For my part, yesterday i spent my Christmas money (thank you - mother in law!) on two items that I hope will add to my knowledge of family. One was a book, the other was a DNA test kit.
The book was from the Seventh Day Baptist organization, entitled "Newport Seventh Day Baptist Trilogy" by Don and Ilou Sanford. Many of my ancestors were founders and members of this church and denomination, and i'm interested in finding out what the book has to say about the early days of the church and my ancestors. The price was right and the description seems interesting:
Part I “Entering Into Covenant” is a documented history of the church including its founding, its meeting house, and the impact of some its its members in colonial history. Part II lists the members of the church from its founding in 1671 until its closing in 1884. Part III is a genealogical study of the descendents of Samuel and Tacy Hubbard through their three daughters, 24 grandchildren and two successive generation beyond.
The other item I purchased yesterday was a DNA test kit from Ancestry.com. The sale price was too good to pass up and the number of people who have tested their continues to grow. Once I complete this test, I will have tested at all three of the major providers : 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry. I am eager to see what new connections I will make. I'll admit that I had held off on testing there before because of the lack of a chromosome browser, but with third party tools such as GEDMatch I'm sure I can work through it.
Last week I was also able to send off two DNA test kits to my first cousins who are going to complete FamilyTreeDNA kits. I continue to save my pennies and add them to my DNA funds so I can sponsor kits for cousins that will be wiling to test.
In other items, I do have plans to try to post more family information to this blog and share some more pictures that I recently came across.