It is now two years plus since my last post.  This has been the era of DNA testing and have had some good results both on my Irish line and that of my husband.  One elusive contact that spoke of a family bible but did not respond to my excited post, very frustrating!

I have spend a lot of time going thru paper handwritten notes and old style files now superceded by digital family tree.  Two storage boxes of same have been reduced to one.  Much more detailed notes are now included in the Ancestry tree I have (but not uploaded).  I hope whoever inherits my accumulation of data will be appreciative.

The tools I have honed in using with family tree research have come in useful for other areas.  For example I was able to find out a long back story to an unsigned painting that had a framer's note on the back with the presumed owner at the time.  The painting was a wedding present 40 yrs ago and features a small fishing village that coincidentally was the location of one of my ancestral lines (200 years ago) and that of the person who gave me the painting.