New Member Introducing Myself

Question

I am new to all this genealogy but I am now passionate.

I began my family search looking for the Native American that I am descended from. Since I never go half-way I am now working on ALL my ancestors. My list became so large on Ancestory.com that I broke it into 5 trees.

1) my siblings, cousins, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and their siblings.

2) my Maternal Grandmother - Anna Marie Watkins McDaniel

3) my Maternal Grandfather - Leander McDaniel

4) my Paternal Grandmother - Leota Belle West

5) my Paternal Grandfather - James Gideon Hughes

With 5 gedcoms uploaded and working on the all simultaneously I am on the computer A LOT!

I have inherited a generous number of records compiled by my sister Bella Hughes.Bella put a number of "snarky" comments into her personal stories and the family consensus was to ignore her information.

Bella did a great deal of genealogy driving around looking at records in person. She emailed and wrote to many family members to obtain their data. I have 6 rolls of pictures she took from two main family albums of Cockrells and of Culls.

I'm still looking for the connection from our Blevins to the Sizemore family of Native Americans but I have covered so much territory in the journey I have amazed myself.

My biggest challenge here has been matching profiles. I find myself back on Ancestory.com looking for all the parents, siblings, spouses and children just to be able to connect one person from my Gedcoms.

I absolutely love this Wikitree project. I have worked diligently on Ancestory.com and been taken down erroneous paths by assuming other family trees have gathered all valid information. I went back to the beginnings of most of my family and only added information that I can see actual documents to support.

I was beginning to feel isolated because I ignore all the other family tree connections because of some errors. Here I feel less of a "freak" meticulously examining each connection.

I have my DNA information attached but so far most of the information about matching is clear as mud.

Thanks for all your good work. I look forward to meeting some of you!

Comments

Hi Teri,  this is a great place to start.

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Yes indeed. I must admit if I had not begun on Ancestory.com with the hints piling in I would probably not appreciate what we have here as much.

Answer 1

A very warm welcome Teri. Great to see all your sourced additions.

The matching from GedComs can be a bit of a pain indeed, as you really need to check. I personally always keep the original tree at hand, so I can mark where I am and who connects to who. But taking your time for this is really the best way and very rewarding.

Comments

Thank you for the welcome, Michael.

I am going to have to stop refreshing my gedcoms after every time I complete them. I need to hold off to once a week or I will never be able to fill in other family members.

I have spent a lot of time re-comparing profiles after they have already been matched.

I'm finding that I'm going to have to stick with Ancestory.com a bit longer for the hints that come in so I can extend my profiles accurately.

Answer 2

Welcome to WikiTree, Teri!

Answer 3

I too have Blevins and Sizemore in my family history on my father's mother's side (my grandmother) and they have a Native American connection. But the crazy thing when I read your post is that on my mother's side I have an aunt Edith Marie Watkins that married a Bob McDaniel. Funny huh?

I do not have a lot of time to do research since I own my own biz so I just follow leads when I can.

Comments

I have found some interesting coincidental name joins.

I confess sometimes I just want to go back and say. "Stop naming everybody the same, and stop marrying people with identical first and last names."

I have spent days sifting thru same name couples trying to correctly match my people. Hahaha.

I married a boy who I knew as George Tracy. Turned out his biological name was Kurtz. Yuck.

Somewhere in some branch, I actually have a George Tracy. Love it.