Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Celebrate Mother's Day - Show Us Some Photos

 From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

1)  Sunday, May 11th is Mother's Day in the USA. Let's celebrate by showing some of our photos with our mothers.

2) Extra credit: What do/did you call your mother during her life? What do/did your children call your mother?

3)  More extra credit: Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother? If so, please share a link if you have one.

4)  Share your photo(s) and answer the questions above on your own blog, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or other social media post.  Please leave a link to your post on this blog post so readers can respond.

Here's mine:

Mom and me - about 1968 - right here
in Augusta in the back yard of our house 
on Heard Avenue.

Here are Mom and me, along with my beloved
nephew, Harry Jr (next to me), my niece, Missi, 
right in front of Mom and me and some family friends
enjoying vacation at Grandfather Mountain in
North Carolina.  I was probably about 11 or 12 years old
here - so about 1978-1979.

Me with Mom and Dad
here in Augusta, June 2005

Mom and Me
Atlanta, 2010

Mom and me with family in
Jacksonville, Florida,
October 2022

As far back as I can remember, I have called my mother "Mom."  I do come out with "Mother" now and again when I am annoyed.  My Daisy-dog and the cats have always called her "Grandma."  

I have not written a tribute to my mother yet, but I did a blog post about her career with the telephone company.  You can read it here:  Workday Wednesday: My mother's career with the telephone company.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How many Autosomal DNA Matches Descend from your Eight 2nd Great-Grandparents?

 From Randy (my cousin) 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 autosomal DNA matches do you have descended from your eight 2nd great-grandparents (they would be your 3rd cousins)? Do you know how they are related to you? Have you corresponded with them? Why are your numbers high or low?

2) Share the number of your autosomal DNA matches for each of your 2nd great-grandparents, and answer the questions above on your own blog, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or other social media post.  Please leave a link to your post on this blog post so readers can respond.

Here's mine:

The number of autosomal DNA matches I have on AncestryDNA (using the numbers from ThruLines) with a known common 2nd great-grandparent is:

    * George Washington Tapley (1814-1880) & Elizabeth Hicks (1824-1880):  64

    *  Solomon Page (1800-1860) & Elizabeth Caroline Scoggins (1802-1880):  288

    *  James William Drake (1829-1908) & Mary Ann Brantley (1837-1891):  13

    *  William Robert Harrell (1838-1908) & Catherine M Odom (1841-1875):  15

    *  James Madison "Jim" Tapley (1847-1912) & Elizabeth Rebecca 'Becky' Page (1844-1924):  49

    *  George W Schwalls (1837-1908) & Lincelia E "Celia" Claxton (1839-1882):  13

    *  Comfort Ranney (1838-1920) & Mary Margaret Hesser (1842-1920):  1

    *  Charles Kelso Carter (1843-1916) & Sarah Schoonover (1840-1918):  0

TOTAL = 443 (380 paternal; 63 maternal)

I am sure that there are many duplicates in the Tapley line.  

A1:  I have traced the lines from my 4th cousins (and closer) back to our common ancestor and entered them into my family tree in Family Tree Maker.  However there are many matches that that I have not been able to trace back to a common ancestor.  There are a lot of matches without family trees or I can trace only so far down but some generations are a black hole.  

A2:  I have tried to correspond with many of my matches, but I haven't had much luck.  Most never respond.  I seem to have more luck with finding cousins through my blog. 

A3:  The numbers are high or low for many reasons... some families have larger families than others (Tapley vs. Page for instance); some families have had more members test their DNA; my great-grandmother Carter was adopted so there are no matches on that line; and like I mentioned, a lot of DNA matches do not have a family tree or a very small family tree.  

I did not include matches I have at MyHeritageDNA because I could not figure out how to find matches per generation in an easy way like ThruLines.  

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Five Funny, Strange, Interesting or Unique Surnames in Your Family Tree

 From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

1)  We all have a plethora of surnames in our family trees, and some of them are funny, strange, interesting or unique.  Please share five of your funny, strange, interesting or unique surnames in our ancestry.  How are they related to you?

