Well, rather than creating a Surname Saturday regular post, I spent this evening doing some random research into several branches. I then of course became entangled with one of my biggest genealogical pet peeves, the unsubstantiated public trees on ancestry.com....( followed closely by the peeve of finding the place names of say "Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States of America" for a date in the 1600s!... sigh)
The furthest back I have gotten in the Mix line is Daniel Meekes and his wife, always listed as "Mrs. Daniel Meekes" so I backed up one generation to Thomas Mix married to Rebecca Turner, and decided to look for her parents. Her father is Nathaniel Turner. so I started to look. The first source was of course NEHGS "Great Migration" database... where I found him, with of course Origin: unknown... and wife as _____ ______ . For curiosity, I decided to look at ancestry, just to see what trees people have listed....
and there I find several with a wife listed as Margaret Leachland, but no sourcing. Then of course there are those trees (a lot of them!!!) who wrongly list Nathaniel as the son of Humphrey Turner and Julia Gamer.... but the son Nathaniel of Humphrey was born in about 1624 which makes it impossible for Nathaniel to have a daughter Rebecca born in about 1629 married in 1649... and of course those are the "hints" that I should merge with my tree! Not likely! I keep my tree private on ancestry to keep that from happening!
Anyway, the only interesting fact I gathered was that from all the data in NEHGS was that Nathaniel Turner died at sea in 1645/6 and that Rebecca and Thomas Meekes (later Mix) were in court in July 1649 "to answer to their sinful miscarriage in matter of fornication, with sundry lies added thereto by them both in a gross and heinous manner" and were married by September 4th of that year! And that from all the offices in the colonies that Nathaniel held, and all the property, he must have been highly educated, was a great military talent, and could accrue wealth in the early colonial period! So I have a great ancestor!
Perhaps I'll find more data later...
On to the next blank on the pedigree, and perhaps a better find!
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year Resolutions
I hate New Year's Resolutions... it seems that growing up, they were always thrust upon me by parents or teachers.... and what should they be but ... do better in school ( I was already doing very well Thank you!) , or to pick up my room more often, obey parents better, and later, lose weight, etc. And I always failed because I was making resolutions to do things I hated in the first place, and not of my own volition, and many that would be impossible to meet. Because I am a perfectionist, and because I can't be perfect, I procrastinate at anything I didn't like, or couldn't do perfectly! So left on my own, I wouldn't make any. But there is ALWAYS room for improvement, so I now make smaller goals that can be achieved as a subset of a large single goal!
Even in the one thing I love, Genealogy, I hate to make the resolutions, but recognize that I need to state some goals, or I'll never accomplish much... I started doing genealogy in 1974, before the age of computers and internet, and so accumulated a lot of paper, along with tons of very interesting information. And as most of my friends know, I am a great researcher, and can find any information you need fairly quickly!!!
I switched to computers very early on, as they were necessary in my work field, and changed programs to get the best way to prepare pedigrees and family group sheets, rather than rewriting them.... But then the problem entered...... Given the limited time available for genealogy, did I want to spend a couple of hours entering (or now, scanning), or doing research.... Guess what! New research always wins!!!!! And there are always ne lines and new cousins to locate! But now I have accumulated so much data that even with my somewhat properly organized filing, I can't always find quickly what I want.... and the amount of stuff needing to be entered is overwhelming!!!
Retiring this year, I jumped at what we all wish for, the time to do more genealogy. So guess what, the hours spent flitting form one line to the other is now amounting to perhaps an entire day of uninterrupted research, and tons more info... some of which I know I must have already found........ sigh!
So rather than state the obvious and totally unreachable goal such as: I will scan in all the old family pictures, or that I will make sure that I file all of the accumulated paper that has recently piled up.... I will attack this the way I did any project for work, setting smaller goals that fit well within the scope of the larger project, which is of course to convert all the paper and information to electronic an then published format.... so here goes
In 2012 I resolve to:
1. Spend the first hour of the day entering data from a notebook or file into a program, WITHOUT Opening E-mail, or surfing the web
2. Spend the next half hour scanning in pictures, then allow myself free rein to research....
Even if I don't fully meet them, any time I spend is getting rid of the paper and pile, and with my looking at the data as I enter it, new insights may occur! I will keep a pad to jot that idea down, but I will not open my Internet window until that 1 1/2 hours has passed!!!
Who knows, maybe I'll actually achieve the largest old goal of all the pictures scanned this year!
Happy New Year!!!
Even in the one thing I love, Genealogy, I hate to make the resolutions, but recognize that I need to state some goals, or I'll never accomplish much... I started doing genealogy in 1974, before the age of computers and internet, and so accumulated a lot of paper, along with tons of very interesting information. And as most of my friends know, I am a great researcher, and can find any information you need fairly quickly!!!
I switched to computers very early on, as they were necessary in my work field, and changed programs to get the best way to prepare pedigrees and family group sheets, rather than rewriting them.... But then the problem entered...... Given the limited time available for genealogy, did I want to spend a couple of hours entering (or now, scanning), or doing research.... Guess what! New research always wins!!!!! And there are always ne lines and new cousins to locate! But now I have accumulated so much data that even with my somewhat properly organized filing, I can't always find quickly what I want.... and the amount of stuff needing to be entered is overwhelming!!!
Retiring this year, I jumped at what we all wish for, the time to do more genealogy. So guess what, the hours spent flitting form one line to the other is now amounting to perhaps an entire day of uninterrupted research, and tons more info... some of which I know I must have already found........ sigh!
So rather than state the obvious and totally unreachable goal such as: I will scan in all the old family pictures, or that I will make sure that I file all of the accumulated paper that has recently piled up.... I will attack this the way I did any project for work, setting smaller goals that fit well within the scope of the larger project, which is of course to convert all the paper and information to electronic an then published format.... so here goes
In 2012 I resolve to:
1. Spend the first hour of the day entering data from a notebook or file into a program, WITHOUT Opening E-mail, or surfing the web
2. Spend the next half hour scanning in pictures, then allow myself free rein to research....
Even if I don't fully meet them, any time I spend is getting rid of the paper and pile, and with my looking at the data as I enter it, new insights may occur! I will keep a pad to jot that idea down, but I will not open my Internet window until that 1 1/2 hours has passed!!!
Who knows, maybe I'll actually achieve the largest old goal of all the pictures scanned this year!
Happy New Year!!!
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