It's our First Anniversary!

 

On April 30, 2014 my dream of having a blog became reality when I wrote and uploaded my first post "My ancestor was just a farmer...". Many of us have farming ancestors and didn't realize much could be said about them and their lives. It was later followed up with the article "Farmer's Directories" .

In all the years doing research on my family, and those of a few friends, I came across mention of these ancestors on various websites, in newspaper articles and in       publications ...  censuses dating back to 1666 New France, city directories, the fur trade, court documents, school yearbooks, just to mention a few. Hmmmm... none of my ancestors are on the Social Register. But at least they are not on the list of people fined for drunkenness either.

My family research takes me not only to 1600's Canada, but also to the United States, Ireland, England, Scotland and Australia.  I realized I was gathering a long list of links and I was happy to share it with anyone looking for information on their ancestors. Then I wanted to reach a wider audience and thought that rather than just putting them up on a website, I could also satisfy my enjoyment of writing by creating a blog.

 

Besides giving you articles and links that suggest where you can look for your ancestors, I also give tips and tools to help in your own research.  Two of the most viewed are: 

"Help me Search my Google" and "Tools for Genealogy Research".

 

I have written about many diverse subjects over this past year, and following are the articles that people were most interested in:

 

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

 

More Than BMD

 

Location, location, location

 

Guilds and Apprenticeships

 

All Aboard!

 

Keep the Faith

 

Time Travel with Google Earth 

 

Burials 

 

I was only mildly surprised at the number of readers of my blog, but really astonished at where in the world they are!!  It is no wonder that most viewers are from the United States, considering there are more people living in just the state of California (38M+)  than in all of Canada (35M+), but it is exciting to me to see that there are readers from far away countries.

 

 

Big thank you to all those who follow on the Blog, FaceBook and Twitter, and thanks for sharing with others. I'm looking forward to another year of researching and writing!