1000 Posts: More Than Names and Dates

This is my 1,000th blog post.

I never imagined I would write this many, and I hope I still have 1,000 more in me.

When I first began researching family almost 30 years ago, I had no idea how far it would take me. What started as curiosity became something much more—a way to learn about the people who came before us, to understand their lives, and to preserve their stories so they will not be forgotten. Along the way, I discovered that I love the search as much as the finding: the puzzle, the clues, the challenge, and the satisfaction of piecing together lives that might otherwise have been lost to time.

This blog has been part of that journey.

My love of teaching, technology, and history has all found a place here. Over the years, this blog has become more than a place to record research. It has helped me connect with cousins, meet interesting people, make friends, and share what I have learned. People sometimes call a genealogy blog a “cousin magnet,” and that has certainly been true for me. Some of the best parts of this hobby have happened away from the computer, as I have traveled to visit relatives, libraries, courthouses, conferences, and family places across the country and in Ireland. Those experiences have brought new people into my life, led to new discoveries, and given me more stories to share.

Family history is about far more than collecting names and dates.

What keeps me interested is learning about the lives of each ancestor—how they lived, what they endured, what choices they made, where they traveled, what hardships they faced, and what kind of people they were. After all these years, I have only scratched the surface. There are many ancestors I may never fully identify and many stories I may never uncover. There are also many ancestors I already know about but have not yet had time to study more fully. There is never enough time for all the stories waiting to be told.

And your ancestors were definitely not boring.

Some lived lives far more dramatic than anything I could have imagined when I began. My father was orphaned at the age of nine and joined the Navy at age 19. He was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked, and almost 20 years later, although he was in the Navy, he served with the Marines at the DMZ on the battlefields of Vietnam. My husband’s grandfather was heavily involved in the Irish rebellion. He fought with the old IRA, his house was burned, and he left Ireland for his own safety. 

Over the years, I have uncovered stories of courage, hardship, mistakes, scandal, loss, determination, and survival. Some of those stories I have written about here. Some I will never reveal.

That, to me, is what family history really is. It is not just names on a chart. It is people and their stories. It is a way of understanding that the people behind us were real and complicated and that, in one way or another, their lives shaped ours.

So this 1,000th post is for all of you—family, friends, readers, those I know personally, those I have met through research, those still distant, and those not yet born. Maybe one of you will someday pick up where I leave off. I hope you do.

There are still many stories waiting to be found

Diana

© 2026