2) Tell us about the surnames in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or other social media post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

1)    Richard Schoonover (1800-1880) is my 3rd great-grandfather. He was born born in New Jersey and died in Wisconsin. He changed the name slightly from his father - it was Schoonhover.  His father also changed the name slightly from his father's ... it was Schoonhoven.  

2)  George W Schwalls, Sr (1837-1908) is my 2nd great-grandfather. He migrated from Germany and added an "s" to the end of the original version.  He died in Georgia.

3)  Nancy E McClammy (1777-1838) is my 3rd great-grandmother. She was married to Wright Scoggins (?-1837). She was born in Alabama and died in Georgia.

4) Richard Treat, Sr (1584-1670) is my 9th great-grandfather. He was born in England and died in Connecticut, USA.

5)  John Edgar Knipher (1903-1984) was the husband of my 1st cousin, 1x removed, Mozelle Elizabeth Lampp (1903-1993). He was born and died in Georgia. 

Please comment on this post by clicking the title of the post and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of the post.  Feel free to share it on social media.  Or you may contact me by email at liz.genresearch@gmail.com. Note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately.

Satur- I mean, Sunday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Favorite RootsTech 2025 Class

  From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday  Sunday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

1)  'Twas the week of RootsTech 2025, and all through the house, the genealogists were checking their RootsTech schedule.  What class did  you absolutely love this week?

2) Tell us about your favorite RootsTech 2025 class in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

I was NOT ready to write a blog post about this last night.  I was exhausted, and I stayed up until midnight for my last class... and the technology still wasn't working.  I gave up and went to bed.

But it's a new day today.  I caught up on some house chores, took my mom to lunch, and then took a three hour nap!  I'm recharged!

For those of you that missed them, I summarized my days at RootsTech 2025 here:

    * RootsTech 2025 - Day 1

    * RootsTech 2025 - Day 2

    * RootsTech 2025 - Day 3

(By the way, Randy Seaver recognized my posts about RootsTech 2025 on his Genea-Musings blog as one of the best Genea-Blogs of the week!  I am full of happy and pride right now!)

My favorite class would be  AI-Powered Transcription of Handwritten Documents: Tools and Techniques with Nicole Dyer.  She explained using different artificial intelligence platforms and large language models (LLMs) to transcribe old handwritten and printed documents.  I am so excited to try this out!

My next favorite class would be How Can Artificial Intelligence Assist Family Historians by Andrew Redfern.  I loved this class.  Andrew explained things so clearly, gave great live examples, and made AI less scary. 

Another conference in the books. I have a long to-do list, both on paper and in my head, of things I want to look into or try that I heard about at RootsTech 2025.  I will be super busy for awhile!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your RootsTech 2025 Plans

 From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

1)  'Twas the week before RootsTech 2025, and all through the house, the genealogists were checking their RootsTech schedule.  What classes are you looking forward to watching online (for FREE) or attending in-person?

2) Tell us about your plans for RootsTech 2025 in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

Earlier this week, I picked out 22 classes to watch online during RootsTech, which is Thursday, March 6 through Saturday, March 8, 2025.  That is 9 classes on Thursday, 10 classes on Friday, and 4 classes on Saturday.  RootsTech holds classes almost 24 hours a day during the conference! I have already warned my mother that I will be locked in my office for three days and will only come out to eat, sleep and feed my cats.  

I did sign up for three AI classes (all times are ET):

(1)  Thursday, 6:30 pm - Learn Genealogy Faster and Easier with Artificial Intelligence.  This class is for beginners, which I am a beginner with AI.

(2)  Thursday, 9:15 pm - How Can Artificial Intelligence Assist Family Historians

(3) Saturday, 11:30 am - AI-Powered Transcription of Handwritten Documents: Tools and Techniques

I also signed up for three Census-related classes:

(1) Thursday, 8 a.m. - Mining the Census, Are you Finding Every Clue? Part I 

(2) Thursday, 9 a.m. - Mining the Census, Are You Finding Every Clue? Part 2

(3) Friday, 2:15 p.m. - A Deep Dive into the US Census Records

The rest of my classes pertain to DNA (2 classes), sources, and just general research.  

