Follow Friday: Branching Out Through the Years

Branching Out Through the Years is one of the great “story-teller” genealogy blogs. Even many of the photos have the nugget of an intriguing story, such as a child’s encounter with a glass bubble or with a cat, or the picture of a “Modern Day Garden Warrior.” My favorite stories are the ones about “The Hero,” hummer’s late husband (the latest is “Sentimental Sunday: The Hero and His Wonderful Car”). What a character, what a man! Oh, but the Bandit stories are wonderful, too. So I guess you could say the very, very best stories are about The Hero and Bandit. Hummer sees the humor and the grace in all of life’s situations (such as in her post “Trees”). She is leaving a wonderful legacy for her children and grandchildren, but we are privileged to enjoy it, too.

This Week

Check out the 2nd Edition of the Carnival of African-American Genealogy hosted by Sandra at I Never Knew My Father. Sandra has done a wonderful job and the submissions are superb!

At Portals to the Past, Irish Mason tells about learning of the life led by her great-grandmother through listening to a taped interview made by a cousin in “Sentimental Sunday – Great Info & Insights – Great Grandma on Tape.”

Sue at It’s a Long, Long Journey writes of the effects mental illness has had and may have had in “Tracking Mental Illness in a Family” and “How Do You Walk Away from 12 Children?”

Brenda Joyce Jerome at West Kentucky Genealogy Blog gives some good advice on “Preparing to Visit Cemeteries.”

Talk about an intriguing mystery! Check out Nutfield Genealogy (again!), where Heather has posted “The Carole Brinkman Unsolved Murder Mystery.” On top of that, the connections that I mentioned in last week’s “Follow Friday” continue at Nutfield Genealogy; read about it in “Cousins Collaborate (and more relationships appear!)”. (Spoiler alert: There are also connections to Barbara at Life from the Roots and Carol at Reflections from the Fence).

Deborah at Help! The Fairy Folk Hid My Ancestors! recommends "Don't Let Empty Branches on Your Tree Stop You from Visiting Ireland!"

In “Connecting Straight to Margheim” at Grace and Glory Becky writes about a strange coincidence she discovered in her research – and elicits a lot of responses recounting similar strange coincidences!

Ruth has some good (and affordable) advice on the "Care and Feeding of a Gravestone" as well as "Family Foundations" at Genealogy is Ruthless without Me.

Happy 3rd Blogoversary to John Newmark at TransylvanianDutch!

Happy 1st Blogoversary to Tracy at The Pieces of My Past!

This week I started following these blogs:

Adventures in the Family Tree

A Family’s Story – Horse Thieves and All (that could so be my family’s story!)

Family Trees R We

Personal Corner

To Karen at Ancestor Soup, deepest condolences on the loss of her newborn grandson.

A bit about the format of Follow Friday:

The idea for “I started following these blogs” was “adopted” from Cindy’s Everything’s Relative - Researching Your Family History. The blog review is something that has been around the Genea-Blogosphere for a while and is promoted by Genea-Bloggers. The list of articles under “This Week” started out as a list I was keeping of blog posts that inspired/prompted me to talk to the computer (= my family thinks I'm crazy) or even write down a “Note to self: Expand on eight-sentence comment you made on so-and-so’s post and put it in a post.” When I didn’t get around to writing the posts in question, I started mentioning them in Follow Friday – at first just a few mentions each week. Many excellent new genealogy blogs have started up or come to general notice, and now there are usually about twice as many posts in my weekly lists. John at TransylvanianDutch kindly includes my Follow Friday in his “Other Weekly Lists” list, but I should note that his “Weekly Genealogy Picks,” Randy Seaver’s “Best of” at Genea-Musings, and Apple’s “Weekly Rewind” at Apple’s Tree are much more thorough and represent a wider sampling of blogs than my list does. Still, I get so many ideas and so much inspiration from my fellow genealogy bloggers that I certainly want to acknowledge them, and Follow Friday may be the easiest, most enjoyable post I do each week.