Why I Blog About My Family History Research

My mother (left) celebrated her 90th birthday
last weekend. She is pictured with her sister, 
who celebrated her 89th birthday just the 
week before. They look great!

A very special family celebration and a few house projects brought my blogging and genealogy researching to a halt just over a month ago. I'm happy to be back at my computer and my favorite pastimes - researching family and blogging. 

I seldom research family without thinking about how the research can be turned into a story for a blog post. For me, the benefits of blogging are tremendous. 

Why Blog?

Blogging is my creative outlet. I like to write and am primarily writing for family - those I know, those I hope to meet, and those who might appreciate my posts beyond my lifetime. 

A blog can be more flexible than a website or writing a book. You can write about your new finds, ask questions, and point out the mistakes in your earlier research. Posts can be as short or as long as desired and published on your schedule. A long detailed post such as John Giddens, a Planter in North Carolina, was most likely read by the few readers interested in this Giddens family. However, the very short, humorous post "That's okay. If we don't know, we just put down John." A Not So Funny Story of Contradictory Evidence was read by many. 

His Name was Jacob Giddens. He had No
Middle Name. Please Make This
Correction in Your Online Family Tree.
I wrote this post hoping others may 
correct this error in their trees.

Blogging allows me to share easily. I work hard researching my family and want other researchers to benefit from my knowledge. One of my personal goals is to add my ancestor blog posts as stories to online family trees, thus allowing the stories to outlive me. 

Blogging has improved my research skills. Writing stories to post on my blog helps me organize and analyze known details about an ancestor or event. As I write the stories, I almost always see missing information or mistakes. Finding these gaps or errors allows me to determine my next steps for research. 

My presence on the Internet allowed
the daughter of Marguerite Cook
Clark to find me and recommend I 
visit her sister in Texas to see their
mother's research. I scanned
hundreds of documents and photos 
and have posted about many.
Numerous family researchers have
benefited from these posts. 

Family members, who find me on the web, share photos, family letters, and more. Some correct my mistakes, answer my questions and share their research and ideas. You can find examples of how I have benefited from blogging in the posts Good Things Come To Those Who Blog! and Was your Giddens, a Merchant?

There are so many good reasons to pair blogging with family history research. As I will never "finish" my family history, I will continue blogging as long as I research. 

If you want to know more about the families I research, click here to like my Facebook page, where you will see each post and other genealogical finds. 

.

Diana

© 2022 

Photographs

Betty and Janet, 90th Birthday, photograph, 2022; digital image, from the privately held photo collection of Diana Quinn, Virginia Beach, VA 2022. 

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101520320/jacob-wealthy-giddens : accessed 26 March 2022), memorial page for Jacob Giddens (1794-1873), Find a Grave Memorial ID 101520320, citing Pleasant Grove Cemetery, Ringgold, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, USA; Maintained by Scout Finch (contributor 47112463); Photograph of gravestone contributed by A Footstep In Time (contributor47345816). 

Marguerite Cook Clark, photograph, n.d.; digital images, from the privately held photo collection of Marguerite Cook Clark (1913-1989), Waynesville, North Carolina, 2021. Photos were accessed and scanned at the home of Marguerite Cook Clark's daughter in Alpine, Texas on April 28, 2014, September 14, 2014, and November 9 to 11, 2016.