It never rains...

but it pours - the microfilm of the Wing marriages for the initial period I am going to transcribe has arrived as well. While I should be able to head over to the library this weekend and take a look, I'm going to be too busy at work (i.e. my real job with real deadlines that involve real extra hours to be put in) to have much time to work on either this or the valuation book project over the next fortnight. Still, they ARE both jobs that break down into individual pages, so a little bit here and there might be manageable...

Back in business

I'm back! And you didn't even know I was slacking off, did you? My computer has been ever-so-slightly not-at-all functional so has just spent several days at the hospital - hence no genealogy time for me.

It's back now though, and the images for the 1910 valuation books project have arrived. There's also some other Wing-related emails I didn't get to respond to before everything went kaput, along with some followup emails (anyone else out there with BONHAM or FOUNTAINE connections?). And if that wasn't enough to keep me more than occupied this weekend, a brand new one place study has emailed me asking to be listed on the One Place Study website - and it's in a brand new country which makes it a 1-hour job not a 5 minute one to update that website, but I'm not complaining as it's so great to hear of new studies!

Wing As It Was vol 2

If anyone would like a copy of this out-of-print book, there is one currently for sale on Ebay via Buy Now: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230731947124&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123
I'm not affiliated with the seller in any way.

This book contains various postcards and photos of Wing in the late 19th century. I have an index of names included on the website: http://www.wing-ops.org.uk/waiw2.html

Good intentions

You will no doubt remember that I have spent the last week creating my project list for 2012. You may also remember that I wasn't supposed to do anything that wasn't on that list.

Downloading the 1851 eccesiastical census returns for the Leighton Buzzard registration district (free from The National Archives digital films section) and getting excited because the original returns have slightly more information than the summary I'd previously seen - not on that list.

So that's about 24 hours I lasted, then.

(I'm also downloading the letter books of the Leviathan for 1837 to 1839 - our pal William ADAMS was on that convict hulk from late 1838!)

The moving target - other targets

There's some other, non-Wing genealogical goals I have this year:

Version 5 of Family Historian is due out next month. I plan to upgrade to this version. Furthermore, I plan to actually read the manual and work through any suggested tutorial material. The mailing list for this software inevitably makes me feel like a complete newbie as I simply haven't explored diagrams, queries and the like in any logical manner, and there's no point having top-class software if you aren't using it properly. 2012 is the year!

Another good idea would be to work through and update Family Historian by family so that sources and the like are consistently recorded. I have a bad habit of getting underway, then putting things to one side and returning three months later only to have no idea which family I was working on and where I might have been up to. For some reason I seem to have a mental block as far as getting a good system going for tracking that sort of thing.

I'd like to write some more articles for the One Place Studies website. While maintaining the index section of this website doesn't take too much time, I didn't add as much new content as I'd like in 2011. 

I should also do some actual family history work on my own actual family tree. Poor neglected thing. I think I should just pick a couple of surnames that I haven't really worked on much (both on my Dad's side, as I 've already written up mini-books for Mum's side) and get stuck in revisiting the information I have, updating Family Historian, then expanding their stories. WILLSON of Lincolnshire and Islington, and PACKER of Sandford, Devon, step on up!

The moving target - step away from the computer

The final goal for my moving target list of projects for the Wing One Place Study for 2012 is offline.

I fear that the plastic supports on the creaking in-tray of doom are permanently bowed. Time to clean out the Wing section (it's only 2 inches thick), work out what projects are actually lurking in there, make a list (ready for 2013?) then file the paperwork away with the rest of my Wing records.

Unfortunately that'll lead me to part two of this goal - I also fear that my Wing "library" might need some reorganisation. Like the in-tray of doom, it seems to have outgrown its current accommodations, so I'll need to have a bit of a reshuffle.

I think that concludes the moving target list. There's a good mix of projects on it - different physical locations to work in, different types and sizes of projects, a clear focus on getting existing projects completed (and with room for some slight deviation if something pops up that's relevant to the farms project, the biggest task), and most importantly the list is more than achievable. It does mean that you might not see an update to the website every month. But you know what? That's okay. I'll have done enough for a Mallowpuff, as we say down here.

52 weeks of abundant genealogy - week 1

I have no idea how Chris Paton does it (check his profile to see what a busy boy he is) but his British GENES blog highlights pretty much everything you need to know or might be interested in as far as the UK genealogy world is concerned. It's essential blog reading - I don't always have time to keep up with everything (who does?) but I know it'll all be there in his blog. Thanks, Chris!

This blogpost is part of the 52 Weeeks of Abundant Genealogy series from Amy Coffin and geneabloggers.com