Ancestor Score and 500th Post

Cathy Meder-Dempsey, author of Opening Doors in Brick Walls, introduced me to the Ancestor Score method of measuring your genealogy research achievements.

My Dad was our family genealogist for nearly 20 years. He started his research pre-Internet and continued until his health made continuing the research more difficult in about 2002. I didn't realize he had nearly stopped researching until November 2012 when he had a massive cerebral hemorrhage that required months of brutal physical, occupational and speech therapy followed by 24-hour by 7-days a week care.

When he and Mom moved into an assisted living facility in May 2013, I brought all Dad's genealogy files home and took over the research.

My Ancestor Score, as best as I can remember it at that time.

My Ancestor Score in 2013; created using Microsoft Excel

To be fair to Dad, he did not work on Mom's side of the tree as her father was an immigrant and had a very common German surname and a book had recently been written about her mother's side of the family to which Mom and Dad contributed.

His big brick wall was his paternal grandmother, Effie (Beard) Jennings (1871-1906). He learned her maiden name in 2001 but knew nothing else about her. My research goals are not necessarily to push our family tree back further into time, but rather to tell Dad stories about our ancestors so he knows his research continues. But this year I did make a commitment to learn more about Mom's father's side of the tree. I joined the Society of German Genealogy in Eastern Europe and hired researchers in Poland to help me. There have been some early successes! So tracking my Ancestor Score made sense.

My Ancestor Score as of 6 February 2015, the third anniversary of this blog;
created using Microsoft Excel

This is also my 500th Tangled Roots and Trees post!