Hitting the Target in 2025

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Happy New Year!

For the past few years, I've written out various goals that I'd like to accomplish in areas such as writing, education, research, volunteering, etc. It's been a great way to focus my brain on which projects to work on, and it motivates me to keep moving forward.

Some highlights of 2024 were:

• Writing 52 blog posts sharing memories, family stories, and lots on my research
• Entering writing competitions to improve my writing (Fortunate to place in the Texas State Genealogical Society's Writing Awards for this blog and an article that was published in Stirpes, TxSGS's quarterly journal.)
• Marking the grave of my 2nd great-grandmother, Catherine Ryan Gilbride, in Scranton's Cathedral Cemetery
• Convincing a Sacramento cemetery that my ancestor Michael Gilbride, Civil War veteran, was buried there and not a man named Michael Gallagher, and,
• Connecting with a Belgian cousin who shares my Cailteux lineage (one of Grandma Gilbride's lines) and who has become a research resource.

So, I've been thinking about what I'd like to accomplish this coming year in research, organizing, and writing. Here are a few that I have already decided on:

Education—January will get off to a busy start with both the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy or SLIG and the 14-day Research Like a Pro Challenge. 

• At SLIG, I will attend Gena Philibert Ortega's "Advanced Techniques: Material Culture Research Techniques for Genealogy." Material culture is "stuff." And material culture research is the study of how and why an item was used and its social history. A family history researcher might investigate an heirloom such as a quilt or embroidered piece, or a household item like a coffee mill, a baby book, farming tool, or telephone, to answer such questions as why it was created, what it was used for, who used it, its historical context, etc. In the past I've researched the history of items that our family has inherited and given a little background in my blog. For example, I wrote about some crocheted items and an embroidered sampler we inherited from my husband's grandparents. I'm looking forward to learning more about material culture research and applying it to my work this year.

• January is also traditionally when the Research Like a Pro 14-Day Challenge is scheduled. I try to tackle a relatively simple research question when I've done the challenge in the past. It's a great refresher on how to complete a research project from start to finish in a short period of time. Tentatively, my focus will be on paternal 3x great-grandmother, Mary Jane Sheridan. The research question: "Where and when did Mary Jane Sheridan (dates) marry Phillip Cassidy (1791-1874)?" I'll blog about this challenge as I have done the past two years.

Focusing on the Women—The RLP Challenge will fit in nicely with my overall research theme this year. I really need to focus on the women in my family tree. I was inspired to do this after thumbing through Sharon DeBartolo Carmack's book, Telling Her Story: A Guide to Researching and Writing about Women of the Past, for a library blog post I was writing. 

DeBartolo Carmack notes that often the women are the silent ones in the family tree, given that records of their lives are often harder to find, especially with surname changes due to marriage and the lack of legal standing which would generate legal records. This "silence" contrasts with their important contributions to family continuity: passing on values, tradition, culture, etc. 

The book tops my reading list for 2025, as there are some gaping holes in the documentation for women in my tree. This is the year that changes. I've tentatively identified about a dozen women in my tree who need some attention. If I can stick with my idea, I will research perhaps six in the coming year—I'm thinking that twelve might be a bit of wishful thinking, but we'll see how it goes. I plan to group them into common localities to streamline the process.

Other Priorities—I have a few other long-term tasks to focus on. 

• Email clean up. This might not seem like a genealogically related task but hear me out. I noticed my inbox count recently: It stood at over 10,000 emails! Yikes! I figured out how to sort them from old to newest and discovered that I still have emails from as far back as 2013! And buried there are emails from my late father, Joseph John Gilbride, Jr. (1937-2018), often with family history tidbits we were sharing; inquiries to various repositories from the days when I was lax in keeping a research log; cousin correspondence; responses from repositories, etc. Who knows what little clues or hints for my research are lurking right there in my inbox? I plan to work on email clean up by setting a timer once every day or so, and just working from the oldest to the newest. I've begun this already, and am down to fewer than 6,000 emails, just by deleting subscription emails, old appointment notices, newsletters, etc.
• Archive closet clean up. Yes, I'm still working on that task. It's easy to get sidetracked and lose steam. Just need to get back on the horse!
• Download clean up. My computer is gummed up by unnecessary items that need to be deleted. Another "set a timer" task.

I plan to write about my progress on these tasks and goals throughout the year, right here on Leaves on the Tree. I hope you'll check back to see how I'm doing and what I've learned this year.

What are your goals for the New Year? Drop me a comment and let me know. 

Until next time...

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved.