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Growing the Family Tree Again

Hello!

Last week I completed my Diploma in Family Historical Studies through the Society of Australian Genealogists - at least I hope I have: I await the results, of course. It is almost eight years since I embarked on building my Phelan & Atkin family tree, using ancestry.com.au, and in that time it has grown to include over 4000 people with many records, photos and articles attached.

But since doing the Diploma (and the Certificate in Genealogy before that), and learning more about the 'proper' way to conduct and record genealogical research, the problem of the large amount of unverified information has bothered me. Rather than try to wade through it all and fix it, I have decided to start the tree again!* This will of course be a long process, but I thought it would be a good one, for the following reasons:

  • I can build a better family tree, with fully verified information (or at least notes to make clear where it is not)
  • I had been unable to keep up with the extra hints ancestry had been sending me, so the end result will hopefully yield more information than I had before
  • I will take the opportunity to revisit all the records I have personally collected from visits/enquiries to local and family history societies around the country as I go, to make sure I haven't missed anything
  • And finally as I go through this process I will write this blog - something I wished I had done when I did this the first time. As I rediscover interesting facts, records and stories I can share them with you (but only the most interesting ones I promise!)

I won't commit to posting regularly or often, as I also intend to work on other related projects over the next few months. And of course there's stuff like 'work' and 'life' that will no doubt get in the way.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and any feedback and comments are welcome.

Anthony

*I have retained my original family tree on ancestry, but have made it private. I want to limit the spreading of unverified (and therefore possibly wrong) information from going any further than it has already.

 


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