It’s the start of a new challenge. First presented by Amy Johnson Crow, she put a challenge to all in the genealogy community. Now I have joined the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge!
Today I am rising up to a challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Amy has challenged the genealogy community to write about one ancestor a week for 52 weeks. She provides the weekly prompts and suggestions each week and the individual writers interpret her prompt as they see fit and write/post about that prompt for that week. You can read her original post on 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks here. Follow along as I post my answers to Amy’s prompts from the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. You will read about the many nuts in my family tree! #52ancestors.
I will try to schedule my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks posts on a weekly basis, approximate every Saturday morning. So follow along and find out how many of my ancestors are really nuts! The first prompt for this first week is Start. I am interpreting it as starting with myself and tell you a little about me, but I am also going to tell you why I started researching my family tree. This is the start of my genealogy journey.
About Me
So about me, well I am not going to put anything too personal on here, just some general stuff. You know, security and all that jazz. So here we go! I am the 4th child in a pack of 5 kids. Although my parents divorced when I was 5, I felt I had a great childhood filled with love. I graduated high school with a 2.8 GPA but was working for a 3.0. I really wanted to graduate with the rope around my neck. I was oh so close! In my 30’s I married and had one daughter. Years later I got divorced. During the last year of my marriage, I went back to school and eventually received by bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Years later, I went back to school and graduated with a MBA. This was the second moment that I am most proud of with the first, being the birth of my daughter. I always say that she is the best miracle I ever helped in making! During the time I went to school for my MBA I met a wonderful man and we married a year after I graduated. This is the marriage that I have been hoping for. Its one filled with mutual respect, whole lotta love, and admiration for each others special talents. This August I will have been working at my job (non-genealogy related) for 20 years. My husband and I are thinking about and looking forward to retirement soon. Well that is me in a nutshell.
My Why
As I stated earlier, my parents divorced when I was 5 years old. My mom raised us kids and my younger sister and I saw our dad every Sunday. the only time this scheduled deviated was when my Dad’s family had a reunion. My dad was one of 13 kids and our family reunion started out as birthday celebrations of my grandfather, Tiburcio, in August. The August after my grandfather past is when the celebration turned into family reunions. With the 13 kids and their children and grandchildren, we usually had over 100 people attending. Two of my uncles lived next to each other and the put a wooden gate between their yards so that during the reunion, family members could go back and forth between the two houses. this helped with refrigeration of the potluck food everyone brought and the number of available bathrooms.
On reunion when I was in my early 20’s, my dad re-introduced me to two of my aunts. After we made chit-chat and as we were walking away, my dad asked if I had remembered my Aunts. Unfortunately, because I didn’t see my dad’s family all that often, I didn’t remember them. We both thought that it was very sad that I couldn’t remember them. Shortly after the reunion, I was thiking about my confersation with my dad and realized that not only did I not know alot of my dad’s family, but I didn’t know a lot about my dad in general. So the next time I saw him, I interviewed him. I asked him general questions about him like his favorite color, food, music, ect. Then a few visits later, I moved to questions about his family. As he told me his answers, I got more and more interested in searching for my dad’s family. It was then I was bitten by the genealogy bug. It has been 20+ years since I first started asking about my dad’s family and love the journey it has taken me on. I miss my dad very much and wish he was still around so we can talk more about his family.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope you enjoyed my first posting about 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Let me know if you plan to join the challenge by commenting below. Follow the blog by adding your email address in the box to the right. You will get an email each new post I make. Have a great day!
