My Learning Objectives for 2011

Below are some of my genealogical learning objectives for 2011. They are not quite New Year Resolutions but they are similar. If I have a plan I am more likely to learn about these ancestors.

1.  Sarah (?) Moore Savatier: This is my great-great-grandmother about whom I wrote in yesterday’s post. I would like to find out more about her life.

2.  Alvina Wilson’s death: My 92 year old father-in-law just told me that when his grandmother was dying she sent him to run and find his father who was at work a couple of blocks away. He would have been 6 years old. I want to see if I can verify whether this could have happened this way. She died of bladder cancer and had previously worked at the Elgin Watch Factory.

3.  C J Dowell’s death: A distant cousin contacted me to verify an oral tradition that a Dowell had been a mean drunk and had shot a killed who stood up to him. I have found a death certificate listing a cause of death as a shotgun wound to the head. I now want to find other details.

4.  German origins: My wife had 5 great-grandparents come from the general area of Prussia/Germany between 1867 1892. I would like to pick up trails on the other side of the Atlantic.

5.  Middle Eastern Origins: According to my Population Finder results from FTDNA, indicates my DNA is 91% from Western Europe and 9% from the Middle East.

I suspect part of the Middle East DNA is from Ana-Baptist ancestors whose paternal lines may have migrated late from the area of Egypt around the Mediterranean and were in Switzerland before 1600. I want to know more.

6.  Fritz’s haplotype: My daughter-in-law’s great-great-grandfather was born in Stoberau, Schlesien and appears to have an unusual haplotype about which I want to learn more.

7.  CeCe Moore, Your Genetic Genealogist, and I appear to share a common female ancestor based on an exact FGS mitochondrial match (see my posts of December 27th and April 17th; and CeCe’s post of December 31st.) I would like to explore our maternal lines in more detail.

8.  My wife has overlapping matches on Chromosome 10 on her autosomal DNA test at 23andMe with several potential relatives. I want to learn what this could mean.

9.  Continue my long and frustrating search for the parents of my earliest confirmed Dowell ancestor Philip Dowell who appeared in Maryland as a tobacco planter in the 1690s and Mary McDaniel who married his grandson “Revolutionary” Richard Dowell in North Carolina. The McDaniels are particularly intriguing as I have several close Y-chromosome matches with men of that surname.

10. Renew my search for the parents of four female ancestresses, Nancy Shedd, Susannah Munroe, Amy Hall and Mary Ann Shover, who married into various of my lines early in the 19th century.

What are your research goals for 2011? If you focus of specific objectives and define specific plans, you will improve your chances for success.

Have genealogical success in 2011!