Thoughts On Certification

I have mentioned before that I am seeking my profession genealogy certification. I am going to do this through the Board of Certified Genealogist, although it is not the only avenue. My goal is to have my portfolio completed by the NGS convention in April. No, I have no started the application process yet. This entails sending in the application and fee. Then I will have a year to send in my portfolio. My torture resume is up to date. There are several things I could pull from my files for the transcribe/abstract part. I actually have a client lined up for after New Years, so I will use that client report. I've decided on the topic for my case study. I was wavering between Lee Rutter and Annie Linner. Both would also work as my kinship study.

• Lee Rutter is one of those orphans on the family tree. I know "Uncle Lee" connected somewhere. I'm almost positive now that he is the illegitimate son of my gr-gr-grandmother, Dora Rutter-McCall.
  
• Annie is my gr-gr-grandmother. She m. (1) Joel Linner, my gr-gr-grandfather. I would cover my search for her maiden name and parentage, which I discovered by tracing her siblings.
  

I've decided to use my hunt for Annie's family as my case study; there is a finite ending. While I'm almost positive on who Lee Rutter's mother is, I have not found that definite proof yet and I will probably never discover who his father is. There is also a lot of things on my to-do list for Lee that might shed more light on to his parentage. Actually, stay tuned, I'm thinking about discussing Lee as my Carnival of Genealogy submission.

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While writing this post I realized that I should explain something. You might have noticed that I hyperlink all of the names in my blog. The link is to their family group sheet on my website. If you're interested, you can click on the link and learn more about that person and their family.

You'll notice that my website is not up to date. I will be completely rebuilding it after my database update is done.

Welcome!

This is my first post as a blogger. I've sort of posted things on my website, www.shawgenealogy.org, in the past, but nothing regular.

So, about me... I am a high school history teacher, currently looking for work in that field. I consider myself first and foremost a historian. Since genealogy is a branch of history, the jump was natural. I'm looking into get my professional certification.

Currently I am still working on switching from RootsMagic3 to RootsMagic4. Sounds easy? I wish. Essentially I am going through person-by-person and making sure my sources are cited properly and that I don't have any information not sourced. When I first started my researched I created the classic mistake of name collecting from various family trees online without double checking the information or sourcing the trees. I know, I know... I feel the shame. I cannot move forward with my research until I truly know what I, in fact, do know.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with RootsMagic in any way. I simply own and use the program.