Five years of genealogy blogging

It’s my fifth blogiversary this week. I can hardly believe I’ve been geneablogging for five years!

So much has changed since then. I started out posting so that I could add new information which wasn’t available when my mother and I wrote a book about our ancestor, Nicholas Delaney, the Irish rebel and Australian convict who built some of New South Wales’s first roads and settled down as a respectable farmer.

Then my genealogy research expanded and so did the blog, taking in more convict ancestors, John Simpson and Sarah Marshall. My post about her grave is still the most visited one.

I branched out again to my last convict James Thomas Richards, a Thames waterman who robbed a pub.

Then my mum Patricia, my genealogy inspiration, died. I could have given up, without having her to share my discoveries with. A big part of the joy of genealogy had been  hearing her thoughts on new insights.

Geneabloggers are wonderful

But I wasn’t alone – the genealogy community was out there and they rallied round.

The best thing about blogging has been the people I’ve met, online and in person. Geneabloggers are wonderfully generous and supportive. And they – you – inspired me to go on. Thank you.

Victorian murder

I went hunting for James Richards’ wife, Rebecca Harrington. I missed being able to tell Mum about that. And Rebecca’s mother, Julia Harrington, led me to a Victorian murder which I’ve been blogging about this year.

That was an experiment, and I didn’t think it would go on as long as it has, but I found more and more fascinating stuff I just had to write about. And I ‘met’ some great historians online as I was researching Celestina Sommer, born Christmas.

I’d like to apologise for the long delay since my last post. A combination of dying laptop, long wait for new PC, broadband troubles and working more hours took me away, but it’s time to give this blog a bit of birthday love and care.

What would you like to read?

So what next? I’d love to hear from you. Would you like more of the social history type posts, like the ones about Celestina? Or do you prefer more family history ones? And I’ve neglected my other ancestors on this blog – the Owens, Lloyds, Davieses, all from Wales. Is it time for Welsh geneablogging?

What do you think?

Image of hand by woodleywonderworks * CC by 2.0 via Wikimedia, slightly cropped