2013 Reflection

Happy New Year.

The New Year is a time to reflect upon the past year and to look forward to the new. In this post I am going to reflect upon 2013, and I will make a new posting for what is planned or hoped for in 2014.

2013 has been a great year in many ways.

Blog and Writing– One obvious genealogical activity has been the creation of this blog. I started it in January 2013 in preparation for the trip to Australia. My focus has been to review and highlight new resources for British Isles research. I have occasionally shared research about my own ancestors along the way.

My Genealogy at a Glance: English Research, published by Genealogical Publishing Company late in 2012 has been selling well throughout the year. I have written the manuscript for Discover English Parish Records which will be published by UnLockthePast publishing early in 2014. I will let you know when it is released.

I continue to write book reviews for The FORUM, the quarterly newsletter of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, and the bi-monthly newsletter of the British Interest Group of Wisconsin and Illinois. This activity is a large part of my personal learning process.

Genealogical Speaking – This has been a bumper year with 80 presentations given to audiences on three continents, in three countries – United States of America, Australia and England. Let me give a few more details.

The first overseas trip to Australia started with an UnlockthePast cruise conference from Sydney to Noumea and Fiji, though our cruise never made it to Fiji (electrical trouble!). This was followed by lectures in six cities: Sydney; Brisbane; Perth; Adelaide; Canberra and Melbourne. The trip included 39 lectures covering a wide variety of English, Scottish and Irish research. There was also lots of interaction with enthusiastic and knowledgeable British Isles researchers.

The second overseas trip was to the Exodus: Movement of the People international conference in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England where I gave two presentations on Irish and Scottish Migration to North America.

In the United States I taught a week of classes on Scottish Research at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Birmingham, Alabama. This along with lectures given at the Federation of Genealogical Societies national conference, regional and local events has made it a great year.

Personal Research – this has focused primarily on my Milner line. I learned about my Australian convict James Milner and got to visit the area of Tasmania where he lived. I wrote about this visit in my blog earlier this year. On the trip to England I spent three wonderful days visiting churches and communities where my ancestors come from in Kent. I also got to photograph parish registers still held by two Roman Catholic Parishes, looking for my Finnegan and Doran ancestors in west Cumbria. Nevertheless, with all the speaking and writing there is never enough time to do the personal research that I would love to be doing.