Celebrating A Decade Blogging Family History

I can hardly believe it, but this year marks a milestone in my family history journey. I'm celebrating my decennial blogiversary!

Where has the time gone?

Ten years ago, in June 2013, I started the Family Sleuther blog to uncover my family's forgotten history. Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors initiative prompted me to make blogging a habit. Soon, I was routinely researching and publishing.

Propelled by a desire to rediscover my kin, I sought out ancestors whom the world had long forgotten. As the poet Marie Howe wrote, “I am living. I remember you.”

And remember I have done. Across 284 blog posts (this is #285!), I’ve racked up over 524,000 total views and nearly 1,400 comments.

I’ve learned a lot about the science and art of genealogy while making some dramatic discoveries. For example:

• I learned that my third great-grandfather John Flynn was murdered in a trifling quarrel in 1881.
• I uncovered and then solved a Misattributed Paternity Event, identifying my Kirk lineage and likely Irish roots and even self-published a biography of my fifth great-grandfather Thomas Kirk.
• I discovered my Cornish heritage and learned about the tragic and grisly death of my third great-grandfather Thomas K. Stephens who was killed in a Colorado mining accident.
• I learned that my third great-grandfather Francis Stephen Lamb shot and nearly killed a man in a jealous fit of rage, making his family fodder for Denver's early 20th century tabloids.
• I learned about my second great-grandfather William Kirk's drowning in a Denver water reservoir.
• I discovered the role Mahlon Haworth, my fifth great-grandfather, played as a station agent on the Underground Railroad.

I've also been fortunate to travel across the country and even overseas on same amazing family history road trips, retracing and documenting the steps of my ancestors. 

The author during a family history road trip to Licking County, Ohio.

I often return to past blog posts and am reminded of discoveries that have already escaped my memory. Writing my family history has helped me process my way through the information that I'm uncovering and preserving for posterity. It's made me a better genealogist.

As I celebrate this milestone and look forward to the decade ahead, I invite you to blog your family's history. I suspect that a year from now (or ten) you'll be grateful you took steps to help safeguard your ancestors' stories for the future. As I walk down memory lane, I know I sure am!

Belated Blogiversary: 6 Years of Family Sleuthing

One of the hallmarks of my blogiversary is that I routinely forget my blogiversary. It's now part of the celebratory tradition. I forget. I remember after the fact. Then I publish a commemorative post a week later.

So, we're gathered here today to celebrate: June 4, 2019 marked six years of blogging my family's history.

If that's not cause to celebrate, I don't know what is!

I've learned an awful lot about my ancestors and the events that shaped their lives. I've also come to understand that every moment of their lives culminated in the circumstances that shaped my own life - certainly the foundations anyway. 

I'm grateful that I get the opportunity to remember their history, reflect on its significance, and share it for posterity. 

And I'm particularly grateful that I get to share it with you. So if you're looking for a good reason to splurge and celebrate today, let it be Family Sleuther's blogiversary!

Celebrating Five Years of Genealogy Blogging

Family Sleuther is turning five years old!

On June 4, 2013, I wrote my very first blog post about my passion for family history.

"...there's something compelling about placing your own kin in their historical place and rediscovering people the world has long forgotten. It has captivated me and sparked an addiction to genealogy." 

That sentiment still rings true for me. It both inspires and motivates me to write. It's the reason this blog has endured for the past five years.

Since Family Sleuther's inception, I've published nearly 190 posts and logged almost 160,000 blog visits. In the past year, I've published over 40 posts, and, since January 2018, nearly one post each week.

The stats are lovely, but the real value of this blog has been the family history brought back to life. During the past five years, I've stitched together countless genealogical fragments, writing my ancestors back to life. 

I'm as  passionate today about this work as I was five years ago, and I'm looking forward to another five years! I hope to have you along for the ride.

Genealogy Blogging Like It's My Birthday!

At first I was surprised then disappointed to learn that I had missed my June 4th blogiversary. I like celebrations and I like family history. Overlooking the two combined was an egregious party foul.

But I have a good excuse. I was too busy blogging my family history. No kidding!

On June 4th, I hadn't forgotten about my blog. No, quite the opposite. I spent a considerable amount of time that day tending to my blog: responding to blogger comments and drafting a new article.

The work of blogging had me so occupied that I simply spaced the significance of the day.

An Evolving Blogging Landscape
Of course, there have been recent changes in the genealogy world that played a teeny role in my absentmindedness.

