Mason County Genealogical Society P.O. Box 103 Shelton, WA 98584-0103 The Mason Log Volume 12 Issue 5 January 2015 January meeting • Thursday, January 1st • 2:00 p.m. Start time, Tech help/Brick walls • Pam Harrell’s House • Membership dues - single: $15.00 Couple: $20.00 • Find us on the web at http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wamcgs/ The inside scoop • Family History & the 3rd Generation • A Book Report. Family History and the 3rd Generation When I started doing genealogy in 2007, my first step was reading a couple of “how to genealogy books”. The main difference in the two books was the writing style and presentation of the subject matter, otherwise both were alike; do this, record that, interview relatives, etc. After digesting the material and printing out the required forms, I started doing genealogy. My first step, as per the books, get a computer program to track my research and record my results, I chose Reunion, a program for Mac users. Second step, record the information I already had. So I entered the names and dates that I had from an aunt on my mother’s side and this same kind of information I had from my grandfather and his sister. After that exercise, I wanted to see the how the information charted out and identify the areas that needed further research. My chart choices were; pedigree, descendant, relative, fan, and timeline. Not knowing better, I chose the fan chart option, and being somewhat optimistic, I had it display 10 generations. Oh dear. I knew my grandparents, most of my great grandparents and then the train wreck happened. I knew 3 sets of great grandparents, one set of 2nd grandparents, one set of 3rd grandparents, and one set of 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th great grandparents. I’d found and recorded 29 direct line relatives out of the 1,023 available. The rest of the fan chart was a vast wasteland of blank spaces. It seems, there was a lot of opportunity for research (actually 993 empty slots). It was mid 2008, a year into the process, and all I had to show was the 29 relatives. I decided to call a timeout, and re-think genealogy and what my goal was. At this point in time, everything in genealogy that I had been doing was something akin to the pedigree charts that horse and dog breeders value. It wasn’t very satisfying to me on a personal level, and there didn’t seem to be a meaningful reward on the horizon for this type of work. Goal setting wasn’t one of the chapters in the books I’d read. On the surface, it seemed that success was the number of blanks filled in, and the goal was to fill the blanks as one floated on the river of genealogy downstream back through the generations. Trouble with this approach is January meeting is cancelled! , OCR Text: Mason County Genealogical Society P.O. Box 103 Shelton, WA 98584-0103 The Mason Log Volume 12 Issue 5 January 2015 January meeting • Thursday, January 1st • 2:00 p.m. Start time, Tech help/Brick walls • Pam Harrell’s House • Membership dues - single: $15.00 Couple: $20.00 • Find us on the web at http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wamcgs/ The inside scoop • Family History & the 3rd Generation • A Book Report. Family History and the 3rd Generation When I started doing genealogy in 2007, my first step was reading a couple of “how to genealogy books”. The main difference in the two books was the writing style and presentation of the subject matter, otherwise both were alike; do this, record that, interview relatives, etc. After digesting the material and printing out the required forms, I started doing genealogy. My first step, as per the books, get a computer program to track my research and record my results, I chose Reunion, a program for Mac users. Second step, record the information I already had. So I entered the names and dates that I had from an aunt on my mother’s side and this same kind of information I had from my grandfather and his sister. After that exercise, I wanted to see the how the information charted out and identify the areas that needed further research. My chart choices were; pedigree, descendant, relative, fan, and timeline. Not knowing better, I chose the fan chart option, and being somewhat optimistic, I had it display 10 generations. Oh dear. I knew my grandparents, most of my great grandparents and then the train wreck happened. I knew 3 sets of great grandparents, one set of 2nd grandparents, one set of 3rd grandparents, and one set of 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th great grandparents. I’d found and recorded 29 direct line relatives out of the 1,023 available. The rest of the fan chart was a vast wasteland of blank spaces. It seems, there was a lot of opportunity for research (actually 993 empty slots). It was mid 2008, a year into the process, and all I had to show was the 29 relatives. I decided to call a timeout, and re-think genealogy and what my goal was. At this point in time, everything in genealogy that I had been doing was something akin to the pedigree charts that horse and dog breeders value. It wasn’t very satisfying to me on a personal level, and there didn’t seem to be a meaningful reward on the horizon for this type of work. Goal setting wasn’t one of the chapters in the books I’d read. On the surface, it seemed that success was the number of blanks filled in, and the goal was to fill the blanks as one floated on the river of genealogy downstream back through the generations. Trouble with this approach is January meeting is cancelled! , Mason County Genealogical Society,Mason Logs,Mason Logs,2015,V12 I5 MCGS Jan 2015 Newsletter.pdf,V12 I5 MCGS Jan 2015 Newsletter.pdf Page 1, V12 I5 MCGS Jan 2015 Newsletter.pdf Page 1