Beginnings....

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge: Week 1 Prompt "Beginnings"

For the past two years, I have been participating in genealogist Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. She believes, as I do, that we need to do more with our genealogical research than simply collect names and documents on our Ancestry family trees. Our research should try to document and explain the lives and choices of our ancestors, and the best way to do that is to write about our discoveries, and to do research about the time and place our ancestor lived to illuminate and contextualize our discoveries. 

So to facilitate this process, Amy Johnson Crow provides 52 open-ended prompts each year, one for each week. My job is to write up a story I have unearthed about an ancestor that fits--however closely or loosely--with the theme. Without this structure, I doubt I would ever have written these stories down, and after my death, my children would have been left with only a pile of photos and a large family tree on Ancestry filled with unfamiliar names, neither of which would have been of interest to them. I am so grateful that I discovered Amy's challenge, and that she has continued to organize it each year.

In 2019 and 2020, I posted my stories on a blog I set up for my side of the family called "Twigs on the Family Tree". But that blog was devoted exclusively to my own ancestors. So far I haven't done any posts about my husband's side of the family. After my success with the 52 Ancestors challenge last year--I completed a blog entry for all 52 prompts, along with five extra blogs--I decided that this year I would start to work on my children's other family tree: their dad's side of their heritage. Hence the name of this new blog: Another Tree to Climb. 

So this is a new beginning--make that beginnings! The beginnings of...

        * A new blog

        * A new year of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

        * And a new direction for my research.

I should note that I will still blog about my side of the tree as well. I will decide whether the prompt of the week best fits one of Bruce's ancestors, or one of mine, and will post to the appropriate blog. 

Here's to an exciting year of discoveries to come!