Looking Back at 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors: "You"

52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors Prompt: You

            I am so grateful to Amy Johnson Crow for setting up the 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors program. It challenged me to start writing about the fascinating stories I was uncovering as I worked on my family tree. Oh sure, I’d gush about some weird little discovery to my husband, or to my son and daughter on the phone, and they’d be pleased for me but probably found it hard to really feel interested, especially when it was difficult for me to even explain how these people were related to me, and to them.

           I also discovered that I tended to forget last week’s fun discovery when I unearthed a new one. I would remember the gist of the story—the guy who dropped dead on the sidewalk out west somewhere, the baby left on the doorstep, the guy who married two sisters and their cousin—but as the months passed, I no longer remember which branch of the family tree they were located on, much less the name of the ancestor. I was forgetting all the fun stuff—it was buried under the minutiae of research.

           My local genealogy society chapter had given a talk recommending starting a genealogy blog as a way to connect with others who were researching your ancestors and as a way to share your discoveries with other family members. It sounded like a good idea, but I just never got around to doing it. That is, until 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors came along.

            I set up my blog on Blogger, and started writing short essays in response to the prompts. The first few posts were just text. But I started looking at what other 52 Weeks participants were doing, and loved how most of them illustrated their posts with photos or maps or images of census forms and marriage certificates. The photos brought the stories to life. I’m a visual person, and I realized my posts could be way more interesting if I included visuals.

            So my posts got better. I started planning ahead more—when I found something “blogworthy” in my research, I made a note of it, and made it fit one of the prompts down the road. 

           But most significantly, I started to make a photo book on Shutterfly of my best blog posts. It wasn’t easy, and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out—would the text font be too small? Would the font color show up against that background? Were the photos and document jpegs I was uploading look good or would they be too fuzzy? Yes, I made some mistakes. But I completed a book telling and illustrating stories about over 30 of my ancestors—a book I shared with my son and his wife over the holidays, and that I will share with my daughter in a few months.

                                              My photo book

            So thank you, Amy Johnson Crow! Thank you for motivating me to bring my research to life and create something that can be shared with family in years to come! I’m taking the challenge again in 2020. I may not get a post done every week (I confess I’ve missed a couple this year, but only a couple), but I will still be creating something way more significant than a family tree on Ancestry—I’ll be telling my ancestor’s stories and honoring their contributions to their families and communities.