Saturday, January 2, 2016

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Best Find of 2015, and Research Challenge for 2016

It's Saturday night, so it must be time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  This week is a two-parter, bridging the transition from 2015 to 2016:

1)  What was your best research achievement in 2015?  Tell us:  Show us a document, tell us a story, or display a photograph.  Brag a bit!  You've earned it!

2)  We all have elusive ancestors.  What research problem do you want to work on in 2016?  Tell us where you want to research and what you hope to find.

 
3)  Put the answers in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.


Well, I absolutely think my best research achievement last year was the collaboration between me and my half-sister that resulted in finally(!) obtaining a copy of my paternal grandfather's birth record, which I wrote about earlier.  Not only had I been incredibly frustrated at not being able to get the record, it turns out the information on it and the subsequent amendment that was filed have raised interesting questions.

As for what I'll be working on in 2016, there are three big questions I'm hoping to answer this year, two of which I put in my Dear Genea-Santa letter:

• I'm trying to learn what happened to the son that my aunt put up for adoption in 1945.  My aunt turned 90 this year, so on a practical level this is the most time-sensitive.

• I want to determine whether my grandfather's father was the same man who fathered my grandfather's siblings.  One of my cousins, who is a straight-male-line descendant of my grandfather's brother, agreed to take a Y-DNA test, and he recently told me that he has sent it in.  Now I just have to wait to see if he matches my father.  And if not, I'm sure it will be . . . er, entertaining to try to figure out who my grandfather's father actually was.

The other focus will be more research on my Cuban cousins, which I've recently started working on more diligently.  I want to make progress on this while some of those cousins who were actually born in Cuba are still alive and able to share information with me.  So this one has a time-sensitive aspect also.

I don't want much, do I?

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments on this blog will be previewed by the author to prevent spammers and unkind visitors to the site. The blog is open to everyone, particularly those interested in family history and genealogy.