2021

It's a new year and I know we are all ready to leave 2020 behind.  For me, it's time to decide what I want to accomplish this year in my genealogy. I have many things on my list, but I need to pick the most important ones and then make a plan to get them done.

Last year I completed my Research Like a Pro eCourse and finished my research project for Ziba Hardee. I did not answer my objective of finding his parents, but I made a timeline, a chronology report, a few locality guides, made a research plan, conducted research and wrote a research report that included further researching ideas. When I want to pick this up again everything will be there and I will know exactly where I left off.

I have spent a lot of time researching Ziba Hardee and many of his descendants. I have written many Hardee bios that I have posted on my blog and on Facebook. I still have a few children of William Thomas Hardee to write about.

But, looking at my tree I have realized I have not been researching all my other lines and some are really lacking. So, I need to develop a plan of how I want to accomplish that. 

I continue to further my education by watching webinars and reading books. I watched a great webinar by Diahan Southard about DNA. I had heard about this process before but she explained it again and this time I was ready to try it out. 

NEW RESEARCH

My new research project will be to find the parents of my maternal 2nd Great Grandfather Curtis Alexander Galttana. This is a very unusual name and it is pronounced Galtney. I went to my mothers DNA matches on Ancestry and found a few matches that I know our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) is Curtis and Synthia Alverson Galttana. I pulled up that known match and then used the shared matches tool to find all the matches that match my mother and the known match that has MRCA as Curtis and Synthia. This will pull up a list of people who also match through Curtis or Cynthia. I then added a colored dot to each of these matches. I continued this process for each known match.

But, some of these matches could be related through Synthia Alverson and I only wanted the matches that are related  through the Galttana side. So then I found known matches that have the MRCA of Synthia's parents, H.B. and Sarah Alverson. I did the same process and marked all these matches a different dot color to each of these matches. 

I could then tell if the match had two dots they matched through the Alverson line. If the match had one dot they matched through the Galttana line. I looked at each match with one dot and looked for ones with trees. I make a spreadsheet and listed them all and added the surnames, looking for ones that occurred in more that one tree. 

Some of the matches did not have much of a tree so I built some of them out. After doing this I found seven trees that had Herman and Maria Knoch. Maria's maiden name was listed as Goltoia and she was born in Ohio in 1823. Curtis may have been born in Ohio in 1827 so could this be a sister? I found Maria in the 1850 census and living in the household are her husband and four children with her married last name. Also living in the household are three people with the last name Gotney. Hummm, sure sounds like how Galttana is pronounced - Galtney.

I wrote an objective and created a timeline of everything I have for Curtis Galttana. My next step is to research Maria Goltoia/Gotney Knoch and find out everything I can about her and see how she may be related.

As I learn more about the Galttana family I will post blogs here. 

I hope this year finds you healthy and happy!

                                                                                   Photo by Ibrahim Boran