LORELLE ON WORDPRESS is basically, for me, “The Goddess of All That is WordPress.” I’ve been reading her blog for ages and, as a long-time blogger-slash-computer dork who has learned relatively little in my 4 years of blogging, I “follow” her and read her words (most of which go over my ever-lovin’ head) with amazement and deference.
To sum it up, this is how I feel about Lorelle:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FucbvoFFy0]
Well, just like that except picture Lorelle as Alice Cooper and me as Wayne and Garth.
ANYWAAAAYS. THIS was Lorelle’s blog entry today. As if she couldn’t get any more perfect-er than being a WordPress Guru Blogger, she is also a Family History Blogger. We scrappers LUV us some family history, don’t we?
And not only is she a Family History Blogger, but she made it into her local paper … and to top it off, on her blogs she tells US how to start and run a family history blog. All the links you need are right HERE.
Do you SEE why I’m not worthy?!?!?
Honestly, until I saw this article, it had never occurred to me to start a family history blog. But what an awesome idea, right?
My maternal grandmother was a geneologist … like back in the day, where you had to travel to LIBRARIES and look at MICRO FICHE and make DITTO COPIES of things. I mean, my Gramma ROCKED it. She was hardcore. She even went to Europe to research her family. Then I have an aunt on my dad’s side who compiled a bunch of family history, documents, and photos into a large bound book. A cousin and my mom have been using ANCESTRY.COM to do geneology research in recent years.
I’ve gone on that site a few times and found copies of things like a census from when my granddad was little and that was super cool but other than that, I get totally lost and overwhelmed at all the clicks and links and documents and searches. I feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. I need to spend more time there to figure it all out, although at this point, I’d probably just be duplicating what my other family members have already found.
Anyhow, it just seems to me that a family history blog would be a cool place to bring all these disparate elements together into one place. Srsly, check out Lorelle’s articles on how to do a family history blog … it’s SO cool! You can scan documents in, tag entries by family name, have authors who are “dead or alive,” post photos, share information and stories, etc.
Honestly, it got this little scrapbooker all kindsa jacked up! {Dork}.
The good news is: I’m TOTALLY adding this to my Bucket List for Life. I so want to do a family history blog.
The bad news is: Not only is my plate full right now, but I got a stack of plates that are all full. So this won’t happen anytime soon. Maybe when I retire (gulp). Or hit the lotto. Or become so famous for blogging that I can quit my day jobs. Uh, yeahhh, right!
But the GREAT news is that when I’m ready ~ or you are ~ Lorelle has laid out the process for us so we can do this cool thing she has done. She’s just a share-y person like that.
Mad props, Lorelle, mad props.
4 Comments
Ditto copy. Wow! That’s a phrase that takes me WAY back. Aren’t you so very lucky to have so much information already collected for you, especially from someone a couple generations back. You are SO far ahead of me in that research.
We had a family bible going back to the early 1700s. Tons of names and dates, names and dates. Rarely a connection between the names and dates. We had born, died, married. We didn’t know who was born of whom and how all the pieces connected until the web came along. After 25 years of research, someone in Michigan, related to our family from the 1700s only, found our missing pieces. In that family bible were the missing pieces of his family that he’d been searching for over 35 years. We did a lot of crying.
Family history research is such a joy. It isn’t just about research and publishing the information. It’s about the connections you make with people around the world just because you are blood and something got lost along the way. Already the article in the newspaper has turned up four people who called the columnist with information on my family and the photographs. Incredible!
Like you, my life is so busy with work and all, I don’t get the time I need to do the family history work I want to do. Don’t wait. I make appointments with myself for at least 5 hours a week, sometimes I can get in more, squeezed in 1/2 hour to 1 hour moments, to work on bits and pieces. I’m working on a series right now on what to put into your family history blog, and I have another on how to speed up the process and remove the bottlenecks coming later in the fall.
Thank you so much for your kind words. It means a lot to me to know I’m connecting somehow. Can I quote you? :D
And maybe you can help me. Have you done any articles or research into how to unglue and preserve photographs in a photo album from the 1910-1930 time period. I’m terrified to damage it but the black pages are smearing black inky residue on everything including my fingers and the whole thing is falling apart. I really need to find a professional to dismantle it, scan the images, and help me preserve them so I can put them together in a new archival paper scrapbook. I’m sure I’m not the first to ask, but I haven’t yet found a good resource. Know of any? These are my grandmother’s photographs. She died when my father was 12, so they are of VERY special value to the family.
Thanks again! You rock!
What a great resource. One of my husband’s cousins is working on our family history through Ancestry.com. It’s all a bit overwhelming to me but definitely something I want to explore for my kiddos.
I can really recommend, from experience, that while you are working on things through Ancestry, create your own family history site/blog to store the information there as well. You can do more, show more, and own the rights to the information. I’ve heard too many horror stories of people not being able to get their information “out” of Ancestry. It’s a great community and resource, but have a back up of your own.
I love that you want to preserve your family’s history for the future. That’s why I’m doing it. 100 years from now if another person like me needs answers to some simple family questions, I don’t want them to spent 35 working as hard as I have.
Nice post !! It isn’t just about research and publishing the information. It’s about the connections you make with people around the world just because you are blood and something got lost along the way.