Overall Goals and Purpose

My Purpose

1. My main purpose in doing genealogy is just to learn more about where I come from. It sounds like every other reason in the world, but before I started doing genealogy I knew next to nothing about my family. We live so far from the rest of the family, that I’ve never had constant contact with anyone but my parents and siblings. All other family, I only see once a year if I’m lucky. So doing genealogy has helped me discover why I am the way I am. Why I love Ireland so much, my love of forms and bookkeeping, things people probably don’t question in their lives.

My Primary Goal

1. I think my primary goal is just to ‘collect’ relatives. I don’t have a particular need or want to do this professionally. I don’t have any grand ideas of being related to royalty. I just kind of like collecting relatives. In fact, when I first started, I collected all kinds of people. I would research just to research. When I cleaned out my file a few years ago, I removed over 100 people that had no blood relationship to me but were distant relatives of people who married into my family.

Other Goals

1. To learn the correct way to document my family history. Sometimes I get so caught up in ‘collecting’ these relatives, I may not source things in the correct, uniform manner. So that’s what I’m working on now. Learning the correct way to document and source things.
2. After watching Roots, I would like to write some kind of family history. I seem to have a knack for picking out things my family will think is interesting without boring them too badly. So I hope to someday write a written history that I can distribute to them myself. Everyone in my family has expressed interest in this website at some point or another, so this is really just an extension of that. I understand people can go either way on the subject of Roots, but I don’t really care about that. For me that movie represented a family journey through life. I would really love to document my family’s journey.
3. I think Tonia’s Notebook Project is a great idea. I’d like to do my own version of it at some point. Probably when I have a house with an office. ^.^ I think my favorite part about the concept is donating the research to the local library. Imagine a genealogist walking into their local library and finding that kind of treasure trove!
4. One thing I would really like to get into is transcribing records and putting them online for free. I had ideas of transcribing the US Census for the counties my families originate from. I have never really gotten around to it, but I think once I get my website into a final design, I’ll probably start it. I want to help others be able to access records they can’t get to because of location or price.
5. Set up a family charity page. One thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time is set up a Charity section. Where people can donate to charities that effect our own family. There are specific issues that effect my family and I’d like to make a small difference in helping the world overcome these things (cancer, scleroderma, diabetes).
6. Volunteer. This is probably something I’ve wanted to do the longest. When I finally get my driver’s license, this is probably what I will start on first. Whether it be transcribing cemeteries or helping at the local genealogy or historical society. When I was working at the video store, I shared a lot of time with the elderly. I even thought about volunteering at a nursing home and taking down stories of the residents. Once again, I’d need a drivers license for that. I’m working on it though, all I have left is taking Drivers Ed!

So here’s my lifetime goals. ^.^ I just thought I’d get them all down on the record.