My head will be reeling after all of that.  The great thing is that any I fall asleep during or can't fit into my schedule will be be available on the RootsTech site after the conference.  

This is the only genealogy conference I get to attend since it is available online. I look forward to it every year, and I always learn something.  I have already taken advantage of "Relatives at RootsTech," which led me to extend some of my lines back a couple of generations and helped me touch base with a cousin I haven't met yet.  Now we are making plans to meet and visit cemeteries.  That's always a good time to me!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Did Your Ancestor Have a "Different" Occupation? Try "Sam the Digital Archivist" on ChatGPT

  From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

        1) Did one (or more) of your ancestors have a "different" occupation? If so, try to find out more about that occupation in Steve Little's "Sam the Digital Archivist" custom prompt using the free ChatGPT4 artificial intelligence tool.  Click on the "Exploring unique ancestral occupations?" button and tell "Sam" in the "Ask anything" box to define and/or describe the occupation.

       2)  Tell us about your ancestor's "different" occupation, and what "Sam" had to say about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post. Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

I have been trying to avoid ChatGPT.  I don't know exactly why.  Perhaps it gives me a foreshadowing of machines taking over the world.  But now Randy has dragged me right to it, and you know what? I liked it!  

I didn't really have any drastically "different" occupations in my family tree.  Of course, another deficit has been highlighted in my research - I have not been collecting occupations from the census.  (Don't come for me; I will do better!) So I didn't have a huge pot to pull from, but I ran a few through "Sam" and the answers made me laugh out loud at times, but also learn some things.  

My prompt for "Sam the Digital Archivist" was "John Mullis Fields was a constable in Vidalia Georgia between 1917-1918.  What was he doing?"

"Sam" provided this information:

    Ah, so John Mullis Fields was a constable in Vidalia, Georgia, between 1917-1918? Well, that means     he was basically the small-town law—think "Old West sheriff" but with less horse-chasing and             more paperwork.

What Would a Constable Be Doing in 1917-1918?

1. Keeping the Peace – As a constable, Fields would have been responsible for handling local disturbances, breaking up bar fights, and making sure folks weren’t causing too much trouble. Small-town life didn’t mean small-town crime—especially during World War I, when tensions ran high.
2. Serving Warrants & Summons – He’d be the guy knocking on doors with legal documents, telling people they needed to show up in court. In some cases, he might have had to escort them there himself.
3. Prohibition-Related Enforcement – Georgia had already enacted statewide Prohibition in 1908 (a full decade before national Prohibition in 1920). That means Fields might have been dealing with illegal moonshine operations—because let’s be real, folks in rural Georgia weren’t just drinking sweet tea.
4. War-Time Duties – With the U.S. entering WWI in 1917, local law enforcement had additional responsibilities, including enforcing draft registration laws. If a young man in town tried dodging the draft, Fields might have had to go have a stern chat with him.
5. Enforcing Racial & Segregation Laws – Unfortunately, being a lawman in the Jim Crow South also meant upholding deeply discriminatory policies. If there were any racial tensions in Vidalia (which, given the era, was likely), Fields’ role would have been complicated and, in some cases, troubling.
6. Handling Livestock Problems – In rural Georgia, “law enforcement” often included rounding up escaped pigs, dealing with disputes over cattle, and stopping farmers from letting their livestock trample their neighbors’ crops. Less “crime-fighting,” more “animal control.”
7. Assisting the Sheriff – If Toombs County’s sheriff needed backup, Fields would have been one of the first on the scene, whether that meant pursuing criminals, transporting prisoners, or guarding the courthouse.
8. Tax Collection – Some constables had duties related to collecting unpaid taxes, which probably made them very unpopular around town.

 I really liked the way "Sam" gave specifics for Georgia and the era I was referencing.  Makes it so much more interesting to read!

