I Feel Like Thomas Edison

This week I made fewer discoveries and spent more time running into roadblocks. But, as Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that do not work,” and I have been discovering sources of information that may well work for other people on the tree later on, bookmarking them, and/or joining them, as needed. I have also added a few bits and pieces of additional facts to people I’d already discovered (some real estate transactions by Great Aunt Julia Hart Siddall and her 2nd husband found on Archives.com and Newspapers.com; some family stories about Great Aunt Julia Hart Siddall told to me by one of my mother’s sisters after she saw the post about the quilt and my efforts to find the drapery shop; some Civil War related information for some of 2nd great grandfather John Erwin’s siblings, etc). And I’ve been doing some background research on the War of 1812 and Mennonites to try to understand and reconcile some facts I’d found regarding one of my third great grandfathers, Henry Y. Zimmerman, who will be my Ancestor Highlight for this week (I learned a lot but it didn’t help me reconcile the two opposing facts – the man is a puzzlement, on multiple levels). I will write that post tomorrow.

I also received and uploaded some family tree software to my computer so that I can work on it outside of Ancestry.com and so I can more easily keep track of information obtained from sources other than Ancestry. I am living proof that incessant advertising works. Over the past several months I’ve gotten a tone of ads from Ancestry.com for software called Family Tree Maker. I bought the latest version of it. I’ve since seen competing blog posts by other people as to whether they like it better or something called RootsMagic or Family Source better. Since I’m just beginning I rather think that whatever I get used to will work for me and this is set up a lot like Ancestry.com and will sync with Ancestry.com quite easily, which I like.

The Family Tree Maker software also helped me make the chart I put up with the catch up post earlier this week. Making the chart was easy and fun. Figuring out how to post it on BlogSpot was anything but; even though I found a how to video and a step by step instruction with pictures on the web. It didn’t turn out like I wanted it to turn out but it’s readable and adequate. It’s odd how I have infinite patience with historical research, even including brick walls; but am shortly reduced to cussing at the computer and pounding the desk (both actions utterly unhelpful) when I’m trying to do something technical and it isn’t working, lol!

Next week I’m going back to the Erwin branch to get them as far as I can, and then I’m moving on to the Snyder side of Mom’s family. My goal is to get the first pass through Mom’s family done by the end of October. I don’t know yet if that is possible, but I’m going to try.

P.S. Hah! I just learned how to make paragraphs in html! (I had no paragraphs the first two times I previewed this. I needed to use html to put in links.) I can learn nearly anything from a good Google search! And now, to bed.