The top five

Sometimes The Legal Genealogist just gets tickled by something.

Sometimes it’s just that the piece means more to me than most.

Sometimes readers agree with me.

And sometimes the post languishes down in the lesser-reads.

But you, the readers, and I tend to agree on these five overall favorites for 2014.

At Number 5:

“Case closed … and another opened” (3 December): “The scientists who had studied the remains and who had analyzed DNA taken from the bones stood before the microphones that day in February 2013 and told us the conclusion they’d come to. ‘Beyond reasonable doubt the individual exhumed at Grey Friars on September 12th is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.’ At the time, we thought it couldn’t get much cooler than that. … But it did get cooler than that.” So we found a king… and then wondered if maybe he wasn’t, at all.

At Number 4:

“Oh, Charlie!” (2 February): “One of the most exciting things about working with DNA testing in genealogy is how fast things are changing, and how much we can learn with new tools that are becoming available. And boy did that make The Legal Genealogist’s heart glad this past week. Because we’re pretty confident now that we’ve found Charlie, a missing member of the family, thanks to XDNA matching and a really neat new tool called the Autosomal DNA Segment Analyzer — ADSA, for short.”

At Number 3:

“Go read this” (4 December): “Drop everything. Put all your other projects on hold. Clear your decks. Make sure you have a lot of time and a good strong internet connection. Have something to drink and snacks at hand. Then click over to Hoosier Daddy?, a blog by Indiana genealogist Michael D. Lacopo.”

At Number 2:

“The cousin who isn’t” (8 February): “I posted messages far and wide on the Internet asking for any male Baker who was a documented descendant of Alexander Baker to step forward, and I’d pay for his DNA test. And we waited. And we waited. Finally, one day some years back, I got a message from a lovely lady in California, Lisa Baker, who said her husband Tony fit the bill. His paper trail back to Alexander was excellent. And he was willing to test.”

And by far the Number One, your and my favorite post of 2014:

At the very top of my personal list for the year, and on my readers’ top posts list as well, the post illustrated by the photo you see above — “Finding Evan” (27 September): “If I had waited just a few more days before getting that phone number. If I had called a few days or weeks later. If I had waited a week or two more before sending that letter. If it had arrived just a few days later than it did. If any of those things had happened, Edward Anderson wouldn’t have been able to give Evan my letter.”

Happy New Year, all. Thanks to all for making this journey with me in 2014.

On to 2015!