Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Find a Grave Entries?

 From Randy (a cousin discovery!!) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  How many entries are there on Find a Grave for your exact current surname and the birth surnames of your grandparents?  What about your spouse's grandparents' birth surnames?

(2)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, in a post on Facebook, or on Twitter.  

Here's mine:

I used the Memorial search feature on Find a Grave.  There I entered only the surname I was looking for in the search parameters and clicked "Search."

Here is what I discovered:

Tapley:  3,491

Drake:  65,255

Ranney:  3,597

Page:  99,539

Harrell:  32,932

Schwalls: 54

Carter:  284,185

Since I do not have a spouse, I went back to my great-grandparents' original surnames.  

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Surnames in Your Family Tree Database?

 From Randy (a cousin discovery!!) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer or an online family tree), and figure out how to count how many surnames you have in your family tree or database.

(2)  Tell us which GMP you are using and how you did this task.

(3)  Tell us how many surnames are in your database and, if possible, which Surname has the most entries.  If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5! or 10!! Or 20!!!

(4)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, in a post on Facebook, or on Twitter.  

Here's mine:

I use Family Tree Maker 19 (FTM19) as my GMP.  In FTM19, go to "Publish,", then "Person Reports," and then choose "Surname Report."  I then tweaked the Settings to "All Individuals," "Sort by Surname Count," and "Show Divider Between Surnames."

I have 75 pages of surnames, listed from the most number of instances down to the least number of instances (1).  I did a count of how many surnames on a page (44), multiplied that by 74 pages, and then added the 20 entries on the last page (page 75) and got a total of 3,276 surnames in my family tree.

This is the first page of my report:

Surname Report 05-14-2022

The top 20 are, with birth date ranges:

TAPLEY - 927 from 1691-2010

MNU (Maiden Name Unknown) - 672 from 1531-1984

OZMUN - 300 from 1764-1973

CLAXTON - 299 from 1764-1997

DRAKE - 291 from 1647-2001

PRICE - 272 from 1680-1967

BUSH - 264 from 1589-1971

POWELL - 257 from 1750-1980

SMITH - 249 from 1648-1984

RANNEY - 232 from 1661-1973

HUBBARD - 212 from 1601-1925

WILLIAMS - 145 from 1777-1992

DAVIS - 126 from 1760-1965

GOODWIN - 125 from 1776-1961

DURDEN - 123 from 1775-1960

JOHNSON - 123 from 1681-1974

WILSON - 116 from 1847-1981

BARWICK - 113 from 1731-1957

WHEELER - 108 from 1807-2017

BEASLEY - 97 from 1788-1983

I found surprises in my list.  First of all I would have thought that my number of Tapleys would have been higher.  I also did not realize how high the numbers are for Smith, Johnson, Davis, and Williams.  I had to laugh that Powell was in the top 10 - all of the them married into my family.  I have none in my direct line.  However, my family intertwines with the Powells over and over again to the  point that a fellow Powell researcher I know and I call each other cousins anyway.  I was surprised (and disappointed) that the number of Odoms, Goths, or Schwalls were not higher.  But then I have had a harder time researching those surnames, so it shouldn't be a surprise.  

I am looking forward to see how this changes over the next few years since I am about to dive into the Ranney family records again.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (on a Sunday afternoon!) - What Keeps You From Doing Genealogy?

 From Randy (a cousin discovery!!) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  What keeps you from doing genealogy? What real life activity/ies do you have to do, or like to do, that takes time away from genealogy research?

(2)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, in a post on Facebook, or on Twitter.  

Here's mine:

And the #1 answer is... WORK.  A JOB. EMPLOYMENT OUTSIDE MY HOUSE.  This takes me away from home for 10 hours a day.  That's a huge junk out of my genealogy time.  I can't seem to find a way around this.  Without the job, the cats and I don't eat.  

#2 is the exhaustion I experience every evening from the #1 answer above.  I fall asleep on the couch almost every day after work.  Dealing with the public - just people in general - wears me out.  When I try to sit down at my computer and do some genealogy research, I am nodding off every couple of minutes.  This seriously cuts into my genealogy time.

#3 is the cats.  Feeding them.  Cleaning up after them.  Shopping for them.  Loving on them.  All of this takes a lot of time.  However, I wouldn't trade this one for anything in the world - not even genealogy!  

#4 is chores.  Grocery shopping. Cooking and cleaning up afterwards.  Scooping litter boxes.  Taking out the trash and/or recycling. Laundry.  Changing sheets.  Mopping, vacuuming, cleaning toilets, etc.  It goes on and on and on.  And about the time you finish a chore, it's time to do it again.  This really cuts into my genealogy time... though I do sneak in some genealogy with lots and lots of "breaks" during cleaning on the weekends.  

And #5 is SLEEP.  Along with #2 above, I do have to sleep at night in order to go to the job the next morning.  However, I put it off as long as I can.  After that nap on the couch every evening, I am raring to go, and I am doing genealogy research as fast and furiously as I can.  I don't make it to bed until midnight a lot of nights.  Sometimes even later.  The I have to drag out of bed at 6am the next day and do it all over again.  

Honorable mentions:  Eating.  Watching true crime TV.  Facebook.  Stupid games on my phone.  Watching even stupider videos on my phone. All time wasters when I could be doing genealogy!

(The reason this Saturday night fun blog post wasn't done until Sunday was actually doing genealogy research and needing sleep!)