Question of the Week: What are your genealogy goals for 2024?

Question

Do you have any genealogy goals for the new year?

If so, what are they?

Please tell us with an answer below. You could also answer on Facebook or use the question image to share your answer with friends and family on any social media.

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Answer 1

FamilySearch has digitized 3 of my family histories published 30–40 years ago, but the content is not accessible online due to copyright restrictions. I hope to release them in 2024, as soon as I can recheck them and update the errata sheets.

Comments

Making your family histories available online is an admirable goal. I wish you success, not least with the copyright issues.

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It's super easy to publish right now. Print on demand services are easy to find and a cheap option for making books widely available in print and/or digital formats.

I did two records compilations that way, paperback formats only. Created simple covers myself and uploaded formatted interior PDFs to Amazon (through KDP) and IngramSparks (formerly Lightning Source), which publishes them to non-Amazon online retailers like Barnes & Noble and IndieBound. Hard cover formats can be done the same way, if that's your preference.

Writing/publishing is my day job, so I have a ton of resources if you need them.

Answer 2

I have a WikiTree goal and a general process goal.

WikiTree: I have trees on the three major commercial sites, with 626 (Ancestry), 186 (FindMyPast) and 667 (MyHeritage) people. Although relatively small, they are fairly well sourced. Maybe that's why they're small! Yet I have only created 40 profiles on WikiTree so far. I don't like to create one without a decent biography. So for 2024, I'd like to get that number higher, at minimum 100 or more.

Process: Three commercial sites is getting to be to expensive, so I'd like to drop one of them in 2024. It's not obvious which one. For example, FindMyPast has fewer people but it also has some sources, which are important to me and not found elsewhere.

Answer 3

2024 Goal(s) is to add more generations to my Wikitree page period an more specifically to my maternal Grandma Brehm's line.  Eventually, long term goal, to "publish" a 2nd edition to the book her husband, my Grandpa Lloyd researched.  The compiler/typist, editor and proof readers didn't do a very good job. There is also so much more information available on the Internet than my Grandparents could have dreamed in their 40+ years of boots-on-the-ground research in the early 1990's.

Answer 4

I think its about it.

Answer 5

I'd like to add all the children and grandchildren of my ancestors (to the 4th great-grandparents generation) to WikiTree, or to make sure those profiles are connected together if they've already been created. 

Research-wise, I'd like to find parents and siblings for at least two of my female ancestors whose LNAB are currently unknown, Ursula (--?--) Nichols and Catherine (--?--) Darnell Grist; connect James R. Roberts to his parents and all siblings, which may mean sorting through all the Roberts families in Jackson Co., GA; and more fully reconstruct the family of Richard Carver, the Revolutionary War soldier who died in then-Pickens Dist., SC. These are all long-term projects that I've been working on for years. I'd like to make real progress with them in 2024.

I'm also working on another records compilation (marriage index) that would be very useful for local researchers. It's been in the works for at least 25 years, so it's past time for me to finish it and get it published.

And finally, I'd like to finish researching and writing at least two genealogy articles and submit them for publication. 

Now that I've written it all out, it sounds like an awful lot to accomplish in one year! But I think I can make inroads into each of these projects, so long as I don't get too distracted by or involved with my day job (which, to be fair, consumes an awful lot of my time as I'm self-employed).

Good luck to everyone with their New Year's genealogy goals and resolutions!

Answer 6

I would like to solve at least one mystery listed in the Bahamas Triangle.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Ceruti_Family_Mysteries

Another project I have started is to go through Bahamas records of births, death, marriages, etc. looking for information about various profiles. This is what I call the "needle-in-haystack" approach. It sounds crazy but this method has yielded a surprising amount of primary-source material for a number of profiles.

Lastly, but not least, I would like to improve and add to Wales and Scotland profiles.

