Friday, May 27, 2011

GeneaBlogging Works!

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I loved footnoteMaven's blog post "Shades and The OverStuffed Baby Make A Connection" yesterday, and my first thought was that "geneablogging works again!"  The post discussed the contact made by a descendant of the baby girl in the "overstuffed baby" picture.  In this post, fM noted that "We research, we write, and sometimes we are rewarded."  Yep -good things come to those who geneablog!!

Today, fM gives us "The Overstuffed Baby Comes Full Circle!" about the rest of the story - a photo essay on the full 102-year life of the baby in the picture.  fM was rewarded!

Yesterday, I noted that I had found a listing for Alexander Whittle in the New South Wales Publican Licences, but couldn't access it without an Ancestry World Subscription.  Voila!  An email from Genea-Musings reader Lisa Nap in The Netherlands (her website is www.nap-kin.net, check it out!) provided me with the image from Ancestry.com for this record.  Now I know exactly where in Sydney "The Lancashire Arms" pub was located (and I didn't know the name of the establishment before).  Randy was rewarded! Thank you, Lisa!  This is one reason to put my email address on my blog.

It's not all "taking from others" - we also have to "give back" to make this geneablogging mystery tour work.  My series on the William Seaver murder and the resulting family information is an example - I was contacted in an Ancestry.com Message asking for help on that study, which turned into a month long detective story.  Geneablogging strikes again!

On Friday, 20 May, Jasia posted "Jasia's Friday Night Puzzle" at 9:29 PM, and by 9:36 PM reader Chris (Dunham?) had found the image on www.archive.org.  By 9:47 PM Chris had found that Ancestry.com had skipped imaging and indexing pages 7A and 7B in ED 507 on Roll 1052 of the 1930 US Census.  Geneablogging works again!

I'm often asked "why do you blog?  Who would read your stuff?"  My reason for blogging about genealogy is really simple - "to help other researchers, and to be helped by other researchers."  It's really a two-way street, and the more that readers comment on posts, the better it gets, for everybody!

The capability of search engines to snatch the kernels of ancestral grain from all the genealogy chaff really helps too!  I'm always surprised, and happy, to find a genealogy blog with information about one of my ancestral families when I Google a name with a place.  It turns out that many of the geneabloggers are related back in time, especially those of us with New England ancestry.

Do you have some genealogy puzzles that you can't solve?  Try geneablogging about them.  Blogging is very simple to perform - you type into a box, upload images easily, and attach hyperlinks easily.  It does take a time investment, and may become addictive.  Check out some of the webinars and articles about how to start a genealogy blog.  If I can do it, you can do it.

Yes - GeneaBlogging works!

4 comments:

Sharon said...

I so enjoy your blog Randy. I learn alot from you. Thanks so much and keep it up.

footnoteMaven said...

Life is good!

Thank you for mentioning my Overstuffed Baby Collection. I am thrilled that I was able to bring a family together with an old photograph.

This is a "powerful" business we're engaged in.

Someday, perhaps I will bump into my GGGrandfather's photograph online. It's out there, somewhere.

Keep blogging my friend!

-fM

Greta Koehl said...

Amen. The longer we are at this, the more frequent it seems to become. So many examples out there in the blogosphere right now of this kind of cooperation and helping attitude (I'm both reading about and experiencing this phenomenon).

Dr. Bill (William L.) Smith said...

Best advise I've seen in a while: "Try geneablogging about them. Blogging is very simple to perform - you type into a box, upload images easily, and attach hyperlinks easily. It does take a time investment, and may become addictive. "

Dr. Bill ;-) Keep them coming, Randy, THANKS! ;-)