Best Posts of 2013

2013 was a busy year for me, though not for blogging. I finished library school in May and I've been working part time at the library trying to get my foot in the door, in addition to working my full time job at the University. I've also been working on my house in my spare time until I finally got smart and hired contractors to finish the work (this was my Christmas present to myself).

Unfortunately I only managed to get 20 posts written this year here on my blog. However, I do believe that sometimes quality is better than quantity and I think this has shown to be true this year.

My most popular post of 2013 with a page count of 1,423 was Downloading Someone Else's Online Tree and then Uploading it as My Own. It was one of my first posts written in 2013. This post was written in collaboration with Russ Worthington's Cousin Collaboration post. Both posts share our attempts at using Family Tree Maker and our Ancestry.com online family trees to collaborate with family on our research efforts.

Another popular post was It Must Be in the Genes. This post was written in response to a DNA match I had which may have derived from a common WATSON ancestor. In a bit of genealogy serendipity, while I was researching my WATSON ancestors, I came across the will of Joseph JEANS who was the father of Nancy JEANS who married into my WATSON family. I included an image of the will, my transcription and the source citation; as well as the list of information I learned from the will and what my future research might entail.

My blogging year wouldn't be complete without a post about the North Carolina State Archives. This post about Identifying Land Grants using the NC State Archives' online MARS Catalog was especially memorable to me because it earned my blog a mention by the staff of the Archives in their blog History for All the People. It is an extensive "how to" for locating land records using the online catalog. The land records differ from deeds because they are usually the beginning of the paper trail for tracts of land. Land grants were issues by the State to the buyer up until a certain time after which land changed hands via deeds.

I hope you have enjoyed following my quality posts this year. What were your favorite posts?