A progress check

At the start of the year, I set out family history research possibilities for 2011 in  Looking ahead to look behind. Half way in, I’m more than pleased with the results so far.

Here’s the tally

• Visit to the Tonypandy area, and Trealaw cemetery in particular. Tick – gathering a useful bunch of photos and data while there, and a splendid visit to a key local relation. There is still one or two blog posts to come on this, but the start is at A quick look at family gravestones at Trealaw.
• Digitally scanning old family photos. Tick – results scattered across Cutlock and Co. But now time to plan to locate and scan Mum’s old photos?
• Keeping on finding material to blog about. Seemingly a tick.
• New online records: still waiting for relevant Welsh parish records on Findmypast, and the fully indexed version of the 1911 census images on Ancestry. At least I’ve found some useful records on the latter without a proper index, and the outstanding material is clearly in the pipeline.
• Finding living Cullum relatives, the Canadian branch of Neal, and Watkins cousins too: great success on the Neals, a little on the Watkins.

So the only real outstanding item is making contact with some Cullum cousins. Other than adding to what’s already on this website {1}, the rather minimal strategy at present is fingers crossed that somebody stumbles upon one of my notes about a relative.

Ancestry’s various connectivity features to help locate relevant family trees has been a great help (see recent In praise of  article). This blog has also come up trumps with new family contacts a number of times. I’d still keep writing even if it hadn’t, in expectation but also as I find it a valuable ‘sounding board’.

Working by myself on the tree can mean I miss the obvious through over-familiarity, or just losing track. Writing up a story here can see the narrative evolve and holes in the logic or gaps in the supporting data appear, as well as perhaps engaging another part of the brain in the thought process. It spares my brothers from receiving bunches of disjointed emails on the latest research, too, which no doubt quickly get buried in their inboxes with more urgent/interesting stuff.

I’m not now going to produce a new list of things to do for the next 6 months as it is summer and I want to stop adding to the time I sit in front of the PC! There’s already plenty of notes for further blogging, anyway.

Note 1

See Cutlock and Cullum page