Jill Ball, who blogs as GeniAus, encourages us to look back every year on our family history research and Accentuate the Positive. This year I published 60 posts, not counting this post and any I might fit in before the new year. In 2023 I participated in my tenth A to Z April challenge (Painting the map red). Each year’s challenge encourages me to expand my family history research.

The places I wrote about in the 2023 A to Z challenge

1. On revisiting some old research I found more information about my 5th great grandmother, and in particular, details of her second husband: Mary Gage nee Low formerly Taylor (1768 – 1850).

2. In 2023 I connected with a new (to me) living cousin as a result of my post about her father, an Antarctic explorer, Hugh Mainwaring Millett (1903–1968), who was my first cousin twice removed.

3. I’m pleased to have started using the Awesome Screen Recorder & Screenshot tool. It works very well for filing and annotating screenshots.

4. I am chipping away at my Hughes brick wall in Flintshire:

5. I was pleased that I finally read Letters to Pituncarty: Colonial Correspondence of Christian (Taylor) Buist Including Letters from Ellinthorpe Hall by Carol Bacon published 2022. Christian Taylor Buist was my 4th great grand aunt. Her correspondence sheds a lot of light on my family’s experience. The letters include correspondence to and from my 4th great grandmother Isabella (Taylor) Hutcheson (abt. 1794 – 1876).

6. I enjoyed my geneajourney to Tasmania earlier this year. I had prepared for the trip by doing some family history research:

7. In 2023 I finally met a Chauncy cousin I had corresponded with (W R).

8. I was the recipient of genearosity from cousins in England who forwarded me photos of family portraits. I have started my research on these:

9.  I am pleased that I am a member of the Genealogical Society of Victoria and have attended a number of online meetings this year.

10. I continue to make new DNA discoveries, but I made no genealogical breakthroughs this year as a result of new matches

11.  I found some informative newspaper articles concerning my 3rd great grand-uncle Henry Hughes (1838–1907) who was a bank accountant in Beechworth: 

12.  I have found some interesting portraits of my 4th great grandfather and his 3rd wife in the collection of the State Library of South Australia: Photographs of Admiral and Mrs Mainwaring

13.  When we were in Tasmania I enjoyed wandering around Kirklands Presbyterian Cemetery, Campbell Town, where my 5th great grandparents are buried. Later this year I also visited Sandford cemetery in Victoria where my 4th great grandmother is buried.

The Taylor graves in Kirklands Presbyterian Cemetery, Campbell Town,
and the Hutcheson/Murray grave at Sandford, Victoria

14. AI was a mystery to me but I have learned not to trust chatbots for genealogical research. The field is rapidly changing and I am sure this will change. However, sources must be checked and Artificial Intelligence outputs are certainly not a substitute for real research. 

15. The best value I got for my genealogy dollars was … I have a number of subscriptions and I buy digitised images of records. I do not begrudge this expenditure. I am pleased that the UK government has reduced the cost of images of death and birth certificates.

16.  I was pleased to continue to contribute to Wikitree. (Wikitree – what is it and should I use it?) For a few years now I have been making an effort to transfer my research results to WikiTree. Wikitree is a collaborative project intended to produce a single worldwide family tree. I have found that adding my family tree material to WikiTree is an excellent way to review and verify my family history research. My family members and distant cousins can make use of what I’ve discovered and review sources to make sure that I didn’t get any of it wrong.

17.  I published a printed version of all my blog posts that concern the Cudmore, Budge, Cavenagh and Mainwaring families. It was a lot of work to review and edit the posts. A book of course is very different to a website. Hyperlinks and navigational aids are lost, and the ability to perform casual text searches disappears.

I look forward to continuing my research and sharing my discoveries.

Previous reviews of progress