New Genealogy Service

I have just initiated a new blog to advertise my new Genealogical Research service called "Family History Discovered"   in fact, that is the name of the blog site: http://www.familyhistorydiscovered.blogspot.com/
Of course, with my own family, I do genealogy for love, not for money!   But there are many people who are curious and not able to do their own research.  And I have so much to do and so little time!  We shall see what happens next.

In the meantime I am sticking around home for awhile, no trips for a few months.  There are some repairs needed on my condo that I must attend to.  One little item I'm not looking forward to is that my whole, six-unit, building is going to be tented by the exterminators.  Of course all the people and pets will be evacuated before the poison gas goes in.  I'm going to try to herd any resident geckos to the outside before any tenting occurs.

I've been very consumed with my new Family Tree Maker 2010 software.  I have not been able to import my entire database of 12,000 people into it....yet.  It is very frustrating, and I've tried and tried even spending hours on the telephone with the service representatives at FamilyTreeMaker/Ancestry.  So, I'll be content using Family Tree Maker 16 .... which I like very much ... for awhile yet.  

In the meantime Larry Akin has corraled me into co-editing the David Akin of Newport R.I. member family tree on http://www.ancestry.com/.   It is a really big family tree, but he has painstakingly cared for every bit of the data in it and we work to try to provide the correct sources for all the information.  Just learning all the ins and outs of creating and mainting a family tree, online, is time consuming.  I have my own very small Member family trees on ancestry.com for the Rees family and the Hague family.  I'd like to create one for each of the surnames that are closest to me.

I've also trying to find time to scan my important historic documents, and to photograph my family heirlooms.  It seems that I have quite a few things around the house that could be considered heirlooms, like vases, books, ceramic figures and such, the history of which would be lost if I didn't document it.  I'm photographing each item then annotating and printing each item, six photos to a page.  I'm just using regular printing paper instead of photo paper, as the photos are more for a catalogue type collection.   I think I once heard that an heirloom was over 50 years old... hmm  then all my childhood toys would qualify.... not that I have any around.