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!

Genealogy Stats Update and More Resolutions for 2017

Time to update my stats again for the past year. I didn't really add a lot in my own family, but I did add my brother-in-law's family to my program, which definitely added a good deal to my numbers.

Overall Roots Magic Stats:
•    People 5260  – an increase of 532 people, which is more than double from the increase between 2013 and 2016
•    Families 1742 – an increase of 111 families, again, more than double from the previous change
•    Events 8999 – An addition of 1574 facts throughout the file, which is five times the previous change
•    Alternate Names 196 – 43 new alternate names, some of which may just be repeats. I'll have to look into these
•    Places 1425 – 203 new places, though again, I may need to see how many are just repeats written out differently.
•    Sources 390 – 109 new sources, which is definitely due to adding a new family to my tree
•    Citations 23455 – 320 new citations of those sources, which suggests to me I haven't been sourcing the facts in the new tree nearly enough. I'll have to work on that, too.

As I said, most of the changes are due to my brother-in-law's family tree, which I have to clean up, but still looks like it added a great deal to my file this year. Still finding new connections in the Scandinavian branches, too, but nothing significant yet.

Family Branch Stats:
Hillinger line –
•    Still 5 generations, nothing new there
•    136 people (this may just be from a different style of counting)

Hansen line –
•    Still 21 generations, ending with Nana
•    Still seems to be about 2000 people, according to what I managed with Family Tree Maker, though I may have mucked that up. There really doesn't seem to be a good report for this. At least, nothing easily done.

Bordewick line –
•    Still 11 generations, ending with my mother
•    Again, seems to be just over 1000 people, according to what I can work out in FTM

Jones line –
•    No changes in number here, either. Still 6 generations, ending with my grandmother
•    397 people according to my program, which is over 100 new people, so either I miscounted, or I've added more people on this line than I realized.

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

Nelson line –
•    4 generations currently, ending with my brother-in-law's father
•    Currently seems to be at 26 people.

Bergstrahl line –
•    6 generations, ending with my brother-in-law's grandmother on his father's side
•    This line currently has 56 people

Matlack line –
•    7 generations, ending with my brother-in-law's mother
•    This line currently has 74 people in my program, though I see lots more to add from Family Search

Holly line –
•    6 generations, ending with my brother-in-law's maternal grandmother.
•    This one's the largest, with 134 people currently in the line, though like Matlack, I see lots more to add from Family Search.

As you can see, I added quite a few people with his lines, though that part is by no means finished. And I've got more work to do because of the resolutions I already stated earlier this week. But here are a few more goals:

•    Clean up the names in the database, make sure no one has multiple names that are just repeats.
•    Clean up the place database for the same reason
•    Finish pulling everything up from Family Search for any family lines
•    Add the Nelson, Bergstrahl, Matlack, and Holly lines to the Ancestry tree as well
•    Finish adding Citations to any facts that don't have them yet

I think with the other resolutions, that's quite enough, don't you?

Genealogy Stats Update

So it looks like I haven't updated my stats in some time. I was thinking it hasn't changed much, but looking back at the post I made in 2013, apparently it has. Significantly. I do need to update with a few things found at Family Search, but for now, here are the stats as compared to 2013:

Overall stats for Roots Magic File: 
• 4728 People – a difference of 238 from 2013
• 1631 Families – a difference of 50
• 7425 Events – a difference of 368
• 153 Alternate names – a difference of 4
• 1222 Places – a difference of 69
• 281 Sources – a difference of 51
• 23135 Citations – a difference of 763

I'm fairly certain most of the changes were deep in my tree over these past two years, though there have been a few natural additions, and one minor but significant discovery as well. I've had cousins on two separate sides (about equidistant cousins, actually) have babies. One on the Hillinger side, and one on the Jones side.

