It’s a new year and I have decided to change things up a bit on my blog.

There was a popular genealogy dare a short while ago called ’52 Ancestors’. The objective of the project was to write a biography about one ancestor a week, and the goal appeared to be to improve one’s story writing skills.

Yeah, I’m not going to do that.

Reading about this project did get me thinking about doing the same thing. However, when I remembered that I am not retired, and that many of those bios would require a lot of research, it just wasn’t feasible.

Instead, I decided that my new thing this year is going to be a celebration of the women in my family. By creating as full a biography as possible about one ancestress, as often as possible (some will certainly be easier than others), I hope to bring their voice more fully into the family narrative. All the posts related to my ‘New Thing’ project will be about my direct ancestresses, starting with my great grandmothers and working my way back in time as far as I can go. Hmmm, that will take more that 52 weeks, especially as I definitely will not be able to do one a week. I am hoping that by laser focusing on one individual in this manner I can fill in gaps in my research that aren’t noticed as much when one focuses on a surname, rather than a single person.

And don’t worry, I will still be making ‘special find’ posts, and sharing family letters, (boy do we still have lots of letters). I hope you look forward to reading these posts as much as I look forward to sharing them.

Oh, yeah! There’s the new theme, of course, can’t keep the same old look, it gets stale fast.

Unfortunately there were no great DNA finds or revelations in 2017, so I can’t share anything on that front. I did meet a few new distant cousins, didn’t get much out of them other than a hi, which is fine, but I always hope for a little more. (Hint – I love pictures! And DNA tests. Can’t get enough of those.)

Oh, well – maybe this year!

Have a great year,
jen