I chose this occupation because I haven't heard the South or even the United States reference a constable.  To me a constable was in Canada.  We have police officers, police chiefs, sheriffs, and deputies.  So I was curious if there was a difference.  After searching Google, I found out that the difference is that constables enforced both criminal and civil laws whereas police officers enforce criminal and traffic laws.  

John Mullis Fields (1883-1957) was the husband of my 3rd cousin, 2x removed, Mayme Lorena Dukes (1886-1938).  She and I are related on the Tapley branch of my tree.  

After getting this information about a constable, I asked "Sam" to create a description of an image that would show John Mullis Fields as a successful constable.  Here is what "Sam" created:

   The scene is a bustling Main Street in Vidalia, Georgia, circa 1917, lined with brick storefronts, wooden sidewalks, and a few early automobiles parked alongside horse-drawn wagons. At the center of the image stands John Mullis Fields, a commanding yet approachable figure in his well-pressed dark uniform with a brass star-shaped badge pinned to his chest. His neatly combed hair and serious expression give off an air of quiet authority, though there’s a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth—suggesting he’s well-respected, not feared.

To his right, a group of townspeople—shopkeepers, farmers, and a few young boys in suspenders—watch as he speaks to a man, possibly settling a minor dispute. His leather belt carries a revolver and a baton, but his hands remain at ease, showing that his presence alone is enough to maintain order. Behind him, a wanted poster for a local moonshiner flutters on a wall, a reminder of Georgia’s prohibition era, a law he was sworn to enforce.

In the background, a 1910s-era courthouse stands proudly, symbolizing justice, while a telegram office and a general store hint at the town’s daily rhythms. Perhaps a newspaper headline in a storefront reads, "Constable Fields Thwarts Local Disturbance," further cementing his reputation.

This image captures John Mullis Fields in his prime—a steadfast, fair-handed constable who kept the peace in a growing Southern town, ensuring law and order with both wisdom and strength. 

Now I don't know if that describes John Fields at all, but it sure paints a flattering picture!

OK, after reading Randy's comment, I decided to go for it and see if ChatGP4 would help me out with an image.  It did and here you go:

He looks a lot like the speculator from Randy's post!  Must be a cousin! LOL.  But it's pretty good!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What is the Most Unusual Cause of Death You have Discovered?

 From Randy (my cousin) 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 is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors? 

       2)  Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook status post. Please leave a link on this post if you write your own blog post. 

Here's mine:

Out of the more than 33,000 people in my family tree, I have only entered cause of death for 442 of them!  So right off, I see a huge hole in my tree I need to fill in!  

My 442 causes of death are mostly mundane; just the usual Bright's Disease, heart attacks, infections, gunshot wounds, and automobile accidents.  All sad, but not unusual.  I could not think of or find any unusual causes of death among my direct ancestors, so I had to branch out to the entire tree.  Who I managed to find is not even a direct relative - it's a cousin's wife - and the cause of death is similar to Randy's 2nd great-grandfather's!  

Mildred Faye Hutton (1898-1942) was married to my 5th cousin, Charles Rex Ivie, in 1920 in Emmett, Gem County, Idaho.  (Charles is my cousin on my maternal side, descended from the Hessers, who originally came from Germany.)  Faye was 22 years old when she and Charles married.  The little marriage announcement in the paper sounds as if they were very excited to get married:

Published April 15, 1920 in the Emmett Index, Emmett, Idaho

Alas, it appears that Faye and Charles divorced between 1930-1935.  On the 1940 census, Faye is listed as a lodger and divorced in a new town.  She was living in that same town in 1935, also according to the 1940 census.

She was only 43 years old when she passed away on June 22, 1942. According to her Idaho death certificate, Faye died of "Status Epilepticus due to Nerve Syphilis."  The Status Epilepticus had come on in the last 48 hours before her death and was due to the "Neuro Syphilis" which she had for 2 years.

Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1967 from Ancestry.com

I googled this cause of death, and this is what I learned:

Status epilepticus is when someone has a seizure that lasts longer than 5 minutes, or if they have more than one seizure without returning to a normal level of consciousness between episodes. It can lead to permanent brain damage or death. Status epilepticus is very rare.  

