After a somewhat half hazard attempt at writing and posting regularly I have decided to try some new things in 2018 to help me stay on top of the things I love to do.
Today I want to share the first change I am making related to my genealogy searching and writing. In a Facebook group I came across a post that was shared about a genealogy challenge call 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks by Amy Johnson Crow. At first I thought there is no way I could do that. The more I read about it the more I thought I needed to give it a try.
You can find the challenge at www.AmyJohnsonCrow.com/52ancestors , if you are on Instagram search the hashtag #52Ancestors to see others post.
I have done challenges for house cleaning, purging and organizing. I even participated in a Photo challenge or two but nothing with regards to genealogy or writing. I am excited to get started.
Here is how it works, at the beginning of the month we are sent prompts for each week. Each prompt is specific yet vague (that is totally possible right) so there is plenty of room for us to interpret it in our own way.
Week 1 (January 1-7) prompt is: Start
When I decided to commit to this challenge I wanted way to organize my thoughts for each prompt. My first step was to create a printable that could fit into my planner. I think this will be a great help for me to stay on task.
As I took notes for this week, my mind immediately went to when I STARTED my genealogy journey. My first introduction to family trees and ancestry was back in middle school. In science class as we talked about traits and genes, we also documented our family tree noting physical traits that have been passed on.
A year after I graduated college I discovered a class called “Write Your Life”. I signed up and while not directly genealogically related it did help in writing and documenting family stories. It was this class that started me out on a journey to gather stories and pictures to document.
My father was the second source of fuel for me. One day while searching for randomness on the internet he happened to GOOGLE my name. Most of the results were for other Jessica Green’s but one stood out. As I worked my way back to the home page of this site I realized that what I had was the paternal genealogy of my biological mother.
It was here that I signed up for Ancestry.com and really started delving in. I now have two trees (biological and adoptive family) with a total of 3657 individuals and counting.
I am doing this because I love history and stories and I want to share my people’s stories.
Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him…Colossians 2:7