Been a long time since I last posted. Still working away on the genealogy project. Not getting super far. At least not on our direct family lines. Robyn of course had gotten the Smith family for our biological maternal grandmothers line. Our biological paternal line is almost impossible to trace without professional assistance since our maternal great grandfather came from Kiev to Canada in 1913

We have access to www.ancestry.ca but there are no records available for the time period we're looking into. The only thing available on www.ancestry.com are census records which also don't help a whole lot. Although we do have the first names of our maternal great grandfather (mom's paternal grandfather) But that's as far as we can get right now

For our paternal grandmother (dad's mom's family) we also cant get very far. You would think with our Livingstone line (dad's paternal line) we would be able to get further, but we're still somewhat stuck. Using the site www.familysearch.org assuming the information is correct, we can go back to 1769 or so, but that's it. Somewhere along the way I would've thought we could connect to another branch of the Livingston or Livingstone families. Once we do that then our direct family tree extends considerably. I even sponsored for my brother to take a DNA test to see if that would help

The DNA test wasn't conclusive of course but it suggests I think that we're related to the Livingston's from the Highlands of Scotland, which are originally McLea's. I'll have to look into that angle more. There were suggestions as to who we maybe related to that also has taken a DNA test.

Meanwhile on our indirect lines, I'm doing great. I'm up to 10,500 entries on the family tree maker. I'm also doing something a little different. I found some indirect lines thru www.ancestry.com with lots of entries. To keep track of them all, I'm creating each "tree" I find a link to, even an indirect link--like say thru an aunt's spouses family--non blood related, I create an index. An alphabetical listing of the tree, so that when I enter the new information onto our tree I can mark them off and make sure I get them all on there. One of the trees I found an indirect link to has over 40,000 entries and will take a while to enter of course. The index is taking long enough to type too

Trying to keep an eye on my subscription to www.ancestry.com and www.ancestry.ca The Canadian website is under a separate subscription and user id and logon, about $9.00 a month on my BECU visa card. Basically I'm paying for something I don't use right now. But this site will be more useful than the regular site I think. The regular site expires in June, just two months away and there's no way I'll be done by then with combining these trees. So I'll probably do what I did last time and purchase the year old version of Family Tree Maker, at a very discounted rate, which will allow me another year of use but also means uploading the tree I have now into the newer version

Trying to start going to some genealogy meetings too, but it's hard when I have Nicholas and I don't think he can sit thru them. Plus I still try to do cemetery transcriptions from time to time but haven't been actively working on that project in a while. Have some cemetery stone pictures taken from a local cemetery but haven't logged them into the spreadsheet yet and I still have two cemeteries in Lewis County to finish and I want to do some more small ones down that way.

One goal since I submit these records to www.interment.net is to help have at least one cemetery for every county in Washington State represented. There are only a few counties left that aren't represented, including Skagit, Thurston and one other one up near Skagit County north of here. I was just going to do a small cemetery for each so at least they're represented

One thing I don't get is why places like Southwest Genealogy Society or something like that for South King County do cemetery transcriptions and have them published, at least a few copies for them "library" and possibly a few local libraries but they never share them online thru this site like www.interment.net or the rootsweb site. Others only submit their work to rootsweb

Plus there's places like a local historical society I contacted regarding additional information on an old cemetery and they never even replied to my email or acknowledged it. I've also contact a couple of local town halls for information and contacted a couple of church/religion places regarding their cemeteries they handle and have had very very little response from any of them. Besides doing the transcription itself its appreciated if I also submit additional info on the cemetery like the history, size, contact info, location, address, etc. Very hard to do that if no one responds to my requests