--https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/

Neurosyphilis is a bacterial infection of the brain or spinal cord. It usually occurs in people who have had untreated syphilis for many years.

Causes

Neurosyphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria. Neurosyphilis usually occurs about 10 to 20 years after a person is first infected with syphilis. Not everyone who has syphilis develops this complication.

There are four different forms of neurosyphilis:

• Asymptomatic (most common form)
• General paresis
• Meningovascular
• Tabes dorsalis

Asymptomatic neurosyphilis occurs before symptomatic syphilis. Asymptomatic means there aren't any symptoms.

Symptoms

Symptoms usually affect the nervous system. Depending on the form of neurosyphilis, symptoms may include any of the following:

• Abnormal walk (gait), or unable to walk
• Numbness in the toes, feet, or legs
• Problems with thinking, such as confusion or poor concentration
• Mental problems, such as depression or irritability
• Headache, seizures, or stiff neck
• Loss of bladder control (incontinence)
• Tremors, or weakness
• Visual problems, even blindness

     -- Medline Plus (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000703.htm)

Of course I do not know what Faye's symptoms were and thus how progressed her condition was.  However, from my research, it appears the disease was advanced.  Syphilis has been all but eradicated thanks to penicillin.  Unfortunately it didn't come soon enough for Faye as penicillin was only first given in February 1941.  While that was 16 months before her death, I imagine that her condition may have been so far advanced that it was too late for the medicine to help.  

Note: It is important to consult a healthcare professional for an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment if you experience any of the symptoms listed above.  All I know is what I read on the Internet.  I purposely left the hyperlinks from the Medline website in case anyone wanted to view it themselves.  

So while poor Faye is not a direct line ancestor, she is still a part of my family tree.  I had never heard of this condition before.  I learned quite a bit writing this blog post.   

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - My Thanksgiving Day

 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:

       A)  We all need to document some of the special moments in our lives so we can   recall them, or our descendants can learn more about us. Today’s question is   “What was your Thanksgiving Day like this year?”

B)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.

Here's mine:

Thanksgiving 2002 was very quiet and peaceful.  Just the way I like my days.  I had spent the entire week excited that I only had to work three days and would be off four.  There is always something that needs to be done around the house that I never seem to have time for during the week.  I was looking forward to getting a few done over the holiday weekend.  

I didn't make big plans for Thanksgiving Day since it is a holiday.  I spoke with my mom via phone that morning.  We usually Zoom for Thanksgiving and eat together, but she had been invited to a friends' for dinner.  After our conversation, I turned on the CMA awards on Hulu and started organizing my financial records drawer.  I was rewriting all of the labels on the folders, changing out worn folders, pulling out records from 2021, and throwing away paperwork that was no longer needed.  I worked on this until about 12 pm when I decided I was hungry and would go ahead and cook my turkey casserole.  I shared my casserole recipe on my last blog.  You can see it here: Saturday Night Fun "Friendly Fill-ins" for Thanksgiving.  While my lunch was cooking, I worked on my organization project a little longer, but I ran out of file folders.  So I tabled that project for another time.  I heated some blackeye peas and chopped some onion to go with my casserole, and enjoyed my Thanksgiving dinner.  It was yummy.

After lunch, I spoke with my BFF in Georgia.  It's just her and her husband, but she goes all out and cooks a big Thanksgiving meal.  She'll pay for it tomorrow, but I'm sure it was good eatin' today!

I spent quite a bit of time earlier in the day sending texts of Happy Thanksgiving GIFs to friends, co-workers, and cousins.  I wanted to let people know I was thinking of them.

