It’s the last day of June and therefore the last day of our current 30 x 30 challenge. I’m dying to know: How did it go? Were you able to research or organize for 30 minutes a day each day this month? If not, did the challenge encourage you to do more than you might otherwise have done?
I’ll be honest; I had a disappointing month. As I posted in the middle of the month, my husband was hospitalized for a couple of days on June 6 and that completely disrupted my month. He’s doing well now (much better than before he was hospitalized), but I had a difficult time climbing back on the horse. The highlight of the month was being able to research at the History and Genealogy Room of the St. Louis County Library. I was able to get through my list of documents I’d found online that were only accessible online at a FHL affiliate. I downloaded them and will be processing them for the next little while.
I’ll definitely want another 30 x 30 challenge soon…probably August. So stay tuned. In the meantime, please let us know in the comments how your challenge went!
I also had a disappointing month. I started out great, then fizzled partway through. My plan was to get my first five generations into Twile.com. When I reached my Revolutionary War soldier, I made a mistake and made him a sibling and not a parent. No matter how many times I tried to remove him, it couldn’t be done. I had to reset my tree and start all over. Sigh. I am still bound and determined to get my peeps put into this very cool timeline site.
That sounds frustrating, Christy! But I’ve anxious to check out Twile.com. Thanks for bringing it up!
I did not do well either, but I did get my first family of Morrow County Ohio submitted
Congrats on getting that submitted, Martha! I bet that felt great!
My month was not a disappointment at all, but soooo erratic. Personally, I think it’s because I am fully vaccinated and things have opened up where I live. These includes visits with my kids. I need a new daily schedule, eventually….(HA!) So while there were days I didn’t do any research or organizing, there were just as many or more, where I happily spent hours. The Family History Library near hasn’t opened up yet, but there is a affiliate library near me that is on my list for later this week. So glad your husband is okay!
I’m glad it was a good month. It’s great that you got so much work done, even if it wasn’t daily. Thanks for the kind words about my husband.
I had a great month even though I didn’t research. I averaged 1.5 hours for all 30 days catching up on my education — blogs, podcasts and webinars. I added my notes and handouts to Evernote so I can easily retrieve them. It’s like clearing my desk so I can research! I’m looking forward to the next challenge.
I’m so happy your hubby’s health has improved.
Started off great. I managed to do 30 minutes of organization every day until about the 17th. Then life hit the wall. I have only been able to do about 30 minutes every other day or every 3rd day. It is a great goal and I plan to incorporate this into July’s monthly goals. Thanks for the inspiration
Rebecca, that sounds like a very successful month! I’m glad the challenge was helpful!
I started out well. Made a presentation to the Roots Users Group of Arlington which consumed about 8 hours in preparation and delivery. And then work got stupid busy and not much else was done.
I know how that goes, David! I hope your presentation went really well.
I missed about 10 days in the middle of the month due to moving and a delay in my internet getting connected, but spent extra time on the days I did do some research, so I am pretty pleased at coming out with an average of just under 20mins a day! I am still stuck on working out which of the two men with the same name is my ancestor, and have discovered that the children are not the key (a couple of the children from both families have the same name), so the key is occupation, but sadly the parish records in the early 1800’s did not note father’s occupation, and with census records only available from 1841 I need to look at other records and see what I can find. A slow process, but it will be rewarding in the end.
I’m impressed that you got so much research done during a move, Missy! Your challenge sounds like a good one–just think how sweet it will be when you make that identification!
Hope your husband has recovered from his heart problems a d is doing ok.
Overall I did ok. I missed a couple of days when I was driving to and from our home on a vacation (Morro Bay). While I was on vacation I listened to some of the talks from SCGS Jamboree. During the month I was able to provide a Genealogy Ancestor Report to my cousin and her two daughters. One of the daughters showed an interest in doing genealogy research, which makes me happy. Most of the month I was busy inputting obits and cemetery data for my direct and collateral line. Yesterday, I located an obit on my grandmother that was posted in 1955. Although I had her death record, I never had an obit on her.
