A Review of 2009

It was a very productive year for me with more than 375 posts. I certainly didn't come close to completing my wish list for the year however.

I started off the year with great energy! There was a letter published everyday and I started reposting family history articles that were written during my first year of blogging at The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree. I started my series on my Graham line and made some progress there. One of my favorite posts for the year was about Tippecanoe Place, one of the mansions that my great grandfather worked on. I also started doing a Weekly Rewind, a roundup of posts I enjoyed reading during the week.

In February I continued with a letter a day. I had my annual break from the snow and cold with a week spent in Florida and we also celebrated our 25th anniversary. My favorite post for the month was Grandma's Kitchen, written for the Canadian Genealogy Carnival.

By March I had run out of letters that I had transcribed while recovering from surgery so I had to start working again. I did manage to continue posting one a day. For National Medal of Honor Day I wrote about Father Vincent R. Capadanno and Abraham Jay Buckles. I stopped putting together my Weekly Rewind because I was receiving so few comments I felt no one was interested. My favorite post of the month was Princess for a Day.

In April I managed to continue with a letter a day however by the second half of the month that was all I was posting. I did break down one brick wall and that changed the focus of my research for the rest of the year.

Spring fever hit and I spent May and June persuing my other passion, gardening. The letters dried up and there were only fifteen posts over the two months. June was saved when I hosted the 73rd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy: The Good Earth.

I got myself back on track in July with a post written about my great-grandfather's annual Birthday-Indepenence Day celebration Beneath the Oaks. Not a great piece and one I really should expand on. I got back to transcribing letters and researched the Buchanan Fire of 1862 for the 77th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.

August and September were full of letter and document transcriptions. I did have a bit of fun, shared some laughter and spent a lot of time creating a map. The hightlight of September was having Becky come to visit! Behind the scenes I had a conversation with friends about my dissatisfaction with the twists and turns my blog had taken and wrote What Is and What Could Be for the 81st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. This was one of the hardest COG posts I have ever written and also one of my best.

In October I was in charge of our annual Safety Expo at work which took a lot of my time but I still had a great genealogy month. I did a short series on how breast cancer has affected my family. I started on my blog indexing project. While I didn't get back to daily letters I didn't get quite a few transcribed. There were a few by non family members that I did some research on but still have not been able to reunite them with family members. After talking with a few other bloggers I decided to bring back Weekly Rewind. I started the month by writing about the Apple Butter that my family made and finished the month by making my own.

We had a very mild fall and I spent as much time outside as possible with several walks in local cemeteries. There were a few letters and other documents transcribed but no new discoveries. I ended up with a nasty virus through my own stupidity with no real harm done. I have been much better about backing things up weekly since then! Once again the COG saved the month for me. The Seed from which Apple's Tree Grew was written for the 84th edition and was a fun trip down COG memory lane. For the 85th edition I wrote about my great-grandmother Rose, an orphan with two living parents.

I decided to take December off. No letters were transcribed and I merely dabbled online looking for nothing in particular. Rather than follow the crowd and repost my Advent Calendar series from 2007 I choose instead to rerun my memory countdown series from 2006. With that complete I have now moved everything from The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree that I feel should really be included here.

For me, Tombstone Tuesday and Wordless Wednesday really ran their course early in the year. Amanuensis Monday really forced me to transcribe something other than letters and there were many weeks that I participated in Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

A brick wall down, roughly 175 letters and many family stories. A good year indeed!