Around 4:30, I decided to tackle a couple a couple of things with my computer and printer that I had been putting off for months.  The first item on the agenda was getting my printer to "work" again.  It had suddenly stopped communicating with my computer a few months ago.  So I decided to get to it and figure out the problem.  First thing I found was that the printer's power cord was unplugged on the back.  OK, easy fix.  Perhaps a cat managed to do that.  I turned it on and printed a few test pages.  Black print is choppy; color print is fine.  So I clean the printheads.  Black ink quits working altogether.  I check the ink level... almost full.  Hmmm...  Then I check the wireless connection so that I can print from the computer, phone, etc.  Evidently, when I had to change out my wireless modem a couple of months ago, I didn't update the printer with the new network name or password.  So I entered the information and guess what!  I can print from the computer again!  I print a test page.  It's in black so it comes out blank.  I change the font color to red, print again, and it comes out perfectly.  Of course, I don't have a spare black ink cartridge.  So I go on Amazon, and order remanufactured ink cartridges for the first time.  They had the same number of good reviews as the name brand cartridges do, and I got two cartridges for way cheaper than I would at Walmart!  

I counted that as project completed, even if I do have to wait for the black ink cartridge to be delivered!

The other project was the one that terrified me a little bit.  In August, a new update for Family Tree Maker 2019 was released.  When I tried to download this update, I got an error message.  I reached out to support and was told that I would need to uninstall my FTM and re-install the software with the new updated included.  That had stopped me in my tracks.  I hate updating software because it never goes smoothly for me.  So for three months, I had been hitting the "Remind Me Later" button every time I opened FTM and it offered to install the update.  But Thanksgiving afternoon, it was time.  So I got the directions support had sent me and got to it.  First, I did a backup of my file in FTM.  (Do you keep multiple backups from different dates?  Whenever I back up, I just keep the latest one.) Then I uninstalled FTM 2019 from my computer.  When that was done, I rebooted.  I had gone to the FTM site and gotten the newest version of the program (with the update included) so when my computer came back up, I was ready to download and install.  I did that and everything went well.  Then I restored my backup.  Family Tree Maker 2019 syncs with my Ancestry.com family tree.  I sync after almost every research session.  I add a lot of Ancestry hints to my tree, so I download them to my FTM and keep both sites up to date.  Or I do a stint of looking up Find a Grave memorial pages and enter information from there into FTM.  Then I sync and the new information uploads to my Ancestry tree.  

My next step, of course, was to try to sync the two trees.  Just to test.  Well, that's when everything went wonky.  It started syncing and told me it had over 18,000 citations to sync.  What?!  I stopped the sync and checked that I had the right number of people in my tree, right date of back up etc.  I did.  So I started the sync process again.  By this time, it is late, so I leave it overnight to do its thing.

And that was my Thanksgiving.  There weren't any earthshattering, exciting moments here either, but I enjoyed it.  I get a feeling of accomplishment from getting projects done.  And I am thankful for the time to do these things.  

As all of you know, I am most thankful for my Mama.  I will see her in January, and we will celebrate being together then.  From our viewpoint, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day are just days on the calendar.  We can celebrate each other any day of the year.

I am also thankful for the cousins I have met along the way.  Each one is special to me, and I look forward to seeing a couple of them in January.  

Last, but not least, I am grateful that during this last trip around the sun from Thanksgiving 2021-2022, my BFF and I found each other again.  Relationships are hard, and I'm not very good at them.  However, sometimes you have a strong enough friendship to just drop back, re-group, and come back stronger than ever.  

P.S.  Oh do you want to know what happened with the software upgrade?  It ended up being a 48 hour nightmare.  First time I contacted support, I was told that it was normal for the first sync to take awhile, because this updated version of FTM is made to make syncing more accurate and thorough.  OK.  Still wouldn't sync.  It would get so far and freeze.  Contact support again and after much run around and repeating myself, it was decided I needed to re-upload my FTM tree to Ancestry.  I started that project this morning (Saturday).  After doing all that, I had to delete my first tree from Ancestry since I didn't need two exact trees there.  Then I needed to change the names of trees back to what they were (Georgia Tapley Tree) so it would make it easier for folks to find it on Ancestry.  Then I did a couple of syncs to make sure that worked.  It was about 5 pm today before I got back to where I was before this upgrade.  Did I mention I hate software upgrades?