A couple of months ago, I read a fascinating blog post by Yvette Hoitink, a Dutch genealogist who decided to apply the principles of the Genealogical Proof Standard to her own family tree research. She developed an Excel spreadsheet and code to assess where she was in her work.
Once she filled in her 7-generation chart, she said she found it shocking to see where her personal research wasn’t at the professional level she would provide for clients. And she challenged her readers to do the same.
So I did. And yes, it was shocking, especially for the more recent generations. I supposed those are not filled in as much because these are people I actually knew or had heard a lot about by parents and grandparents who actually knew them. But I hadn’t filled in a lot of the blanks, especially in building a solid chronology of their lives and then writing up what I’ve found.
So I’m working on improving that, beginning with my great-grandfather, John Woods Rowland. You can see his initial bio here and also here (on my free WordPress site). There are still some blanks because records aren’t available online (which is how I need to find them at the moment). But it was a great start and really enlightening to see where the gaps were in his life story.
If you read this, please let me know what you think of the bio. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.