Tuesday's Tip: Why (Genealogy) Blog?
I wrote an article for the WMGS newsletter, Michigana, to share my blogging experience and reasons why one should create a blog (Vol. 58, No. 1, Jan/Feb/March 2012). I have tweaked it a bit to add as this post:
Basically, there are three reasons why
you should create a genealogy blog: the past, the present and the future.
Past:
You should create a blog because of the voices in your
blood. Author GG Vandagriff wrote an aptly titled book, Voices in Your Blood: Discovering Your
Identity Through Family History. In this book, she writes, “Every name on
your pedigree tells a different story. You have thousands of stories in you.
What are they?” GG even has a blog of her own at http://www.ggvandagriff.com/blog/
Helen Hinchliff, Ph.D., wrote in her forward on Henry Z.
Jones, Jr.’s book Psychic Roots that
“It appears that untold numbers of ancestors have asked to be understood and to
have their stories told, fully and accurately.” Who will tell their story?
Present:
Family stories need to be told for the present generation.
I’ve been writing stories for years—not only stories of my family but also about
my research experience. Family stories have been handed down to the current
generation in one form or the other for thousands of years. Some of us remember
hearing stories while sitting on the front porch with elderly relatives. Blogs
are certainly not front porches, but they can be the equivalent of one,
especially in a time when family is often geographically far-flung.
“As genealogists we are passionate
about the past but we also need to be equally passionate about the present. By
writing up the present we leave behind a trail for our own descendants.” Gena Philibert Ortega
at http://philibertfamily.blogspot.com/
A blog is also a good place to record your thoughts on a
particular research problem. You probably have a family puzzle that you go over
again and again. You may even share your ideas on this particular problem with
other researchers again and again. I’ve had many people contact me and mention
that they heard my ancestor Samuel Watts (died ca. 1812 in Halifax County,
Virginia) was from England. I finally posted information on my blog that
details my thoughts on this possibility. Now I can direct folks with that same
question to my blog instead of having to re-write my explanation each time.
Sometimes I even have to direct myself
to my blog in order to refresh my memory, so I don’t have to keep going around
the same mountain in terms of research about what is known and not known so
far.
Greta Koehl mentions in her blog at http://gretabog.blogspot.com/ about
the “fabulous social aspects and cousin connections” of genealogy. Using a blog
to connect with other bloggers is also a social enhancement to the sometimes
isolated world of researching the past. Fellow bloggers can always relate to
your wanting to do the happy dance at finding a long-lost relative after ten
years of research--something that sometimes leaves your family shaking their heads
in wonder at you. Fellow bloggers can provide advice on ways to break through a
research brick wall and also encouragement when everything you’ve tried has met
without success. Most everyone would agree that Geneabloggers (a term coined to
describe bloggers who blog about genealogy) are a great bunch of people.
Future:
Those interested in the past are also interested in the preservation
of it. Most of us who have been doing this family history stuff long tend to
accumulate things such as old photographs and other memorabilia. Uploading to
your blog scanned copies of old photographs or pictures of memorabilia helps to
preserve these items for future generations. What a cost-effective way of
sharing as well.
Consider blogging as a new medium with which to work in. In
this digital age, there is always new medium. I can remember 45rpm records,
eight-track and cassette tapes. These ways of recording are all becoming
obsolete. Even VCRs are starting to fall by the wayside to be replaced by DVDs
and heaven knows what next. Future generations will not know what to do with an
old record and will eventually not have access to technology that will unlock
the media embedded in such. Blogging is another step towards the future of
accessible technology. Granted, based on our knowledge of history, we can
predict it will not be the final step. But just as we have transferred
reel-to-reel home movies to VCR tapes and now to DVD, this will ensure that we
will be able to update our material and make it available for those inevitable future
technological advances.
A blog could be the beginnings of that book you’ve always
wanted to write – saved for posterity before it even becomes a book. There are
several bloggers I know that blog for the writing experience, for the basis of
a future book. Yvette Porter Moore blogs about her research for a future book
at http://www.thecullyfamily.com. Even if you never get around to publishing, years
from now a descendant will be delighted to stumble across the work that you
have made available on your blog.
“We may
think writing about ourselves is boring or egotistical but stop and think how
excited your descendants would be to find a journal or dairy that their great
great grandmother (you) wrote.”
It begins with you
Just like the start of your ancestor or pedigree chart, it
begins with you. You are the link between yesterday’s past, today’s present
& tomorrow’s future. A bridge, if you will, to span the generation gap(s).
And just as every individual is unique and every family is unique, your reasons
for doing a blog will be unique as well. Your blog will reflect who are you and
where you come from. Don’t think there’s no reason to add another blog to the
web world, there is no other blog like the one you will create and it deserves
to be out there.
Thanks so much for quoting from my blog, Gena's Genealogy. I strongly believe that while we need to share the stories of the past we need to document the present. Afterall, someday we will be someone's ancestor. I love how you have articulated that with this article.--Gena
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