Do you track your genealogy progress? If so, do you measure your progress in terms of goals met? Or, do you rely on numerical data to document your progress?
For the most part, I’ve been concentrating on my goals and I feel good about the progress I made during 2022. (2022 Goals Summary)
However, it is fun to look at the numbers to see what they reveal.
RootsMagic
- 22,246 People
- 7,404 Familes
- 73,184 Events
- 9,729 Places
- 5,635 Sources
- 26,475 Citations
- 13,182 Media Items
While tracking these numbers from year to year is one way to measure growth, the numbers alone can be deceiving.
- The number of people in my file is NOT the number of people in my tree. I have people in my file who are not connected to my ancestral tree. In fact, I have quite a few floating trees of people that don’t connect to my ancestral tree (yet).
- This helps me document the various men named James Crawford and their descendants who lived in the same area of Kentucky and Ohio as my ancestor, James Crawford.
- This helps me document that I do NOT descend from another line such as the Alexander and Mary (McPheeters) Crawford line.
- While I hope that the number of sources, citations and media items grows as I progress in my research, cleaning up my RootsMagic file might result in a decreasing number of those items.
Ancestry Tree
- 21,652 People
- 18,323 Photos
- 1,782 Stories
- 22,024 Records
Since I use TreeShare to transfer my RootsMagic data to my tree on Ancestry, one might question the difference in the numbers.
- Many of the living people in my RootsMagic file have not been transferred to Ancestry.
- Even though I accept hints for family photos and stories, I don’t tend to download them from Ancestry to add to my RootsMagic data.
While I’m not crazy enough to set it as a goal, it is fun to look at the numbers for Ancestry hints.
- 13,606 people with hints (out of the 21,652 people in my tree)
- 115,327 hints
Blog – 2022 Year in Review
When it comes to my blog, I do check my stats. While I like getting mentioned on the list of ‘best’ blogs for a week, I don’t write/post with that goal in mind. Many of my posts are in hopes of connecting with a distant cousin versus seeking readership from the genealogy community.
- 369 Posts
- 311 K Words
- 37,221 Views
- 21,297 Visitors
Ancestry DNA Matches
When I first tested my DNA, I loved to watch the numbers grow. However, I now have more matches on Ancestry than I can ever document.
| Me | Brother 1 | Brother 2 | Mom | |
| Paternal Matches | 36,028 | 40,329 | 36,764 | 29,020 |
| Maternal Matches | 30,748 | 35,867 | 31,042 | 15,415 |
| Both | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8 |
| Unassigned | 55,820 | 62,281 | 59,125 | 38,148 |
The 8 BOTH matches for my mom are easily explained since I have several first cousins who have tested. Thus, they would show up matching both her maternal and her paternal side. However, the 3 and 4 BOTH matches for my brothers are a little harder to explain. However, these mysterious BOTH matches are distant cousins. Since my tree is deeply colonial, it is possible that we could have common ancestors from both sides of my tree. Unfortunately, these mysterious BOTH matches do not have trees of their own to help figure out the mystery.
yDNA Matches
While the autosomal DNA results are interesting, they’ve primarily helped to support what I’ve learned over the years from the paper trail. When it comes to breaking down brick walls, I’ve been hoping that yDNA testing would help find James Crawford’s father. Thus, I have sponsored three BigY tests on FamilyTree DNA.
| Big Y | 111 Markers | 67 Markers | |
| Brother 1 | 28 | 29 | 67 |
| Brother 2 | 27 | 29 | 67 |
| 4th cousin | 27 | 24 | 44 |
These numbers represent over forty years of research with some of it still being ‘messy’ notes from my early days. While I hope that these numbers grow in 2023, my main focus will be on updating my research for my 4th great grandparents and sharing my tree via Ancestry, FamilySearch, WikiTree and this blog.
May you have a fantastic 2023 filled with wonderful discoveries in your genealogical research.