Putting my toe back into the Genealogy pool

Cousin Love!

The big move is over but still figuring where to put stuff.  My craft room is still being used as a bedroom.  Everything I want in the craft room is still packed.  But I have my laptop and I have my digital files.

Recently I got the chance to learn more about my uncle who was adopted.  He recently did a DNA test & found out more about his birth parents.  So I have been working on that sporadically. Went to the library for some obituaries. And used the census to find out that his birth parents were neighbors.

I also explored the largest library in my new county.  They do have genealogy materials so spent some time looking things over.  I did take some photos of materials I found interesting.  There was also a picture of my g+grandparents that I've never seen!

I also attended a local conference where we were encouraged to blog!  Going to conferences always gets me fired up to work on my tree too.  Learned a lot and feel like I'm heading in a good direction still.

I also re-connected with wikitree.com.  I made an account in 2012 but didn't even have the same email.  Got that all straightened out and have been working on adding my lines to the great tree in the cloud.  That has been a good experience since sourcing is very important.  But it is fun when you connect your line into an existing tree!

Good Luck & Good Night

Sorry for the delay

I moved!  Okay it was just across the county line, basically, but after 20 years in one place, it is good to be some where else!  For the last year+, I have done so little with any genealogy or pictures.  Nothing.  Everything got packed away when we were looking for a new place and getting the old one ready to sell.  And it is still packed away since the new place needs to have the lower level completed before I will truly have a whole bedroom to organize everything.  Someday........

(Also we do not have regular internet, just cellular data which is not very fast.)

Lubbers, Lubbers and More Lubbers

Since my first post I have heard from another Lubbers that there were two groups of Lubbers.  My Lubbers came from Bentheim and the other from the Netherlands.  Since my group had so many children there are tons scattered all over West Michigan and other locals.  The dutch Lubbers seem to be centered around Zeeland area and I don't know how many or what the descendant count is looking like.  And since the first house post, I had my disaster so I'm spending lots of time trying to get everything back into the file.  But going along with my paperless status, I'm shredding paper files that are not original and I have digitally copies of.

Paper Free Office

So at work, we are needing more space but have limited storage.  This makes me think of the mythical paperless office.  So I did some research and found some ideas of how to get started.  But the suggestions are actually better for my home.  I kind of hate mail.  There is just so much paper all the time.  My kids are out of school so I'm not even seeing that flow of paper.  Yet I feel like there is just too much paper all over the place.  It also doesn't help that my husband writes things down on random pieces of paper and leaves them in his pocket or laying around the house.

So I'm forging ahead to eliminate paper clutter.  Mail should go in one spot, scan and tag and then shred that sucker!

UPDATE:  I didn't post this before but I have been making an effort to move paper along faster.  I did purchase a new scanner (I love scanners!).  And it is better than I thought it would be.  I did choice one with OCR since, if I'm getting a new scanner might as well have something I didn't before!  Since my home scanner is even better than the work one, I'm bring paperwork home to scan and eliminate more clutter!!

Disaster struck

Okay not total disaster but not great either.  I have been working very hard to create a very sourced family using RootsMagic.  I was going along fine, not quickly, but fine until I started noticing missing people. Yep, names I knew should be there were not there.  I'm not sure if I accidentally switched files or what but it was a big problem.  So I tried to fix the problem by merging an earlier backup with my current file.  Basically I just made it worst.  Now I had multiply people and everything was just mixed up.

Logic thing to do?  Just start over again.  The good part of this is it is going faster the 2nd time because my family logs were much better.  So that work didn't go to waste!  And I have a way to make sure I don't mess up again.  Before every backup on RootsMagic, I keep a spreadsheet of certain key file summaries to make sure that I'm not loosing any additional information.

Making progress on my Genealogy Do-Over

I have been working on my do-over since 2015.  After 2 years and a few months, I have accomplished two very important goals.  I had an overwhelming amount of digital information that needed to be logged and added to my rootsmagic tree.  I am very please that I have complete not only 1 surname, but 2 surnames (out of four).  I'm still working on the remaining files but I also still have a lot of paper not digitized at all.  So sorting and scanning is still in the future.  But I am very pleased with my progress!  

House History pt.1

There are a lot of people looking for the history of the house they live in now or where they grew up. I have also done a bit of looking. My starting knowledge was that my parents bought the property before my brother was born in 1966. The woman who sold the farm was named Shoemaker and lived there with her daughter. The husband had already passed. Our address was 1444 84th Ave.

I believe I have found the correct couple from newspaper accounts. Mr. Cornelius Shoemaker married Hattie Lubbers 23 November 1917. "The newly-weds were the recipients of many beautiful and useful gifts, and will make their home one and one-half miles southeast of this city where they will be at home to their friends after December 15." This would have been before the address was assigned and was probably a rural route. There were of course other articles that helped me narrow it down. And it doesn't say they built the house so maybe it was already there? More to discover.

The Lubbers surname is quite familiar to me since that was the maiden name of my great-grandmother. There are a large number of folks with that surname still in the area but I am not totally sure they are all related. Maybe. To narrow the field down, I am working on the many family group sheets of the family and hopefully I will find a connection.