I started out the month with all good intentions and I even spent several hours on a couple of days. But being away for a week in the middle of the month kind of stopped my progress and I was rather erratic at the end of the month. I hope to do more in August. (July is GRIP and then vacation for a couple of weeks.)
I started off really great until the middle of the month, then life happened. I am still determined to get my family history organized. I was amazed how much I did complete in 30 minutes a day. I have already penciled out 30 minutes per day for July and attempt to complete even more organization.
Overall, my month wasn’t as as successful either. After the steady research for the family presentations early in the month, my gardens needed attention and I had several other commitments. August will be different (I hope!). Zenda
Hi, Janine. I am sorry to hear about your husband but glad that he is recovering. My prayers are with you both. My month of June went very well. I did about 53 hours of web indexing for FamilySearch. I met my goal of 1200 documents and feel pretty good that I am able to help others find family members in the future. Now back to my own organizing — LOL.
Linda Freeto
Linda, indexing 1200 documents in June is so impressive! And inspirational! Congrats on your achievement. As a user of Family Search, I thank you for contributions! And thank you for the kind words about my husband.
I thought I’d have more time to do work on the tree but I didn’t. I’m ok with this and that’s a huge improvement from my mindset of 5 years ago. I am just going to keep on it for July.
Mary, I’m so happy to hear you’re being kind to yourself! Enjoy your work on your tree in July.
So glad to hear your husband’s on the mend.
I spent June wrapping up loose ends on my paternal lineage research. Over the first half of the year, I found 5 Patriots and have submitted 3 DAR Supplemental Applications. I’m awaiting some documents for the other two. I’m blown away with how much I accomplished in 6 months.
I transition to my maternal lineage as my second half do-over. My goal is to discover more Patriots. My maternal grandmother working back is my primary focus and best chance. I’ll continue my monthly 30×30
Cheri, congrats on your achievements of your first half of 2021. I hope you enjoy shifting focus to your maternal lineage and that the second half is equally rewarding!
Glad to hear your husband is recovering well, Janine! I think I did pretty well in my 30×30 challenge, considering for 4 of the 5 Wednesdays I had a seminar at my church to attend, and other life things of course. I have embarked on a file renaming project, inspired by your “How I Do It” package – renaming most of my digital files (I’ll work on my paper stuff in another project) with a standard file name scheme.I managed 16 total days (I confess, I started a few days before June 1), 17.50 total hours, avg 0.58 hrs over 30 days or 1.09 hours over the actual 16 days of work. I’ve gotten about halfway through my folders (some large, some small), created new ones and deleted ones that were not needed. I haven’t quite decided how to deal with my “working documents”, that is things that are not documents or photographs – such as summaries, transcriptions, spreadsheets of data from city directories, etc. I am fairly please with my progress and do plan to continue trying to get 30 minutes a day on this project until it is done. Then, on to the paper files, actual photographs and everything else I need to organize…sigh. It is never-ending, isn’t it?
Cecile, I’m thrilled that How I Do It inspired you to take action! Congrats on all you achieved. As you’re thinking about how to name and file the working documents, I encourage you to think about how you would access them. You could file them by ancestor, by surname, or by type of document. (Or something else.) Organizing does seem like a never-ending project but it certainly bears fruit. Congrats once again.
As for the folders, I’ve taken a tip from Connie Knox (GenealogyTV) and have created “couple folders”, so for example my maternal grandparents’ info is all filed in “SIEGEL-Mueller” (grandfather’s name in caps). They each have their own folder within this overall folder. My mother’s info will be in “SANDS-Siegel”, reflecting my parents’ marriage. So far it seems to be working well and makes sense to me.
I did well up until the last week but I am pleased with what I did accomplish and looking forward to doing this again.
Excellent, Cheryl! I’m confident I’ll be doing another challenge in August.
This month did not turn out well. Remember those five days where I did genealogy research that I mentioned during the mid-month check in? That’s all the research I ended up doing for the entire month. *Sigh*
But, hey, give yourself credit for those five days, Rebecca! I’ll be firing up another challenge in August, I’m confident.