Two today!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I nearly missed it. This blog’s second birthday, today, November 10th.

In fact it was the wonderful Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers who reminded me in his Blogging Beat. Thanks, Thomas – here’s a virtual birthday cake for you and the lovely people on Twitter, Facebook etc who’ve wished me a happy 2nd blogiversary.

A lot has happened since my first anniversary.

I’d just started looking beyond Nicholas Delaney, my Irish rebel and convict ancestor who got me started on genealogy. I was enjoying scrambling up and down other branches of the family tree, and to my surprise my first post about Sarah Marshall (Sarah Simpson) is now the most-viewed one. That’s probably not because it’s brilliant, but because of the great interest in her supposedly haunted grave. Still, the other posts about Sarah are viewed a lot, too.

Old photo of my mother

Another branch that beckoned me away from Nicholas was the story of James Thomas Richards, a Thames waterman who was transported for stealing a till. I’m glad I followed him up, because I pieced together a story which pleased and surprised my mother, who’d started on his trail along with our cousin Geoff a while ago. It feels good to have been able to share it with her before she died.

Something else I showed her not long before her death was the surprising news that Nicholas Delaney had possibly been murdered. Like me, she thought it a sad end for such a vigorous and enterprising man.

After she died I stopped blogging for a while, but eventually I was able to come back and post a tribute to the woman who started me on my genealogy journey.

Image © Tammra McCauley via Flickr

So now I’m not a baby blogger any more, but a two-year-old toddler blogger (togger?), what direction should I go in next?

I’ll keep on doing the new things I’ve done this year. Like going to the National Archives at Kew, London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Library, not just for records but for their fascinating talks.

I’ll look at Sarah Marshall, John Simpson and James Richards more. I don’t know if  I’ll blog about the more respectable other side of my family as it might be too much of a diversion, but I’ll keep hunting them.

And I plan to take part in Amy Houston’s Trove Tuesday meme, and do Trove transcriptions, more. As well as other genealogy blogging prompts.

But the most important thing I’m looking forward to is finding out what you would like to see on this blog. More about New South Wales? Or Ireland? Or London? Or convicts? Historical background as well as genealogy? I’d love to know what you want to read about.

If you’d like to start genealogy blogging there’s a lot of help and advice around. Here are some tips for new geneabloggers.

 

 

 © Frances Owen and A Rebel Hand, 2010-2014