Reflect on Your Genealogy Journey with the Genie Jar

In 2017, I started something called the Genealogy Jar. Then, in 2021, that jar got a new name. The Genie Jar.

Here’s how it works. You choose a jar, and as you find interesting genealogy or DNA discoveries, write about the discovery on a little piece of paper and put it in your Genie Jar. Then, at the end of the year, you can remind yourself about all the discoveries that you’ve had throughout the year.

I started this because, as I worked more and more years on my research, I sometimes felt like I hadn’t made many discoveries.

Sometimes, all you need to do is look back at your correspondence to see how far you’ve come. A few weeks ago, I was thinking of a detail I knew about my Vincent family. That detail was about Margaret Eliza Vincent, my great-grandfather’s niece. Her story is a sad one. Her father and mother both died when she was young, and I thought that my cousin had told me that while she was in an orphanage, in some correspondence that he’d received from the orphanage archive, she was to be sent to a home in another country. But do you think I could find that email? This made me create a document of the years of correspondence I’d had with my cousin and capture all the genealogy information we’d discussed.

It’s times like this when you realize how far you’ve come in your genealogy, but it also reminds you how much better you could have been had you captured more of those details in your tree; I hadn’t captured them all.

But how do you do that? One way that I saw was a demo given by Jill Morelli on Mondays with Myrt – 25 Nov 2024 edition. I’m a panelist on the show but couldn’t participate due to my ailing computer. In the presentation, Jill spoke about research notes and analysis and how you can capture this information in your database. Her approach helps her know exactly where she’s left off when researching an ancestor, and she hasn’t finished the research. Although Jill talked about Roots Magic, this would work with most programs.

I will be watching this again and implementing this idea in my own research process.

So, getting back to research discoveries. Do you remember all your discoveries in 2024? Here are just a few of mine.

• I learned that I can use AI to help me write the documents that I want to write about my ancestors. Read HERE.
• I learned that my great-grandmother Ellen Middlebrough Nee Aindow and my great-grandfather’s aunt, Gertrude Middlebrough, worked at the Stanley Dock Tabacco Warehouse in Liverpool. Gertrude was a tobacco stripper, and Ellen was a tobacco packer. You can learn more HERE.
• Jess Vincent’s brother, Thomas Stanley Vincent, may have been a British Home Child. That’s where Jill Morelli’s process of adding research to your database could help because I discovered this a few weeks ago but haven’t had a chance to get back to it.
• I recently learned that my 5th great-grandfather, Cyrus Gates, fought in the American Revolution. This is amazing because I’ve always been looking for a “United Empire Loyalist (UEL )” in my family, so a Patriot is quite a surprise.
• I have also found a second patriot, my 5th great-grandfather, Samuel Jones, born in 1725 in Woburn, Massachusetts, and there may be more to come as this is a very recent discovery.

These are just a few of my discoveries. So tell me, what did you discover in 2024?