Hey there, SK, it’s time to announce the winner of my first ever genealogy contest.
How it was done
For each of my contestants, I gave myself 3 hours of research time to locate as many promising leads as possible. The winner would be judged based on the number of family members I was able to legitimately find in that time frame. (By “legitimate,” I mean I did the work. If you’re familiar with online family trees, you know that it’s easy to wholesale adopt someone else’s tree, which is a super quick, if suspect, way to gain instant relatives!)
I sent off my questionnaire to all four contestants. At this point, Agnes Bourassa opted not to go on. That left me with three trees to build in one holiday weekend.
It felt a lot like… on your mark, get ready…!
I use Ancestry to build the tree and for some of the research, but I also use any number of sites from Library and Archives Canada, Family Search, the Saskatchewan Genealogy Society, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, the Saskatoon Public Library, and dozens of others. Unfortunately, the Archives of SK were offline over the holiday weekend, which put a crimp in things.
… And the winner is…!
2nd runner up – Lynn Galbraith (40 family members found)
1st runner up – Rhonda Cooper (128 family members found)
Winner – Kelly Bode (139 family members found)
What happens next?
CONGRATULATIONS TO KELLY BODE!
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Your family tree
- All supporting documentation
- A Linda Yip Genealogy research report telling the stories of selected members of your family tree
- For the really keen – a research log, detailing all the steps I went through, the questions I asked, and a step by step how to of how I came to the conclusions I did
- Your story, published in the winter edition of PRAIRIES NORTH MAGAZINE
Congratulations also to Lynn Galbraith and Rhonda Cooper, who received:
- The results of my preliminary researach
- Their family tree built in Ancestry, plus a .gedcom file usable on any genealogy platform
- A summary of research, with recommendations for going forward
Afterword
Thanks to Lynn, for reminding me of my deadlines, and apologies to everyone who noticed I’d blown my own deadline for announcing the contest winner. Sheesh. What can I say? It’s been so hot my brains are melting out my ears…!
