I have to share some news. Yesterday, I reached 100,000 names in my Mendenhall family tree. What! That is a lot of names. I shared the news on my personal Facebook page, but accidentally stated "10,000"... It didn't even hit me until this morning when I read it again. Wait...I've got to have more than that, so I looked and, yep...I was wrong. It's 100, not 10.
So, I have been working on my genealogy since about 2003, 2004-ish, which is roughly 16 years. That's a long time. But, I've been working on expanding and adding sources and verifying sources for only the past 4 years.
This is my Mendenhall project- started Feb 2015
These are the four notebooks I've kept, my research logs. I'm currently half-way through the yellow one. In each one, I keep a record of the person I'm researching. I started with first names that were Unknown names and then went onto the alphabet- "A"s, "B"s, etc.
For example, when I type "Mendenhall" as a surname in my database, it comes up with everyone with that surname and their first names are in alphabetical order. The first one to come up is:
A.M. Mendenhall (b.1832)
So, I try all my different sources- Mendenhall.org, Ancestry, etc. I researched this person (not much) and cited the sources and then moved on to the next person.
If I come upon someone who has children, it depends on if they are male or female what I do next. If the Mendenhall is a male, I research, site and move on to the next person because I will already eventually get to his children because they are Mendenhall's. If it is a female, I research her children and children's children- until I can't anymore. Sometime's one female Mendenhall can take me MONTHS to work on because of her descendants.
As of today, I just started the "Charles"...so I've dipped into the "C"s...and it's been 4 years. LOL This is definitely a long-term project!
This is how I've gotten up to 100,000 names- the constant work and how many people I've actually researched.
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