Stats for 2017, Goals for 2018

I spent most of my genealogy time on Ancestry this year, and haven't quite merged the online tree with my Roots Magic tree properly yet. Which means my usual numbers may be a bit skewed, so I will have to work on that this year.

Overall Roots Magic Stats:
• People 5797 – this is an increase of 537 people. Not impossible, as I know that I've added a lot to the Hillinger branch of the tree, as well as a few other outer branches, but it seems a bit high to me. I did a lot of merging as I worked on the branches below, so it dropped by over 100 people, which means there are probably lots of others that need to be merged as well.
• Families 1862 – 120 new families, which definitely seems excessive, so it's probably off by a few.
• Events 11256 – 2257 new facts, which I can partially believe, as I found a lot of fascinating new documents this year. Some of these are definitely duplicate facts that need to be merged, though.
• Alternate Names 316 – 120 new alternate names, most of which are almost definitely duplicates.
• Places 2175 – 750 new places. There are definitely duplicates here.
• Sources 584 – 194 new sources. Another I am likely to believe, given all the new documents I've found this year.
• Citations 27555 – Wow. Over 4000 new Citations. Ancestry has definitely been a boon there.

I'd say it's a mixed bag, but I definitely know I've added quite a bit to my tree this year. My biggest growth has been on the Hillinger branches, I do believe, though I did a lot of research on all branches of my tree, and I have done more work on my brother-in-law's tree as well, so between the two, and the other additions throughout the rest of the tree.

Family Branch Stats:
Hillinger line –
• Still 5 generations, nothing new there
• 136 people – no difference, which is surprising, given all the work on this branch this year.

Hansen line –
• Still 21 generations, ending with Nana
• Still no good report for this. At least, nothing easily done. Probably hasn't changed much, though.

Bordewick line –
• Still 11 generations, ending with my mother
• Again, unable to find a way to count this.

Jones line –
• No changes in number here, either. Still 6 generations, ending with my grandmother
• 359, which is less, so I must have miscounted last time, though I found a lot of people I had to merge, so that might be it, too.

Then there are my brother-in-law's lines:

Nelson line –
• 4 generations still, ending with my brother-in-law's father.
• Currently seems to be at 24 people, so I lost two somewhere…

Bergstrahl line –
• 6 generations still, ending with my brother-in-law's grandmother on his father's side
• This line currently has 42 people, so I've lost some again.

Matlack line –
• 8 generations, ending with my brother-in-law's mother, so I got one more back. I think I just haven't finished pushing back in this line, though I haven't looked to check.
• This line currently has 110 people in my program, though if there is more to add, that will definitely change.

Holly line –
• 6 generations, ending with my brother-in-law's maternal grandmother.
• This one's the largest, with 173 people currently in the line and still lots more to add from Family Search.

Biggest changes:
I worked on the Hillinger branches the most, in hopes of getting back before my great-great grandparents. I didn't manage that, but I did get an email from a relation in England that helped me firm up a guess I'd made about the line there, so I now have all of my great-grandfathers' siblings' names, their spouses and children, which makes me much happier. No big movement on the Kresch line since the email from the Israeli cousin, but I now have names for all of my great-grandparents' siblings, and the places both great-grandparents were born, which were about 21 kilometers or 13 miles from each other. Though they did not meet until they ended up in Frankfurt after World War I.

And the whole family contributed to learning more about how the Hillingers came to America. Niece wanted to know the story for a class, so I helped her with that, then did some research on my own and we found out a lot of interesting things, though the one question we weren't able to find the answer on was what class they travelled when they came to America. Then dad's cousin emailed with a copy of the ticket. So now I know that Grumpy came to America on a boat called the SS Paris. They took 12 days to get here, and travelled third class, which was the lowest class they had on the boat.

I didn't make any other big progress in my lines, though I did work more in my brother-in-law's family tree. Not enough, but it's slowly beginning to grow. His Holly line in particular is one that has been here in the US for a very long time, so I anticipate working and growing that one for some time to come.

This year's plan:
My hopes for this year are to find the Hillinger and Kresch ancestors another generation back, to find Benjamin Jones and Hannah Griffiths' parents as well, and to firm up more of the Park, Curran, Howells and Roberts' lines. I still don't know where the Park family came from, or whether my great-great grandfather had any siblings, and I'd love to make that jump back to Scotland if I can—Park and Dunlop, how can they not be from there? And I'd love to learn more about the Curran and Blair family as well.

Goals this year are to write more and post more for people to see. I need to finish sharing all the documents on the Hillingers I found with my family, and I need to post to the family groups about whether there have been any major changes this year, so I can add them to the tree. I also plan to start up my Ancestry account again next week after Payday, and possibly get a full paid account at the Newspaper Archive, because I really want to access the newspapers about my great-uncle Ben.

I also plan to clean up the names, facts, and places in my database, so that all the best information is at my fingertips in my program. And maybe do a weekend trip somewhere to do some actual book research, though I'm not sure I'm there yet. Though I'd love to look at my great-grandparents' citizenship paperwork, as well as my uncle Jack's. I need to pin him down a bit more, and finding his legal name would go a long way towards doing that.

Wish me luck!