A reminder to backup your photos

This BBC article from earlier in the month is a good reminder to backup old photos - see Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever (16 Dec 2025). We have an aging iMac with a lot of photos that need to be copied over to a hard drive or saved to our cloud storage. We also have a basement closet with boxes of other photos that need to be scanned and saved.

A shoemaker in Altar

 

Made in Ideogram. Vicente Campuzano, 1852.

In 1852, my 3rd-great-grandfather Vicente Antonio Campuzano was working as a zapatero (a shoemaker) in Altar, Sonora, Mexico. He had recently started a second family with Maria Concepcion Amado, who would have just delivered their first daughter Dolores in the previous year. The imagined scene above shows Vicente mending a boot in his open air adobe workshop.

I picked 1852 for this scene as that was the year of the Pimeria Alta census, which I misspelled and misdated as 1851 in my 2012 post on Vicente's origins. Now I would like to see a digital copy of the original 1852 census of the district of Altar, as I think there's more than just Vicente in that record. There should be a reference to Pedro Suastegui, his wife Ana Maria Orosco and her mother Reyes Valdes in Altar.

Two of Vicente's sons from his first family became tailors. Jose Maria Campuzano moved to Los Angeles, while older son Francisco moved to Tubac in the Arizona Territory.

Paddington and Liverpool Street Station

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Paddington. 6 Dec 2025.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Liverpool Street Station. 6 Dec 2025.

The Grinch Meal

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Shoreditch, London. 6 Dec 2025.

Apparently what I thought was funny street art is actually an advertisement by McDonalds UK for its holiday "Grinch Meal". The Grinch salt will turn your fries into a pickle-flavored "treat" and the meal includes oddly matched Grinch socks. I did not eat this during my stopover.

Where the stories may go in 2026

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Tree of Life, Frane Delalle. Accra. 10 Dec 2025.

The mural above from the entrance of the Accra International Conference Centre in Ghana is massive. My photo shows the central panel, and there are two other large panels on either side. The murals were painted by Croatian artist Frane Delalle in 1990-1991, with the title The Tree of Life. As I look ahead to the new year, I hope to fill out some of the missing branches on our own tree of life and add to the leaves of stories in our history.

Last year I set some ambitious goals and shared monthly progress posts on my DNA research questions. These are going to evolve for January. While I'll continue to pursue some of these questions in the new year, some of the focus will shift to include open questions on Allison's side of the tree. I am curious to apply learning that may come from watching the sessions at RootsTech 2026 in March, as the event always provides new ideas and techniques for sharing family stories.

I am still interested in trying again for a session at RootsTech 2027. Although the dates have not yet been officially announced by FamilySearch, VisitSaltLake says the event may be at the Salt Palace 4-6 March 2027. This is conveniently the week before I'm supposed to be in Europe that March.

In the new year we'll receive updated Big Y results for our cousin Greg and the Campuzano line. Hopefully these results will give a more recent timeline for our Spanish connection.

I would like to figure out the connection to the mystery matches descending from Trinidad Leyva, and fill in the gaps on our Portillo side of the tree.

On the mtDNA front, we have results pending for another cousin in the maternal line path of Maria Jesus Vasquez. I'm looking forward to what we can learn from the shared mtDNA matches. I am also still very interested to see if mtDNA can help sort out the lines descending from John Carter (1715-1783).

In family history TV, a new season of Finding Your Roots begins on 6 January, and I expect more episodes of Who Do You Think You Are may be available on YouTube. I was able to catch quite a few episodes while in the UK earlier in the month. The episodes from Season 22 with Andrew Garfield, Mishal Husain and Diane Morgan were really good.

There's always the unexpected and new stories that come available as sources are scanned and added to the various sites. Many of the major family history platforms add new material and features leading up to RootsTech (and throughout the year).