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New Year, Clean Office

In December I do not pursue much genealogy. Instead, I spend some time straightening up my office—sorting and filing stacks of papers, wiping down surfaces, shelving reference books. This helps me make a fresh start on a new research project in the new year.

This year I even have a new office chair. I had been admiring the active sitting chairs from QOR360 (qor360.com), and I was thrilled to receive one for Christmas. It has an unstable seat with no armrests or lumbar support. The idea is to keep the body moving to improve posture, prevent back pain, strengthen the core, and improve whole-body health. It was developed by a trauma surgeon who developed back pain when he switched to a desk job.

So far, I like my new chair, and I am taking advantage of my newly-cleaned-up office. I plan to pursue two research projects through 2021 in this wonderful workspace:

  1. My subject for traditional, paper trail research will be the study I described last week of my third great-grandparents, Benjamin E. Dunbar (1776-1831) and Rhoda Hall (1784-1850).
  2. I continue to learn more about how to interpret DNA tests, and that will continue. I still hope to learn the identity of my dad’s maternal grandfather. I think that tools like cluster research and software like DNA Painter (https://dnapainter.com/) can help me with that, but the learning curve is steep for me. If I cannot crack this mystery on my own, I may look into hiring a genetic genealogist.

I have big plans for the genealogy year ahead. As always, I am eager to see what exciting family information I can uncover.

 

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