Blogoversary!

Blogoversary!
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

As I mentioned, I have had a blogoversary. What exactly IS that you might ask? It means that you have been successfully blogging at that particular blog for a number of years.

As you can see by this screenshot from my iPod, the community of genea-bloggers recognizes that I have been blogging nearly every day about my gravestone adventures with my ancestors and other people's ancestors too.

As an author or co-author, I have a number of years behind me writing books about educational technology. It is that writing that I consider to be helpful with writing a blog. My knowledge and confidence with technology gives me the background that I need for this 21 century writing. The difference is that I get paid to write books and not to blog. This celebration of a blogoversary is the payment of sorts.

Planning a gravestone adventure, doing your homework before you get to the gravestone location, being there at the right time of year, manipulating the equipment, taking photographs of all sides and the area, backing up the photographs and studying the gravestones is the "pre" work before the research of the dead folk. Finding other people who may have been descended from that person who can't stand in front of it due to living distance is just part of the process. Sometimes, I have waited four years just for an email or blog comment thanking me for my effort. I have has several this week alone. I try to follow up on EVERY question I get.

Sometimes the information matches up with the preliminary research and sometimes it is back to the drawing board to see if I can find out why the evidence and the sources doesn't jive. Naturally, I like the gravestone to be a confirming piece of evidence. Dead people can't write their own death date on a stone.

I have watched over this four years how experts are placing the information on the stones, the age and placement of the stones (in a family) with more importance that the secondary source it was considered to be. With more data comes better research overall.

With more people finding gravestones, photographing them and sharing them with others, genealogy evidence and citation is improved.

That is reason to celebrate, don't you think?