Monday, May 20, 2013

I'm stuck

And it's not even on a brick wall. I'm stuck as to what I want to do next with my genealogy. I've been working on my German family history class - so fascinating to learn the history of the area where so much of my ancestry traces back to. And to finally understand what many of those place names like Silesia, Pomerania, Hessen, and Alsace-Lorraine that I've come across over the years actually refer to! I've also been working on my DNA analyisis, though I can't seem to decide which test to focus on, or which ancestral line I want to try to isolate and trace. I want to do something to prepare for the DNA conference I'm going to in a couple weeks (!) but I don't know what. Then there are the lines where I've had breakthroughs in the last year or so - specifically the Josephs, Bergstads, and Zitzmanns, where I have a pile of records in the original languages of my ancestors, but not enough linguistic skill to read them fluently and analyze them properly. I still have a number of brick walls or confusing lines I want to work more on - Samuel Joseph's second and third wives are still little more than names (though I did recently find corroboration of the addresses of the witnesses to his second marriage, to Elizabeth Ackermann); Pauline (Rosen) Joseph is still a mystery, as I have her death date and place, and a birth year but not much else; and my Gibson/Cain lines are still hard to find in New Brunswick. Then there are my online family trees that have been pretty neglected lately - Wikitree, FamilySearch, and Tribal Pages all need updating. So much to do! Is this what they mean by an embarrassment of riches?

Maybe I just need to sit down and make a list of all the loose ends I've got, and decide which ones I want to focus on. I thought once I finished the Project, my next course of action would be clear, but so far, I kinda feel like I'm spinning my wheels. 

if you were me, where would you start?

No comments: