Monthly Archives: July 2014

52 Ancestors Challenge: Week 30 Recap

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52ancestors-week30Week 30 – can you believe it?!

Leaving links to the posts in the comments seems to be working well. Let’s keep it up.

As for my posts, life has continued to be very hectic. All good, just busy. In fact, I’m heading to Indianapolis this weekend for the Midwestern Roots conference, where I will be presenting a workshop on using Ancestry.com and 4 lectures (“Finding Females,” “How Do I Know That’s My Ancestor,” “Final Residences: Researching Cemeteries,” and “Researching Your Civil War Ancestor on Fold3.” I hope to see you there! (And I hope to be back to writing next week. So much to write about!)

Also, be sure to go back to the Week 29 recap to see all of the posts that were written last week. Who knows — you might find a cousin or two in there!

Leave a link to your 52 Ancestors Challenge post from this week in the comments below.

52 Ancestors Challenge: Week 29 Recap

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52ancestors-week29The first week of doing the weekly recap via the comments seemed to have worked! Thanks, everyone, for being flexible in this new way of doing it.

Be sure to take a look at the Week 28 recap and see all of the great posts listed there!

By the way, when you leave a link to your 52 Ancestors post, leave the URL for that specific post, rather than to your blog. For example, for my post about John McClelland, I would use the URL http://www.nostorytoosmall.com/posts/retaliation-ohio-frontier-john-mcclelland/ rather than just http://www.nostorytoosmall.com. This is important because when people click through to read that specific post, they want to go right to it. If you’ve posted several things since then, it may not be at or near the top of your blog’s front page. Just something to think about.

Anyway, on with the recap! Leave your a comment with a link to your most recent 52 Ancestors post below.

52 Ancestors Challenge: Week 28 Recap

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52ancestors-week28Here it is — the first of the new way of doing the weekly recap. (Well, not totally new, as this is the way we did it in early June.) Due to the length of time it takes to put together the recap (several hours each week), I can’t put it together like I’ve done in the past and had to make a change. Hopefully this new way will work for everyone.

(No, there was no recap for Week 27.)

If you’re participating in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge, please leave a link to your post from the last week in the comments below. I suggest you put the name of your ancestor in ALL CAPS to make it easier for others to scan through.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I realize that I’m still behind in posting my own ancestors! It might take me a couple of weeks, but I will get caught up.

And with that, let the posting begin :)

Changes to the Challenge

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52 Ancestors in 52 WeeksAs you might know, I’ve been contemplating some changes with the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. Specifically, what to do about the weekly recap. It takes several hours each week to compile and, though I enjoy doing it, I simply don’t have the time that I can devote to that.

Instead of me compiling the weekly recap, I’m going to do like I did while I was away in early June. I will publish a post each Wednesday morning and everyone can leave links to their 52 Ancestors posts in the comments.

Two suggestions when you leave a link:

  1. Put the surname in ALL CAPS to make it easier for people to scan through the comments. (You want to make it easy for cousins to find you!)
  2. If you have more than one post in a week, leave each link as a separate comment. My spam filter tends to put things with multiple links into the spam folder.

Thank you for understanding the need for this change. And keep writing! That’s what this is all about!

Decisions, Decisions

Posted in 52 Ancestors Challenge, Musings on by .
I need to decide which way to go with this...

I need to decide which way to go with this…

I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to write this post. I was hoping that I was imagining things, but I know that I’m not.

You might have noticed two things here on No Story Too Small. First, I haven’t been posting anything except the weekly 52 Ancestors recap. (And in the last several weeks that I was posting something other than the recap, the only topic was my ancestor for that week.) Second, I’ve been routinely “late” with posting that recap. My self-imposed goal of posting it on Wednesday morning slipped into Wednesday evening and then Thursday…  Well, here it is Thursday night and, to be honest, I haven’t even started the recap.

I hate the idea of not doing the weekly recap. A lot of you have told me that you look forward to it every week and that you enjoy reading all of the stories that people post. I do, too! Several of you have even made connections with cousins you didn’t know you had before. (Me, too!)

But I also know that the recap takes several hours each week. I have a full-time job and several volunteer projects that I have obligations to. I have enjoyed putting together the first 26 recaps (well, 24 if you don’t count the two weeks I was on vacation and had people leave links in the comments). But as much as I’ve enjoyed it, it has absolutely consumed my available blogging time.

I hate the decision that I think I’m going to have to make.

I’m posting this not to elicit sympathy, but to be honest with all of you — my readers and the contributors to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge — and to let you know that there may not be any more weekly recaps as they have been.

52 Ancestors Challenge: Week 26 Recap

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52ancestors-week26Week 26. You know what that means — We’re halfway there!!

I had another crazy week of travel. I was home for six days before I had to head to Las Vegas for the American Library Association’s annual conference and then to San Francisco for a couple of days in the office. I almost opted not to post a recap again this week, but it’s the halfway point of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks — how could I miss this recap?!

Though I didn’t miss the recap, I did miss posting my own ancestor… again. (sigh) I’m not setting a very good example.

Wishing everyone in the U.S. a very happy 4th of July! And here’s to the next 26 weeks of ancestors! May they be as full of discovery as the last 26!