In early May, Thomas MacEntee announced that major changes would be coming to his brainchild GeneaBloggers. Blogging was in decline, he said, and his business necessitated a shift in how he served his bottom line. Many of GeneaBloggers' features would be retired, so he could pursue new ventures.

Among the changes was the retirement of MacEntee's GeneaBloggers Twitter handle, which is how I was often reminded of my blogiversary. Without that reminder tweet, my day of days simply slipped my mind.

Is Genealogy Blogging Dead?
It's hard to believe that it's been four years since I published my first piece under the Family Sleuther nom de plume guerre.

When I started Family Sleuther, blogging was already a fragile landscape. In 2009, The New York Times wrote that the great majority of blogs were inactive with "95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled."

MacEntee's shuttering of GeneaBloggers came fast on the heels of genealogist Julie Cahill Tarr number-crunching the vitality of genealogy blogging. She determined that 350 blogs in her reader (blogs she follows) hadn't been updated in the past 30 days. Furthermore, over 60% of those blogs hadn't seen a post in the past year.

The takeaway? It's easy to start a blog, but, as Cahil Tarr's numbers show, a steep climb to sustain it.

What happened to genealogy blogging? The Facebook, of course.

Social media is where it's at. It's where the people are and it's where the genealogy groups are convening. With Facebook projected to hit 2 billion monthly users in 2017 and host to nearly 11,000 genealogy-centric groups, it's only natural that family historians would gravitate to the platform in droves. Yes, perhaps the migration is at the expense of blogs.

However, as Amy Johnson Crow assures us, social media hasn't killed blogging. It's just changed the landscape. We only need to harness the evolving system to continue driving traffic to our blogs.

Me? I'm just over here blogging to my heart's content (and, apparently, oblivious to my blogiversary).

Four Years Later I'm Still Blogging
Since Family Sleuther's inception, I've published nearly 150 posts and logged almost 100,000 blog visits. In the past year, I've published 50 posts, and, since January 2017, one post each week.

Sure, these numbers likely pale in comparison to many of my blogging colleagues, but, as an amateur (with a full-time non-genealogy career) contributing to an apparently dying art form, I'm pretty proud of these stats.

But I don't do this for the numbers. I'm a history fanatic who loves sleuthing answers to mysteries. I do this to bring the story of my ancestors to life, and log it for posterity's sake. If I hook a few cousins along the way who can help me tell these stories, that's a welcome perk.

Besides, the landscape may not be so grim. News has come that GeneaBloggers has morphed into GeneaBloggersTRIBE, which will carry on some of the features of the previous site, including shout-outs for blogiversaries.

My heart (and preoccupied mind) were gladdened to see this familiar shout-out trumpeted across social media. So we can, for now, party on!

The Power of Blogging for Genealogy

Today, I'm celebrating. June 4th is my three year blogiversary as Thomas MacEntee at GeneaBloggers has branded it. Three years ago I published my first post as the Family Sleuther.

In that piece, I wrote of my burgeoning interest in family history:

"...there's something compelling about placing your own kin in their historical place and rediscovering people the world has long forgotten. It has captivated me and sparked an addiction to genealogy."

That addiction continues unabated and has yielded a handful of successes. Since its inception, I have published nearly 100 posts and the blog has racked up more than 45,000 page views. In the past year alone, I've published over 40 posts, including my most read piece about genetic genealogy's role in revealing the identity of my paternal great-grandfather. Not too bad for an amateur family historian who can only dedicate time to research and blog when his demanding day job permits.

While increasing my publication output and growing readership are gratifying, blogging has been a powerful tool for my genealogy. For example:

• Writing my family history forces me to carefully process my research and think about about the gaps that become apparent once it's in black and white. Blogging makes me a more focused, discerning genealogist. I ask more questions.

• Blogging puts my family history into the public domain for others - even distant cousins - to find. One day a distant cousin is going to take the bait, realize we share a family bond, and reach out with a long-lost bible, family photo, or [insert family treasure here] that allows me to finally bust through a previously impenetrable brick wall.

• This blog has become an archive for my family history. It documents my finds in real time. If I find my enthusiasm to pursue a challenging research puzzle starts to wane, I can pop onto the blog for a dose of motivation. It's inspiring to be reminded of past success.

For the year ahead, I aim to consistently blog, hopefully expand readership, tell more of my family's history and answer some of our outstanding mysteries, and even polish the technology I use to deliver and present this blog.

Grab your pipe, deerstalker cap, and Sherlock wit, we have an exciting year of family sleuthing ahead of us!