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| My mother, age five, and her sister, age four, sitting on a table in their home at 92-43 214th Street in Queens Village, New York, in 1937. |
My blog has been quiet for most of the last year. I’ve been busy as a full-time grandmother. Swim team, soccer, homework, piano lessons—and all the moments in between—required a change in priorities.
As we move into 2026, I’m intentionally making room for genealogy again and committing time to learning and writing about my family through 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.
This will be my third time taking part in this challenge, in which you write about an ancestor each week. In 2014, I used the challenge to document the collateral families of my second great-grandfather, John L. Hairston. A later round in 2018 followed the prompts more closely. This time, I’ll use the prompts as inspiration but expect to deviate as the research unfolds.
My focus in 2026 will be on my mother’s family. My mother and her sister—now 93 and 92—are faithful readers of this blog, making this a meaningful place to spend my research time. I will begin with my fourth great-grandfather, Benjamin Reed, and follow his parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren, allowing the story to move through the Reed, Glynn, and Harvey families and forward to my grandmother’s generation.
I’m looking forward to returning to regular writing and to spending this year reconnecting with these families and their stories.
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
