When You Get To The Point Of No Return!!!

This woman represents how I feel about my tree at the moment.  It's a mess. 

Basically I have a new laptop and my version of Family Tree Maker no longer works on the new laptop.  I've downloaded Rootsmagic which is ok but I don't like it as much as FTM.  I've also been doing a bit of a tidy up during which I have found a massive mistake where a few people seem to have been merged together and I can't split them or work out how to unsplit them so despite saying in my last post (which was quite a while ago!! I'm sorry.. I've been busy with work) that I was going to get tidied up without having to start from scratch it looks like that's exactly what I'm going to have to do. 

So from today I am doing a complete do over..... well I say complete, although I have just added myself and my parents obviously I won't be researching them because I know all about them.

I have made a database of all the people from my original tree (all 3916 of them.... and no they're not all completely researched and some are probably duplicates or hangers on).  Though I'm wondering whether this restart might be a good time to split them.  The idea of the list is that as I add people to the new tree I can tick them off.  Kind of a like a revision check list.  At the same time I'll be updating the folders that I talked about in my previous post. 

It's going to be a complete pain and going to take hours and hours however unlike the genealogy do-over I refuse to ignore previous research unless I can prove that it is incorrect.  It is essentially a tidy up. 

It also means that I can fill in my diary.  I bought a diary a while back with the idea that I write essential dates in (BMD dates) for each person.  The 1939 Register has been a great help because many dates of birth that were previously unknown are now being picked up. 

Another thing I will be reviewing will be my ancestry chart so that I know when I've got direct ancestors. 

Basically everyone has the ancestors in the chart above.  It's a handy chart to follow to know whether you need to do more research on certain lines.  My ancestry chart shows that I have found everyone up to my 3rd Great Grandparents with the exception of two grandmothers who I do not have surnames for.  However, this may have changed as I haven't reviewed it for a while (I've been a bit slack at things like this recently).  My 4th Great grandparents gets a bit more difficult because 1) we're looking at much older records so reliant on parish records etc and 2) I know that one of my 3x great grandmother's was illegitimate so there is a whole line that will be hard to follow.

Having said all this it will be interesting to go through the whole thing again especially as I can now apply a lot of techniques and knowledge that I might not have known the first time I looked at them.

I will keep blogging my progress (I might even do a tally of how many people I have revisited).

Wish me luck