WikiTree Source-a-Thon!

This past weekend, WikiTree sponsored a Source-a-Thon - a challenge to update as many profiles as possible with legitimate sources.  Since I had a free weekend, and despite the insanity that was work in September, managed to hear about it a few days before it was going to happen, I decided to register and see what it was all about.

I was assigned a "race number" (413), and participants were organized into teams.

My WikiTree Source-a-Thon Race Number

In some cases, people created/joined teams to work in a common geographical area.  Those who had not joined a team beforehand were assigned to existing teams until each team reached 20 people.  I was one of those random late assignees, since I had not seen a team for where I planned to do work - Sweden!  Although later I did discover a Team Europe where folks were working on Swedes, and tried not to step on their toes too often.  :) 

I was assigned to Team Tennessee.  Each team was essentially a smaller group to keep tallies on how many profiles were being sourced throughout the event.  The teams had separate forum threads in which the members posted their updates of sourced profiles.  Periodically the team captains would provide summary information to the WikiTree leaders so they could keep track of the overall progress.  Because of course, there would be prizes for the winners!


The race started at midnight on Saturday morning, and I put my own house in order first.  I had a number of my relatives that had not been documented yet within WikiTree, and that was just a matter of adding the sources I had in Family Tree Maker into the appropriate WikiTree profiles.  Those Irish had a whole pile of Jersey City city directories to enter, so that took awhile.  But I was finished with my 16 profiles by lunch time on Saturday (and I had about 5 hours of sleep in there, too!), and then I moved on to tackle unrelated Swedes, armed with my ArkivDigital subscription and my copy of the Swedish Death Index, 1901-2013.  Oddly for me, I was not feeling at all competitive in this environment (though clearly some folks were!), despite the bragging rights for largest number of profiles sourced by individual and by team.  I just wanted to source the profiles I worked on as well as I could.  In the case of genealogy sources, quality is better than quantity!  Luckily, my team captain felt the same way, and there was no pressure to do any more than I felt comfortable doing.

One of the interesting aspects of this challenge was the online hangout/chat that happened every 2 hours throughout the 3 days.  Some of the WikiTree leaders would run the hangouts, give the updates posted by the teams, and give away prizes randomly selected by race number.  This social interaction aspect was great fun! I had been tossed into a group of complete strangers, and came away with some new friends from the forums and especially the live chats.  It was also a way to stay motivated.  So often in genealogy we are working in a little vacuum of our own, on our own stuff, and it is nice to be able to have some social interaction with folks as obsessed with dead people as you are.  :)  When you get tired, or frustrated by some crazy family linkages, there are other folks right there sympathizing, helping get through the roadblock, and just understanding exactly what you're going through, since they are right there in the trenches with you.

I sourced 100 profiles over the 3 days, and decided to stop there about 2 hours before the end, deciding that I needed to look as something that wasn't Swedish for a bit.  :)  In my continuing 2016 genealogy winning streak, I also won one of the prizes in a 4 am giveaway.  All in all, an exhausting but fun experience. I will probably do it again sometime.  But not until I've had several months to catch up on sleep!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match....

A Smart Match on MyHeritage has led me to my first Italian cousin, as opposed to the Italian-American cousins I have been connecting with up to this point.  In my experience, MyHeritage, being an Israeli-based company rather than US, attracts more European users.  So if you have European ancestry and want to connect with living cousins, put a tree out there.  Unless your ancestry is the British Isles, in which case Find my Past is probably the better bet.  If I ever find Irish townlands of origin for my Irish lines, I might finally spend some time on Find my Past, but I'm not there yet! 

I've connected with many Swedish cousins on MyHeritage (lots of cousins of Buzz Aldrin!), but had not updated my Italian line recently.  Adding in some of the recent Italian discoveries from my Omignano focus the last couple of months brought up some new hits.  I sent a message via the web site to contact my potential cousin, and a couple of weeks later, she replied!  And even though I don't speak Italian, and she doesn't speak English, we've traded emails and exchanged pictures of our Italian Giordano ancestors.  So now I have a cousin to visit when I finally get my Italy trip plan together.  And maybe local feet on the ground to hunt down records, especially if they are OUR family records and not just MY family records.  :)

Working through the Omignano records is reaping benefits!  Time to get back to it....

A Famous Swedish Cousin

My new found 10th cousin 2x removed tells me that I have another "Swedish" cousin: astronaut Buzz Aldrin!! A 5th cousin 2x removed, if I've done the math correctly. And that's just the closest of something like 5 relationships....how cool is that?!?! 

I'll be checking that out shortly. And I am totally wearing my NASA shirt today.  (Yes, I have a NASA shirt.  Doesn't everyone?!?)

My NASA Shirt

 
Update 3/19/2014: I've found records that connect the Spångberg line of smiths that I already had to a line of Aldrin smiths. Now I need to trace that line forward and see where it leads!

Update 3/20/2014: Success! A Swedish 4th cousin found the book 24 Famous Swedish Americans and their Ancestors published in 1996 by The Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies.  It contains a list of Buzz's ancestors, and it matches the paper trail I've found. Buzz Aldrin is our 5th cousin 2x removed!

More Swedish Connections

A Swedish cousin of a cousin (we share cousins, but aren't cousins) sent me two links to Swedish family trees. The couple these both link to are my 5th great grandparents, Anders Spångberg and Stina Beata Birath - if the trees are correct, there may be a paper trail back to 10th and 11th great grandparents on two lines!!

http://www.skoghallsfk.se/Tomas/slakt/1914.htm

http://ingvarj.se/slakt2/family.php?famid=F385

Cousin Connection - Sweden!

I believe I have found a fourth cousin in Sweden on Ancestry.com!!! She signed up for Ancestry this past August. Working my way forward from siblings of direct ancestors this evening led me to a connection in her online tree.  Our shared 3rd great grandparents are Adolph Fredric Boquist and Brita Stina Andersdotter who lived in Gällaryd, Jönköping, Sweden.

Update 11/18/2012: She wrote back!! Woo-hoo, cousin connection!!!

Progress in Sweden - Twins!

Today (er - yesterday?) was a good day for family history research. I found a bunch of Swedish church records on Ancestry.com (not indexed, so much eyeballing required), with which I connected up some cousins with the rest of the tree, traced back another generation to my 3rd great grandparents, and discovered that my 2nd great grandmother was a twin like me!

Update 5/31/2012: I haven't exhausted this new source yet - I'm back another generation to a set of 4th great grandparents!

Update 6/2/2012: More twins - my 2nd great grandmother (the twin) married a man who's father was a twin! From my Swedish great grandmother, I have found my 2x great grandparents, both sets of 3x great grandparents, 3 of the 4 sets of 4th great grandparents, and one set of 5th great grandparents. A week ago I only had names and birth dates of the 2x great grandparents - much progress has been made!