Memories on Monday - A Review of 2008

The last year certainly didn't play out as planned, yet it was was a very good year!

January started with my quest for more information on my Wisner line and the hunt for the elusive parents of William Wisner. A huge highlight of the month - and year for that matter! - was when one of my pages was featured at WeRelate. I was also very pleased with the series of lectures that I attended at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. One of my most commented on posts, Winter on the Tug Hill, was also written in January. I finished up the month having a blast with my float in Bill West's Genealogy on Parade.

February and March were dismal months with only 16 posts over two months! Things started to turn around at the end of March with the Cars As Stars! edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. For me this was the most fun CoG to date!

April was a very exciting month for me and while I didn't write very much I certainly accomplished a great deal! I traveled to Michigan where I found a Treasure Chest left for me by my grandmother and aunt. What a week that was! I photographed hundreds of letters, visited my Aunt and Uncle, found the graves of many ancestors and was thrilled to meet Jasia and Cheryl in person!

The focus of Apple's Tree really changed in late May when I started to post transcriptions of the Wisner and Hall family letters. In June I continued to focus on the letters as my gardening passion took most of my time. I was able to tie gardening to genealogy with Heirloom Blooms. The garden and letters battled each other for my time into July and August. I did write about my $60,000 stage coach ride and footnoteMaven is responsible for my addiction to Wordles! I started Memories on Monday both to record my memories for my grandchildren and to have something here other than the letters!

September was an awful month. Another school year began and I was consumed by the murder of a student. She wasn't one of "my kids" but she lived quite close to me. I also took the Child Passenger Safety technician course. Despite these things I did finally start to get back on track by participating in the Carnival of Genealogy, the first edition of the Canadian Genealogy Carnival and the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture.

October was a crazy month and their was little time for genealogy. I posted the last letter in the Wisner - Hall series and there were a few weeks with no letters at all. The big safety expo was a success, the house was insulated and sided, we bought a new car and I tried to get as much done before my surgery as I could.

Things really picked up here in November when I couldn't get up. Surgery went well and I used my recovery to type like crazy. I started on a new series of letters relating to the Camfield family. I have been able to post one a day and expect the series to last well into next year. I had fun playing with satellite images, I discovered another cache of family letters, and I was honored to be a guest author at Shades of the Departed. I was able to start following many new-to-me blogs and still had time to get tons of research done on my Graham line.

Earlier this month I was able to break down a brick wall for my brother-in-law. There were carnivals and memes galore. I'm still ahead on the letters and have ones scheduled to post well into next month. More Graham information has been found but I think I'm still a long way from proving suspected relationships. My computer died on Christmas day but hopefully it can be repaired and in the meantime I have backups I can work from.

All in all 2008 was a very good year! Hopefully I will be able to keep up in 2009.