For about twenty years I have been collecting data on my family history. Through those years I have used many kinds of software to store the data. I began like many of us just writing down the information as I found it on paper, later starting notebooks to try and organize it. As time went on and the data became more involved and disorganized I began to separate the families data and try and focus on different branches. Over the years I have created many trees, registers, ahnentafel and other reports. I visited vita records offices and copied data from books when I couldn't afford to pay for the official record. I made trips to look at microfilm at the National Archives for Census, Passenger lists, and Naturalization Records. My interest never wavered though the time I had to spend doing this hobby did. Sometimes years would pass without me doing that much. Other times a few months would go by and other times maybe just a week or two would pass without me being able to look at my hobby. The desire to create this web site grew out of the hope of finding a way of putting all I have learned over the years in one place to share with my family. I thought that if I could do this and maintain the site I would attract more and more family to contribute and become interested in my research. Rainwave.com was the first to go up and it was thanks to my son Joseph that it had the flash it had due to his programming skills. Little content of actual genealogy data made it to the site unfortunately and I was baffled as how to get this dream done. Finally I found myself fully involved again and spending consistent time to sort and work through the data I collected. I began to use Family Tree Maker and GRAMPS at the same time with the thought of comparing them to see which would suit my needs the best. I found excellent qualities with both that to this day makes me continue to use both. It was through GRAMPS that I finally began the plans of a new web site. GoodIrishStock.com has been in it's third year now and I am proud to be the sole person who codes and updates the site. I continue to sort through the massive amount of paperwork I have collected using both Ancestry.com and New England Historical and Genealogical Society to confirm my older research. I try to update the site a couple times a year and as the new year approaches I find myself in the middle of another plan to revise. Communication with living family members continues to amaze me as I find new cousins from different branches of our family and they add their stories and data to the mix. I finish out this month working on my paternal family name: Ferris.
I will be reaching out to many who are out of the loop and do not even know of me. I am hoping to make new friends and family while continuing to document our history. My hope this coming year though is to find someone to share this task with who is computer literate and has the enthusiasm and time to dedicate towards improving, validating, sharing and researching this project. Those are my thoughts.
I hope someone out there shares them with me. So back to work at entering old data into the FTM software. From there I will create a GEDCOM file to transfer it to GRAMPS And compile it there. I will move the data then to code both in Kubuntu Linux and Windows 7 and upload it to the site. I hope this new version will find it's way into some new computers around the world and bring the Ferris Family and it's many branches closer together.
