For those who don’t know, the “52 ancestors in 52 weeks” is a blog writing challenge initiated by Amy Johnson Crow* about five years ago to help genealogists publish their research in an interesting and informative way. Bloggers try to write one post each week. Amy suggests topics for each week, and, although the suggested topics are optional, it had seemed like a good idea to use them.
But, as you can see from there only being two posts in the series here, my attempt didn’t last long.
I soon discovered that trying to write topic based posts when you haven’t carried out sufficient research on the ancestors isn’t very easy. Most of my family history was originally carried out by my parents and, although my intention has been to check their work and add to it (see my Genealogy Do-over posts in 2015), I still haven’t managed that. So my lack of personal knowledge of the research, combined with general “busy-ness” meant the posts ground to a halt.
The “52 ancestors in 52 weeks” challenge is still taking place - you can see all the 2020 topics on Amy’s site, at https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-2020-themes/
And I’ve decided that my lack of research shouldn’t be a reason for not posting, so I am going to take part again. However, with a change in tactics - it’s more important to write ‘something’ than to try to produce a detailed article, which then fails to be posted because it isn’t finished, or isn't “good enough”.
So, I am unlikely to be following all the topics, and posts may sometimes consist of just a brief summary of who the ancestor is and what, or how much, information I currently hold on them. The aim will be to help me, getting the family history better organised, ‘auditing’ where I’m at with the research on each person, etc, rather than worrying about trying to entertain readers. The posts should then serve as the starting points for further research on the ancestors in the future.
It may not be the most interesting or exciting blog as a result, but hopefully will at least ensure the research moves forward.
So we’ll see how things progress, under this different set of self-imposed guidelines.
