Fresh Start - Week 1 of #52Ancestors

Last year, my fresh start for genealogy was actually get back to actively researching my family history. I updated software, explored all sorts of online sites with sources I'd never imagined I could access from home, learned a bit about DNA, realized how bad some of the research I'd done years ago really was and attended my first genealogical society conference in years.

Now having seen how the world of genealogy has changed since the last time I really spent time researching, I can't wait to see where my love of research and family history takes me this year.

I've always said I just wanted to research and really didn't have much interest in writing "THE BOOK". But now I've realized there are ways to share what I'm learning without having to feel like I need to write a definitive work on any subject.

So my Fresh Start for my genealogy in 2020 is committing to sharing what I find.

I'll be participating in Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project. Each week, there is a writing prompt for me to think about and share something. Most weeks it will probably be a post here on my blog - other weeks it may just be something I share in a FB group I've set up for my family - or even something I share on Instagram or Twitter. If you'd like to follow my posts on my blog - just click on the #52Ancestors label in the left hand column.

In addition to writing about what I find, I'm also planning on digitizing and sharing family photographs and documents.

I'm lucky, many of the family photo albums and other "stuff" has come or will be coming down in the family to me. We have family photos back to the 1860s (and maybe the 50s), letters from the 1840s, scrapbooks from the early 1900s, research from previous family historians and who know what else.

The first set of photographs I've digitized and am researching are a series of cabinet cards my great grandfather William Lucas Hankins saved from when he attended Keystone Academy in Factoryville, Pennsylvania in the early 1890s. There are 15 photographs in the set - most have at least some identifying information on the back - which lets me identify the person and learn a bit about him. My hope is that as I share the info and photos on the blog - family members of some of these men will discover photographs of their ancestors and family members they've never seen.

You can see the photographs from Keystone Academy by clicking on the Keystone Academy label in the left hand column.

Thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoy learning a bit about my family this year.