It’s Saturday Night and time for some Genealogy Fun courtesy of Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings. Our mission is to create a “Genea-Bucket List”.
Knowing that a “Bucket List” is a wish list of things to do before death:
1) What is on your Genealogy Bucket List? What research locations do you want to visit? Are there genea-people that you want to meet and share with? What do you want to accomplish with your genealogy research? List a minimum of three
items – more if you want!2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own (please give me a link in Comments), a comment to this post in Comments, or a status line or comment on Facebook.
Think big! Have fun! Life is short – do genealogy first!
I have lots of things that could end up on such a list – but I will confine myself to the top seven (since that’s how many I typed up before I had to stop and actually think).
1) I would like to visit London, England and Norfolk County, England. When I was in England several years ago I did spend some time digging around for family but since that time I have discovered a great deal more information on some of
my branches, including the Ansteds, Lustys, Oakleys and Coulmans. Now I need to go back with a more purposeful plan. I have also discovered some information that leads me to the Burtons in Norfolk, so I’d like to go there, too.
2) Since I will already be over in that part of the world, I would like to drop in on Ireland! I know my Palatine German St. Johns settled for a time in the Co. Limerick area, so I would like to visit there. I also want to visit Co. Fermanagh in Northern Ireland where I believe my Summerville ancestors hail from. Hopefully by the time I actually make it there, I will also have figured out where my Johnson, Fee and Hunter ancestors came from. Surely I can do better than just “Ireland”.
3) If time permits on this mythical trip, I would also like to visit the region in Germany where the St. Johns originally came from. I have a bit more research to do before I set off in that direction, though.
4) Within Canada’s borders, I would like to go back to the parts of Ontario my ancestors settled in. That would lead me to Brock Twp for the St. Johns, Uxbridge for the Thomases, Little Britain for the Haights, Sharon for the
Summervilles, Chinguacousy for the Hunters and Daveys and Toronto for the Coulmans. I grew up in that part of the world so I have been to many of those locations, but I’d like to go back now that I have a little more knowledge.
5) While I’m in Ontario, I may as well head east to Quebec to see what else I can turn up on the ancestors that settled there. The Fees, Johnsons, and Burtons moved around between Montreal and the Athelstan area and I’d like to spend more time investigating them. I’d also be interested to see what I could find on the Salter/Bohle branch in the Montreal area.
6) I would like to figure out where Harrison Haight came from. He has long intrigued me and has been a bit of a block to my research for years. I know I haven’t exhausted every possibility so I hesitate to call him a ‘brick wall,’ but he’s a challenging person. I would also like to spend more time verifying the origins of his first wife, Agnes Doan. I keep finding other people’s trees online that take her family back to Deacon John Doane in the early days of the Plymouth colony – but I not 100% convinced yet. And, while I’m at it, I’d like to discover more on Reuben Thomas who married Harrison and Agnes Haight’s daughter Melissa. I have very little information on him beyond the fact we believe he came from Cornwall.
7) Finally, I would like to take all the information I have published on this blog – as well as the information I haven’t – and put it into book form of some sort. Hopefully someone in the next generation will be interested enough to
carry on my research but even if there isn’t anyone to continue on, I would like to ensure that the information I have already found doesn’t end up “lost”. An actual book seems a better way to protect the information than a few computer
files and a big box of photocopies and other material.
Looking over my list I have to say I hope I have inherited the genes from some of my longer lived ancestors – it may take me well into my 90s to accomplish all that I want to!
