What’s not to love about a Monday celebrating the Presidents
of our Great Country? Even though it’s REALLY cold and I have to go to work, it’s
still a great day. I woke up on the right side of the dirt. Heh.
I have been really fortunate to be working on a number of
genealogical projects that have kept my “recreational” writing to a minimum.
But, I decided that there’s nothing stopping me from writing a short post about
what keeps me motivated in the genealogical process:
1) Connecting with great new people. This, for me, is what
keeps me going. I work alone and often spend my non-work time alone, so meeting
new people, virtually, makes me happy. Whether I’m helping them, they’re
helping me or we’re collaborating, it’s fun to work with others to move our
research forward. If you haven't thought about attending a conference, please do...it's a great way to get connected! Great place to start is at FGS's Conference.
2) Enhancing my own skill sets. I find it remarkable that
each time I work on someone else’s genea-challenges, I uncover another skill
set. As an example, in the last few weeks I worked with original Land Records
that included information that should
have been in Court records but was recorded in the Land Records instead. This
made me review how I look at land records and how much material they can
provide when doing research. I volunteer for the Fox Valley Genealogical Society as a research assistant once a month and I'm finding helping my DAR sisters with their HWs leads to some really interesting challenges!
3) Sharing my love of the preservation of our history. Seems
like each time I discuss research with someone, the physical material comes up
in the conversation as well. I’m now assisting a local small cemetery to
determine how best to preserve headstones from burials in the mid-1800s, some
of whom were born in the 18th Century. I’m going to be working to
get an RFP from companies that specialize in historic cemeteries, and will be
doing some of the work alongside them. I also love speaking to audiences about
it; I’ll be presenting a few times this year, including next week in
Naperville, Illinois.
4) Meeting new cousins! I have two such connections that
happened in the past week; one on Dad’s side and one on Mom’s side. Not sure
how well the BEIGHTLER connection is going to play out; we had a nice back and
forth, but I think they may not be happy that our family name is not spelled BIEGHLER, how their ancestor
spelled it. Unfortunately, if you use Name Thesaurus, there are 296 variations
on that spelling and the iterations in our part of the family are BIGLER,
BEIGHLER, and BEIGHTLER. As for Mom’s side, I was really happy to find a
photograph posted in Ancestry that turns out to be the 3rd cousin of
my Mom, part of her WAGNER ancestors from France! Super excited that the cousin
is also excited to know about the detailed work I’ve done on this line, and
that I will be able to add another branch in that line.
These are the things that motivate me. What motivates YOU?
