Starting Again Follow-Up

I wrote a post over my Christmas holiday talking about being side-tracked in my genealogy research. It was really great to see that many people have gone through the same thing and I appreciate everyone's comments!

So, what did I end up doing during my days home relaxing? Well......

1. I caught a nasty little virus on my work laptop which has cured me (at least temporarily) of going to the cheezburger network sites. Yep, something mean downloaded onto the computer while I was on the comixed site. I do miss my kittehs, but I also have 2 real life one's that live with me, and they (especially one of them) do dopey things all the time to make me laugh, so I'm okay with that. For now.

2. I spent time with my parents. :-) Sherlock Holmes was a fun movie!! Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Well, I wouldn't call it fun....it was a good mystery, but not the easiest movie to watch - some tough stuff happened.

3. I did lots of maintenance on my online life - updated and strengthened passwords and cleaned out and cleaned up temp files and trash on my home computer. I made sure my work contacts list (ie, stored in outlook) and home contacts list (stored in comcast) actually matched. I made sure I had the most recent versions of firefox, IE, Adobe, etc (see #1 above).

4. I burned CDs for family members of photos from our trip to Walt Disney World last Fall. I also pored through the hundreds of photos and picked out the best to get printed into real life photographs to send out to my grandfather so he can have pics of his great-grandchildren at Disney.

5. And finally, finally!!! I got to work on some genealogy "stuff". I had intended to do what I stated in my blog post - start with me and fill in documentation holes working backwards. But I got sidetracked by deciding to follow-up with my DAR contact on my application (part of #3 above).

A while back, I submitted an application to DAR for one of my ancestors on my mom's side. I got a letter back asking for some additional documentation to further prove the relationship between some of the fathers/sons. I've had a hard time doing that so far. I have hope that I'll be able to do it one day, but it will require a lot of time going through records in local historical societies I think. In the meantime, my father had suggested using an ancestor on his side of the family.

My father and I have split up the research so that I do my mom's side of the family and he does his, so I'm not intimately familiar with all the people on my dad's side.

So I asked my contact about submitting another ancestor while I continue to research the one and she explained what to do.

Then in a matter of days, I was able to pull together the documentation for an application to DAR on my paternal ancestor Kinsey HARRISON (from Maryland).

Why so easy? Because his Revolutionary War pension file is on fold3.com. Yay!!!!! Then I found a transcription of his son's will online that named his son! Yay!!!!! And from there I had census records and actual birth/marriage/death certificates. Man oh man did it come together more easily than my New York ancestors!!!

So I didn't spend time doing what I said I was going to do for my research on my break, but I think it ended up being pretty worthwhile. No matter what, whether my application gets accepted or not, it still prompted me to gather together some really great documentation for that HARRISON line of mine that I didn't know much about before. :-)

Time to Spring-Clean the Car

So I decided to finally pursue a membership in DAR. I had put it off for many years because it would require that annoying thing called "actual proof". "Actual proof" takes all the fun out of genealogy research and sometimes makes it feel the tiniest bit like work. But not really that much, and it's mostly work that I enjoy.

Except for instance, like now, when I'm entering like 500 Redcay obituaries I found on genealogybank.com. Geez louise those Redcay's were/are prolific!!! But don't think for a moment I won't enter all that information in my database. It's called OCD my friends, and it's a blessing and a curse. Funnily enough though, the OCD only rears it's head in certain parts of my life. For instance, there's junk in my car's trunk right now from I don't even know how long ago. I drive around with all that stuff back there, let my co-workers make fun of me when they put their laptop bags back there, but do I do anything about it? Nope. Just. Don't. Care.

Don't think for a minute I'm exaggerating either. There's containers of kitty litter, cardboard boxes to be recycled, books to be sold to the Book Barn in west chester, a salad dish, dry cleaning, and an external dvd drive. And that's just what's on top.

But leave one obituary out of my Redcay family tree? NO WAY!!!! The information would be incomplete!!! Are you CRAZY!?!?!?!?!?

Yes, it's a sickness. I've learned to live with it.

But anyway, back to the DAR information. I contacted them back in February letting them know I think I have something, and they have this disclaimer that it could be several many lots of weeks before you are contacted back. Nothing so far....I'm trying to be patient! Anyway, so here's what I think my lineage is:

1. Me!

2. My Mom (no need to get too personal on a public blog)

3. My Grandma (ditto)

4. William Homer Mix, b. 1876, Caroline, Tompkins County, NY (m. Cornelia Akins)

5. John Francis Mix, b. 1830, Tioga County, NY (m. Mary Ellen Cook)

6. Jonathan Collins Mix, b. 1803-1804, NY (m. Sally Stevens)

7. Collins Mix, b. 1777, Wallingford, CT (m. Leafe Ide)

8. Thomas Mix, b. 1745, Wallingford, CT (m. Lois Collins)

Isn't "Leafe Ide" a great name??? I love that name. Did they pronounce it like leaf from a tree, or some other way? Are there still people in Vermont with that name? That's where she was from, it was a hot name in her neighborhood. So was "Squire" for a boy. Her father's name was "Squire Ide", and he was not the only one.

So anyway, it's Generation 8, Thomas Mix, who was in the Revolutionary War, in the 4th Connecticut Regiment (and spent the winter at Valley Forge, maybe that's him in the picture!). I like Thomas and Lois, they've given me lots of interesting things to look at over the years. Lois Collins, his wife, is my link back to nobility and royalty in Scotland and England (through her grandmother, Lois Burnet). I distinctly remember the day during the winter of 2002 that I figured that out. But that's all a story for another day!!

Hopefully I'll hear from DAR soon and start the process of my application with all that annoying proof. Wish me luck!