the last two years of his life. I am hoping to find more information than I did at the state archive of Michigan.
2. Order more microfilms of probate records for Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.
3. Look up and print other probate records of ancestors who lived and died in Saint Joseph County, Michigan.
4. Order birth, marriage and death records of ancestors from the United Kingdom.
5. Order microfilms of Trippstadt, Germany's civil records.
6. And last, but not least, I hope to make more connections and to find more ancestors and relatives.

Well, those are my resolutions. I realize that it is not a lot, but I believe that I probably will be able to accomplish most of these resolutions. Well, I'll just have to wait until next year to see how I did.

Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The carnival of genealogy has been posted! The topic for the next edition is genealogical New Year's resolutions. Enjoy!