And then there was the email I got from a distant cousin in Israel. She added several more families and family members to a very sparse branch of my tree. While she didn't double the amount of people in that line, she definitely added to it and the information I had in a significant way. I now know for certain I lost only one family member in the extended line to the Nazi purge. I'm sure there were distant cousins or aunts and uncles who may have been affected in other ways, and I know that some of Alex's nephews died fighting in the war, but only one of Dora's sisters was taken by the Nazis, and none of Alex's family were in the country, and so they were safe from that fate. It's good to know. Still saddening, but I'm glad to finally have a name and a number for my family.

Numbers for each line: 
Hillinger line—
• 5 generations (plus one after me)
• 129 People (13 more people, with the addition of Dora's siblings' families)

Hansen line— 
• 21 generations (ending with my paternal grandmother) (either I miscounted last time, or I found a new branch, not sure which)
• Over 2000 People (Still not able to determine an exact number here. Someday I'll figure it out.)

Bordewick line— 
• 11 generations (ending with my mother)
• Over 1000 People (Again, not certain how to count these, either.)

Jones line— 
• 6 generations (ending with my maternal grandmother)
• 296 People (72 new people, mostly from being linked to the Gabriels's family tree online. Need to get back to that and add in my family's full information there.)

The Hansen and Bordewick lines are still the longest. Not that I expected that to change. The other are the ones that have changed most, though. And are most likely to change in the future, though I do keep working on the other two as well.

Goals for the coming year:

• Finish or at least continue the Hometown Histories Posts
• Add the Gabriels's line as I have it to the family tree online.
• Update my database with the info found at FamilySearch.
• Write letters to the UK—one to see if there is any information on the Seneft family's immigration there, and one to see if Leon served at the synagogue in London.
• Write a letter to the Red Cross in Geneva to see if they have information on Alex's time in Camp Douglas during WWI, and whether any of his brothers were there with him.
• Find Nana and Aunt Marilyn's letters and work on getting them scanned, along with other family documents.
• Work on a format for a new family tree book.

Wish me luck!

2012 Genealogy Stats

So in the interest of seeing how far I've come each year, I think it's time to start doing yearly stats, just to see which family groups I've come farthest on. Most of these will be for my own edification, but perhaps someone else out there might find them interesting.

I'll break this down into a few categories: Overall stats, Family groups, and other comments.

Overall stats for Roots Magic File:

·         4490 People

·         1581 Families

·         7057 Events

·         149 Alternate names

·         1153 Places

·         230 Sources

·         22372 Citations

Family Groups:

Hillinger line—

·         5 generations (plus one after me)

·         113 People

Hansen line—

·         14 generations (ending with my paternal grandmother)

·         Over 2000 People (I lost count, despite trying to use a number of programs, but I believe this is the biggest line in my tree)

Bordewick line—

·         11 generations (ending with my mother)

·         Over 1000 People (Also less certain, as it's still quite a large number)

Jones line—

·         6 generations (ending with my maternal grandmother)

·         224 People

As you can see, most are in the Hansen, then the Bordewick lines. The other two are more descendants than anything else.

Major discoveries this year:

Hillinger – A few more records on the Seneft side, mostly in the 1940 Census, but also the Old Man's Draft cards for Alex, and Jack. Also, I discovered Dora's brother and his family in the Brazillian immigration cards, which was quite exciting. We also had an addition in the more traditional sense—my cousin's wife had a little girl.

Hansen – Nothing really new here. Lots of additions of information, but no big discoveries, though I have been working to firm up my information on Oline's lines. I did firm up a bit of information on a couple lines here because of the Surname Saturday posts, but no real new information.

Bordewick – No new info here, either, though I keep hoping to find more on the Park side. Again, a bit of firming up information due to the Surname Saturday posts, but nothing I didn't really know before.

Jones – Nothing much new here, either, and one loss this year: my grandmother. I also had a few distant cousin additions. My mother's cousin's daughter had a child, and another of mom's cousins, one who has been gone for a few years now, had her first great-grandchild at the beginning of the year.

Comments:

I think I still have a few more additions from the old program to add, and I know I have at least a few more documents that I've printed out this year that haven't been added to the program, but definitely close to done with it. Between that and working on Oline's story this year, I think I'll have my hands full.

And as always, if you've got information on any of the above, I'd love to hear about it.

Wish me luck!