A Fresh Start to my Blogging Activity

I have take the plunge and signed up for the 2020 Challenge of "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks", with the first prompt -  "Fresh Start".

 

How do you remain focused when researching and writing your family history?

• Do some ancestors appeal to you and become almost "living, vivid potentialities, whilst others fail to capture you interest and are one dimensional - little more than names and dates? 
   
• Are you inspired to write by some ancestors more than others?

I  have to confess - I am a flitter, jumping from one aspect of my family history to another, easily distracted by another blog, or Facebook feed, or news of an interesting website, plus  reading, replying and deleting e-mails, and other aspects of life getting in the way.

I am also aware that the majority of my blog posts relate to my mother's side of the family, where I have a fascinating collection of photographs and   it has proved easy to identify engrossing  stories on their lives, ranging from bequests in early wills, a bastardy bond, extended large families, remarriages, a step mother, business ventures and tragic First World War stories.  It is all too easy to recycle these blog posts.

The result, I have ignored other branches of  my family and many  topics on my "to do" list  have been there far longer than I care to admit, despite various short- term attempts to be more focussed.

But as a former boss was fond of  pronouncing  - "It is not a question of 'having no time' but how you manage the time you have".  

So I am setting myself a personal blog prompt - 

Friday will henceforth be Focus Friday,

when I will set out to work only on my three main targets.

•  Research and write about the females in my family - e.g.my maternal great great  grandmother Elizabeth (Calvert) Danson and my paternal great grandmother  Matilda (Simpson) Matthews, (below).  The information I have so far on Matilda's background is rather murky, complicated by her mother and grandmother having the same Christian name.
  

• Research in more depth and write up my father's Weston and Matthews family narrative. This is my " far more shadowy" ancestry, as I am finding it  difficult to get beyond the basic names and dates information to discover some interesting stories.  For reasons of geography,  I had far less to do with   this side of my family, have only a cousin as a contact and very few photographs to help me gain a picture of them.  
  
  
  
   
  My paternal grandparents - Albert Ernest Weston (1876-1945) and Mary Barbara Matthews (1876-1.  This is the only photograph I have of my grandfather Weston,  taken  after my parent's wedding in 1938.  
  
  

• Finish the final part of my husband's family history narrative - this section is on Donaldson Sidelines with the surnames Hawkyard,  Iley White, Hibbert, Armitage  and Moffet. They were mainly mariners or miners from South Shields on Tyneside in the north east of England .  Again I have already drafted most of this narrative on the computer, but need to focus on the final family names and the writing of blog posts.   Below is a photograph of John Robert Moffet, master mariner, supplied by an Internet contact.  This is the only image   I have of my husband'mariner ancestors who faced storms at sea as part of their daily lives.
  
  

  
  

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  So there we have it in black and white!     
  

  Hopefully this resolution  will help me come to grips with my self-imposed "brick wall" on action and make a FRESH START! 

  
  
  

  Watch this space for more blog posts on my (almost forgotten) ancestors.

  
  

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