Answer 7

As I read in G2G (thanks again, Dieter!) that Archion has finally included church books from my paternal family's home area of Lüneburg, I intend to take a one-month pass for viewing Archion sources and research the families of my paternal grandfather's brickwall ancestors (there are ten of them within four generations, LNAB incl. Warnecke, Detje, Putensen, Westedt, Bergmann, Benthake, Bünstorff ...).

Answer 8

To continue sourcing and writing bios for profiles I find with minimal of either, especially for family members. To add more siblings and their children for those I have already added.

Answer 9

My genealogy goals for 2024 are:

1) Take over the Macklin/Macklem DNA project at ftDNA

2) Make significant improvements to the Macklem ONS

3) Continue adding missing family members to WT where I find them, concentrating on my own ancestors’ families.

4) Write more about my ancestors

5) Scan & label more physical photos that I have and share them with family members.

6) Continue to help connect Canadian Notables.

Answer 10

My Christmas and New Year wish and goal is to finally locate when and where my GGGrandfather and mother, William Henry and Mariah Brinkman, came from in Prussia as well as what happened to her.

Answer 11

My goal is to learn the proper way to cite sources!!

Answer 12

Every year I have a WikiTree-specific goal of earning all 12 Club 100 badges.

I contemplate giving a couple of presentations next year: one a Genealogy 100 sort of talk at my local library; the other a presentation to my local Quinte Branch of Ontario Ancestors called "Counting Guppies: researching the Irelands of Murray Township". Four Ireland brothers came from Yorkshire to the same little Upper Canada township, got married, and started having children, grandchildren etc. Lots of descendants! So, until further notice, I'm working exclusively on deeper documentation of that very leafy family tree.

Answer 13

I tend to go off on tangents, and I need to focus on filling in my family lines.  I'm quite new, so haven't been good at sourcing, and need to improve the profiles I've started already.

I've also started stuff in my husband's family lines, and they require a lot of work, and research.  Nobody knows anything!

Answer 14

Yes, I have a couple:

Coulter tree connection, biographies and cleaning.

Vernon tree connection, biographies and cleaning.

Hampson tree connection, biographies and cleaning on husbands family

Answer 15

Learn how to use Wiki tree and Research the lives of my Irish ancestors in Canada and Michigan in the mid1800s.

Answer 16

Find my elusive secretive family line. Took 26 years and a lucky break that located my great grandfather.

Answer 17

To find the true parents of Richard Horton-186 since DNA has established he is not of Barnabas Horton (1600-1680) lineage.

Answer 18

Spend more time updating my tree on wikitree I often spend much time helping others with thier genealogy projects I forget to work on my own.  I have accumulated a lot more research preparing for some upcoming videos for 2024 and I need to get the info transfered to wikitree.

Answer 19

I would like to have my One Name Study website live so that others can find it and contribute.

Answer 20

Goals for 2024.  That's a tuff one.  I have so many projects going on that I may need an intervention.  I'm addicted.

I still consider myself very new to Wikitree and it has just added to my addiction problem.

My goals this year are:

1.  to add sources to all the profiles I manage.  I would like to have 5-6 sources for each.  Many only have 1 real source not just "family knowledge" notation.
2. expand the families of those profiles and document.
3. provide research notations when I cannot find any more sources.
4. work on my own Mayflower project for my own website.
5. scan family photos that I have received from various family members and redistribute to other family and my website.
6. work on a cemetery project that I started for my own website and also share it here on Wikitree.
7. collect all of my hard copy data (sources) and place in my binders for my own library and to make sure I have digital copies of this library.
8. document everything
9. document everything
10. document everything

I know I probably forgot a few. Oh, my main goal but not necessarily for 2024 is to write a book or books based upon my personal research. I finally realized it's not all going to fit into 1 book.

The last goal which is ongoing is to help anyone who needs it in their own research.  Wikitree is an amazing group of people and I love you all.  I've been fortunate that everyone I've had contact with here has been super nice and helpful.  This is a wonderful community based upon sharing.