Genealogy, I am doing it!

Last summer I started doing genealogy on my mom's side. As I was researching names, I was lucky (actually, I guess the more appropriate word would be "blessed") to come across a website that a town historian in Hannibal, New York, had put together. He had researched families that had lived in the city, and one of the families was in my line of ancestors. He had found hundreds of my ancestors, and many of them had birth, marriage, and/or death dates and places included. What a gold mine!! I have spent countless hours since then adding all of the names to my Personal Ancestral File (PAF). It would have been quick and easy, but I wanted to make sure the information I had was correct. I tried to find a source (birth record, marriage record, SSN, etc.) for every name I added, so I searched though www.familysearch.org and google to see if I could find more information on each individual or locate additional family members for them. For several I also tried to find where they were buried by searching cemeteries. At the end of it, I had over 580 names in my PAF.

I took my names down to the regional Family History center down town thinking I would have the names temple ready in no time. Wrong! The first time I went down, my PAF wouldn't open from my jump drive and the volunteer there was really rude to me and lectured me about how I was doing things wrong. I was nearly in tears by the time I left. The next night I bought a new jump drive and re-saved my PAF to it. Later that week I decided to pack the two kids up (Jackson was not even two months old at the time) and head down to the center again. Before I left I knelt down and asked that everything run very smoothly and that the kids would behave while I tried to get this done. The nicest man helped me this time, but he informed me that I had to edit each of the places listed in my PAF to a certain format (city, county, state, USA) and then run the entire PAF through a new program called PAF Insight. Great - more work! But, I was amazed that Jackson slept the entire time -driving to the center, while we were there, and all the way home (he literally woke up the second we got home), and Lexi was happy in the car and just sat still and quiet in the stroller the whole time we were at the center. To me - that was a small miracle!!

Anyway, in the last month I have edited all of the places and run all of the names through PAF Insight. I finished late last week, and on Sunday Jeff opened the program at church and noticed that the youth were doing baptisms this Saturday and needed names. Coincidence?? I think not! So, Tuesday night I went back down to the center and got 40 names temple ready, and tomorrow their baptisms will be done. YAY!!!!! :)