Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Genealogy Journal - 12/31/07

This was a fairly active genealogy day. I was on the computer from about 8:30 AM until about 5 PM with several breaks. We went to a Progressive Dinner party at 6 PM with our church social group - four courses at four different houses in Chula Vista, with a gift exchange and midnight champagne at the dessert house. It was a lot of fun - about 30 attended. The most interesting thing for me were the family photos on the walls at the last house - she has done a magnificent job of choosing pictures and framing them in a wonderful presentation.

After reading my email and Bloglines, I wrote the post about "Genea-Musings in 2007." This took awhile to research and post, but will be handy for me in the future. After receiving the email from Bob Velke about TMG 7, I wondered about genealogy software in general - what's available, how do they compare, what do they cost, etc. I spent over an hour reading software web sites and looking at add-on software items.

After lunch, I wrote the "Della's Journal - Christmas Presents" post. Then I decided to look for data on the Jefferson County NY USGenWeb page for Russell Smith and his family (I'm pretty sure that David Smith was his father). There was one mention of a Russell Smith in Adams township (just east of Henderson where Ranslow Smith settled) in the transcribed pages of the history books. There was also a David Smith, perhaps Russell's brother, and several other Smiths in Adams around the 1800 time frame. Brothers? Uncles? Cousins? That led to a Google and Ancestry search for Russell Smith and David Smith, which uncovered several mentions in the Oneida County NY history books, with some leads to Plymouth CT (Russell was purportedly born in CT). Then it was 5 PM and time to get ready for the party. Where did the time go?

Genealogy today - 7.5 hours, of which 1.5 hours was reading email and Bloglines, 2.0 hours was blogging, 1.0 hour was researching software, and 3.0 hours was researching my elusive Smith's in the history books.

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