GENEALOGY DO-OVER, Week 8 - How is it going?

Week 8 in the Genealogy Do-Over, and given the challenges I had with my eye surgery and post-surgery recovery time, I'm doing very well indeed!!

Week 8 focuses on two important research tools:
1.  Conducting Collateral Research, and
2.  Researching Offline Education Opportunities.

Tick!  Yes, I have researched collateral relatives family details as much as I have been able to find, for over 10 years.  Sometimes that has been the only way I found where a family originated from, or gained an understanding of the occupations of the family members.  Frequently looking through collateral relatives has helped me decide if a particular family group IS or IS NOT my ancestors - names, occupations, religions, neighbours - these details and more are so helpful. I keep details on my full family tree, and considered them "family" just as much as the direct ancestors.

In general I go up a few generations, and down several generations as well.  For my various Grover Buel(l) ancestors, I had to use collateral relatives' details in order to make sense of the line. And then I followed down the collateral relatives to see if any others kept up using the surname Grover as a forename.  The collateral relatives' research was  necessary also as I struggled to dig through the tangled lives of the several Archibald "Archer" Walters men, their parents and their children.   So this 'new' learning was actually old-hat for me, and all I'm doing is making certain that I have indeed done the research, and clarified the in-laws and out-laws!

Oh Dear:  The second point about researching offline education opportunities - this is significantly more difficult for me.  Retired on no pension, living with my youngest son who is unable to work competitively, means I have such a squeaky budget that my so-called disposable income is tiny.  I have to figure out where to spend it, and sometimes I decide to spend it on a haircut, or on tickets to Bard on the Beach in the summertime in Vancouver.  These are choices, of course, and I could choose to pinch even tighter to see if I could pull enough dollars together for a conference out of province.  Don't hold your breath!  I love conferences, but this is unlikely.

I have my BC Genealogy Society I belong to, attending meetings as well as some of the special events we put on.  The LDS Tri-Stake one-day Conference held here in the Lower Mainland (Surrey, BC) in October is one I attend almost every year.

But I have my list of want-to-attend conferences, with these two at the top of the list:  RootsTech, Jamboree (SCGS).  And wouldn't it be a treat to go to England for their huge Who Do You Think You Are conference?  Then again, there's the pull of visiting Northern Ireland... I would love to travel to my great-grandparents' village of Augher in County Tyrone, to see if I could find "something" about the Armstrong and Gillespie families there.

One day...  In the meantime, doing my second year of #52Ancestors posts on my blog, Twigs and Trees, gives me a weekly opportunity to research one ancestor at a time and save documents, maps, books, photos, "properly" - labelled correctly in a standardized way, as well as use my new habit of adding to my Research Log(s), To Do lists, Document Sources to cite.  I can't believe how easy it is becoming to do this in a methodical organized fashion.  Every time.

Amazing.  Thanks to all the helpful genealogy people on the Genealogy Do-Over Facebook group for their great templates, suggestions, helpful hints and examples. You're a great community.

And a huge THANK YOU to Thomas MacEntee for proposing such a crazy idea of actually "doing over" our genealogy tree and research work. Definitely crazy - definitely worth doing, and not as difficult as I thought it would be!