I’ve been heads down the last two weeks trying to update captions for the roughly 10,000 images that will become part of the second edition of my book series. About half of those are new since the first edition and often lack consistency.

I get tickled at the information people attach to their photos. Some of the most popular but un-useful captions read “iPhone Photo”, “Android” & “Samsung”.

Items downloaded from Facebook contain long cryptic number based captions that form from the file names and you would be amazed at how many pictures of people say something to the tune of “Uncle Bob”. That’s great when the photo stays inside your immediate family. But once it is online no one knows who wrote it and which uncle Bob the person was referring to. Maiden names are mostly left out and Ancestry does a poor job of de-duplicating images.

So, it’s a dull mindless task, but one that is necessary to produce the quality product that I hope to bring to you. I’ll be at this for a couple more weeks and then will be able to get at the fun part of pushing out the new volumes.

We have learned so much since the early editions and I now have a powerful book rendering tool that makes publishing relatively easy (once all the components are in place).

We have solved the Puzzling Mystery of the Eastern Virginia & North Carolina Babbs, having proven their relationship through DNA results.

We have established a DNA lineage for the Staffordshire Babbs that needs to be included as well.

We have an additional 7,000 people in the tree (having just crossed 30,000 total) and 10,000 new images (having just crossed 20,000 total).

Other discoveries are always on the horizon (such as the Barbados Babb Lineage), but in the words of my predecessor Jean A. Sargent, the work will never be completed and at some point you need to stop and publish the results. That day is coming soon!

Cheers!
Daniel