Accentuate the Positive

A few days ago, Jill Ball of Geniaus created a Geneameme of 20 items to help geneabloggers share some of their successes in 2012 as opposed to lamenting the fact that not as much had been accomplished as anticipated. Per her instructions, I have omitted the few items that were not relevant to me.

An elusive ancestor found: No new ones were found in 2012, but several that I had known about from online trees and/or publications were confirmed through documentation.

A precious family photo found: A recent find (like the 2nd week of December) on an ancestry tree was  a photo reportedly of my 3rd great grandmother, Sarah Foster Parkison. I'm still waiting to hear back from the submitter of the tree to confirm that it is actually her and to hear how he came to have the photograph.

An ancestor's grave found: I didn't find the grave itself, but rather a photo of the gravestone of Jacob Berlien (1716-1790)

An important vital record found: the 1763 marriage record of John George Steinweeg and Veronica Danerin in the records of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Photocopies of the original records in German Script are held by the Lancaster County Historical Society.

A newly found family member who shared: A trio of Hoffman cousins. Nick Hoffman, Mike Lies, and Bob Hoffman whom I wrote about in Cousins Connecting, Contributing, Collaborating.

A genea-surprise received: links to two newspaper articles about a Hoffman Family Reunion in 1913 and one in 1914.

My 2012 blog post that I was particularly proud of was: There were three brothers who immigrated... Yeah, Right! about the three Berlin brothers (really!) who all arrived in Philadelphia on the ship, Charming Nancy in 1738.

My 2012 blog post that received a large number of hits or comments was: So, Now what do I do? regarding use of my blog posts on ancestry trees has had the most hits of any post written in 2012 and the most comments.

A new piece of software mastered: It's not new to me but I've learned a few more things about using some of the (to me, lesser used) features of Legacy Family Tree.

A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy: the "Technology  for Genealogy" group on Facebook and Google+ in general.

A genealogy conference/seminar/webinar from which I learnt something new was: the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh.

A great repository/archive/library I visited was: the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

It was exciting to finally meet: For fear of leaving anyone out I won't mention names but I had a wonderful time meeting fellow geneabloggers at RootsTech and the NGS Conference in Cincinnati.

A geneadventure I enjoyed was: my Research Trip to Pennsylvania (to the counties of Westmoreland, Lancaster, and Berks) and visiting The Old Trappe Church and the farm where my ancestor served as an indentured servant.

Another positive I would like to share is: From the stats, I know that a great many people have "landed" on the blog while searching for people mentioned in various blog posts. Out of those several hundred, twenty-six individuals actually contacted me in 2012 because of blog posts that were published, which pleases me no end. Many of them turned out to be distant cousins.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Accentuate the Positive," Kinexxions, posted January 1, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/01/accentuate-positive.html : accessed [access date])