Happy New Year – 2015

Happy New Year!  

I hope your holidays have been a lovely and joyous as mine and that your New Year be safe and prosperous. In ending my 2014 year I thought I’d update everyone on what I anticipate for the new year. The big news for the new year is my new domain.

I’ve decided to add a more professional look to my
genealogical efforts.  To help that look,
I have gotten an internet domain name: 
dtaylorgenealogy.com

The first thing you may notice is that when you go to this
blog via a bookmark, or direct entry, to dtaylorgenealogy.blogspot.com you will
find that you are directed to blog.dtaylorgenealogy.com.  I am still using Blogspot to host my blog but
have made an entry in my domain to direct blog.dtaylorgenealogy.com to the
Blogspot site.

I also added a Google Sites website for “D Taylor Genealogy”
and have directed www.dtaylorgenealogy.com
to the Google site. It is still under construction but I plan to use it as a
location to show the kinds of things that I can and will provide as
genealogical services.

Next, I created an email account through Go Daddy.  I am still having trouble with it.  I am receiving email through them okay but
can’t seem to send email from Apple Mail or Outlook. I can send from the web
interface fine though.  I’ll see if I can
fix it soon.  In any event, you can send
mail to me via “don (at) dtaylorgenealogy.com” and I’ll receive it.

CURRENT ACTIVITIES

Over the past few weeks I’ve received a lot of things to
work on.  On the Brown/Montran
Research I’ve received a letter and some eMail’s from my Uncle Russ that will
help put some additional information regarding my great grandmother, Ida Mae
Barber, and her husband Harvey Knight.  I
also received over 800 photos of various relatives from a cousin.  It will take some time for me to categorize
those photos and incorporate them into my research.

On my Madonna Montran
research, I have dozens of additional bookings that I know of and will continue
bi-monthly posts regarding her vaudeville life.

Clock Tower – Joyner Library East Carolina University Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

On the Howell/Hobbs
research, I recently received a book through inter-library loan from the J. Y. Joyner Library about Martin County History. It is a two
volume set and has dozens of references in it regarding the Howells including
the Armstrong, Bryan, Hobbs, Howell, Johnson, Long, and Price families that
lived in Martin County.  I’m looking
forward to researching them. I am so grateful for the interlibrary loan system.

On the Darling/Huber
research I have several areas of research that I’m going to pursue.

Finally, on the DNA research front,
I’ve encountered another person for whom I have a DNA match on my paternal
side.  Unfortunately this individual only
has the surnames for 9 of his 16 2nd great grandparents named and
only 10 of his 32 3rd great grandparents.  Family Tree DNA is suggesting that he and I are
related as 2-4th cousins so we are likely to need to go back to the
3rd greats to find a common ancestor. We will see.

PROJECTS

One minor project I’m doing is posting poetry written by my grandfather, Dick Brown, to my facebook wall. I typically find an appropriate graphic to accompany it and post it as public.

On my projects for friends, I have six different ones.  I use these
projects to help hone my skills by exploring other people’s family histories.  I try to give each of these projects a day’s
work every 6 to 8 weeks. The projects I am working on include
the following:

Adair,  Burlison,  Kirks*,  Pettus,  Rode,  and Smith.

I will be replacing my “Web Pages” tab on the blog with a
page that speaks about these projects and moving “Web Pages” to the www site. 

PRESENTATIONS

I have recently updated my “Getting to Know You”
presentation.  I don’t currently have a
good way to display the presentation.  The last time I gave the presentation, I
copied it to a thumb drive, and connected the thumb drive to someone else’s
computer that was connected to a large screen TV.  It worked fine for the venue I was at, but probably
won’t work well elsewhere.  I will
probably need to get a projector and a way to connect it to my iPad to better show
it to groups.

Also, I’ve been thinking
about putting together a networking presentation that describes how to use social
networking to improve your genealogical research.  I have a lot of the material and many ideas about
how to approach it.  I just need to put the
presentation together.  I know I can get
some offers to present that type of material.