The Best of Joy for 2017!

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Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying the holidays!Very soon it will be business as usual for all of us! 

There are so many rewards for doing our family history! One of them is collaborating with others. 8 years ago I met a wonderful man who wrote and asked me about someone on our Italian line. He was trying to find his great grandfather in a little village in the province of Genova, Italy called Tasso. As we collaborated together over the next several years we became good friends and also established that he and my husband are, indeed, cousins descending from several common ancestors. Often times the collaboration stops there but not in this case.

We have worked together on his Italian database of over 8000 names and made connections with some living cousins as a result of mostly Stephen's unending efforts. As a result this week we gathered together as cousins from three states.

My mother-in-law, Gloria, is now 91 years old. She has felt for a long time that she is the only Ferrera left since everyone she is related to with that surname is now dead. Much to her delight this week she met Stephen for a second time and his brother Andy for the first time and a relative and his wife and son from Pennsylvania. Richard from PA turned out to be Gloria's second cousin, they share Great Grandparents!

Andy, Jim, Gloria, Bonnie, Richard, Anne, Stephen & Mark

8 cousins!

The kind of joy this brought to my husband, Jim, and his mother and to Richard from PA and our two cousins from Utah was unbelievable. It is one thing to find records and sources citations for ancestors and relatives but to actually meet them is the ultimate. You know the old saying that "Blood is thicker than water". It is definitely true.  Richard bought his wife and son and the joy for all of us was amazing.

So sometimes when we get involved in our genealogy we get way more than we bargained for in the way of blessings.

Exploring The Family History Guide Is Fun! Online Tracker-August 16, 2017

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It has been fun for me to explore the Family History Guide everyday for the past 6 weeks in preparation for these posts. I have been a fan of the Family History Guide since day one, but am astonished daily by the depth of the content and what is available to us and what is being continually added.

Spending a little time diving in is just invaluable. It has helped me prepare for the new Partner pages by becoming very familiar with what is already in the Family History Guide. It is a great foundation for what is coming.

Have you taken a look at the Online Tracker and the paper Tracker (Word)? This is one excellent way to keep track of what you are learning.

On the home page look in either the Misc. or the Training dropdown menu and click on the paper Tracker (Word) first. Look at the content and the paper pages you can download, print and use. Open Family Tree and take a look at it. Now take a look at the United States. We could be working on this Tracker page alone for a while and think of what we would have accomplished at the end of our study. Check out one of the other country choices as well.

Just download and print out the Tracker Page you need and have it at your side as you go on the Family History Guide site and choose your Project. Then go through the Goals and Choice and Steps and master them one by one. Go at your own pace and know exactly where you left off. It is simply amazing.

I'll talk about the Online Tracker tomorrow. Tracking is a very good and important way going forward, to keep track of where we are in our learning. We can work on Family Search and the other Partner pages as <www.thefhguide.com> continues to give us exactly what we need to be very successful in our family history pursuits. I really love this feature. I would like your feedback on what you think about it too. It is thrilling for me to teach others with it and I sure wish it had been around 7 years ago when the online content was becoming so relevant.