Nicknames are often a shortened version of a given name or, frequently with men, a surname. My close friends and family call me “Nik”. Everyone else calls me “Niki”. My mom calls me “Nicole” when I’m in trouble – still. Sometimes, she throws in my middle name for good measure. Thankfully, I haven’t heard that…
January 6, 2025. Today, we woke up to two inches of snow on the ground. That wouldn’t be too bad except for the massive ice storm that came through yesterday. Our fluffy snow was sitting on top of an inch or more of solid ice. Ice is sitting heavily on trees and power lines. We…
I didn’t know I wanted to go ancestor hunting until my sophomore high school French teacher threw a family tree project my way. At 15, I was already a self-proclaimed history nerd, so the history part of the assignment had me hooked. But when it came to actually putting together a family tree? Total blank….
This isn’t so much a recipe or genealogy post, rather a “let’s get this 2022 party started” post. When Amy Johnson Crow launch her 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge in 2014, I jumped at the chance to share my family research with, well, a small audience. That was about three months after I…
I have always enjoyed participating in Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. This year, I’m putting a food heritage spin on the 2020 themes and writing monthly instead of weekly. Week 3 of this year’s 52 Ancestors challenge is “Long Line”. This, like many of the weekly themes, can be interpreted in…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The 2019 Week 1 challenge is “firsts”. There are a lot of “firsts” in genealogy … the first moment you fall in love with family history … the first time you break through a brick wall … the first unsolved mystery you uncover … then solve! There is…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 10 challenge is “Strong Woman”. I grew up listening to my daddy tell stories about his French fur trapper ancestor – a great-great-grandfather named Joeseph Lemaitre. We went on wild adventures as he narrated the 19th-century fur-trade. I had images…
Every time I go somewhere and see a pressed penny souvenir machine, I dig for 2 quarters and a shiny penny. I’ve done this ever since I was a kid. It began as a child’s fascination … sometimes a challenge to crank the machine … and is now something I love adding to my collection….
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 7 challenge is “Valentine”. When JD and I were married, my dad presented me with his grandmother’s wedding ring. It was my “something old” to wear on my wedding day but he meant for me to keep it thereafter….
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 6 challenge is “favorite name”. One of my favorite things about genealogy is discovering names and naming patterns that have been used throughout my family’s history. The farther back I reach, the more unique and sometimes unusual the names…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 5 challenge is “In the Census”. When I was a kid, it was hard for me to think of my grandparents as anything other than grandparents. My grandpa was 55 years old when I was born, my grandma was…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 4 challenge is “Invite to Dinner”. Food has always been a central part of my life. From holidays to family celebrations to culinary travel adventures, food is part of my identity. When I was growing up, dinnertime was a…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 3 challenge is “Longevity”. As defined, longevity means long life or long existence. Today, looking for inspiration, I asked Noodle if she knew what longevity meant. She just turned 11 so I didn’t expect a “yes”. I didn’t get…
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 2 challenge is “Favorite Photo”. My Time Machine The hallway in my house is like a time machine. One that takes you back 150 years through family photos, old cookbooks, and little trinkets that represent various lives well…
I’m at it again this year … 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, thanks to Amy Johnson Crow. The theme for week one is “Start”. Oh, so many ways to interpret that. But we all start somewhere … The Start of it All I was 11 years old when I fell in love with history –…
I love that Amy Johnson Crow has given us themes for the 2015 52 Ancestors challenge! This week (week 15) is “How do you spell that?”. Ha! I have a lot of short, easy surnames in my family tree – Moore, Davis, Douglas, Lindsey, Jones. I also have a few like Lemaitre that have a…
Just one photo. Is that really all I get to pick for week 14 of 52 Ancestors? Too bad. I’m picking two! Each photo is of my great-great grandparents, Jake and Anna Mueller. Jacob Mueller was born in 1870 in St. Clair County, Illinois to Jacob and Dorothea Mueller. Anna was born three years later in…
“Same” is the theme for week 12 of the 2015 52 Ancestors challenge. I’m always fascinated at how characteristics and features get passed to us from our parents and grandparents. Every now and then, I come across a photo of an ancestor that sends me into utter shock because of a family resemblance. The “sameness”…
The week 11 theme for the 2015 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Luck of the Irish”. I don’t really have an ancestor that fits the theme … we’re of Scottish and German heritage and, while the Celtic route would still sort of fit, I decided to focus in on family tradition this week in light of…
Stormy Weather is an apropos theme for the Week 10 52 Ancestors Challenge. It’s March and, in southern Illinois, we would normally be headed into spring and well on our way to “tornado season”. Not this year … our only two snow storms of the winter have happened in the last two weeks. They’ve been…
I initially had trouble deciding about whom to write given the week 9 52 ancestors theme, Close to Home. I live in the same area where my ancestors on all sides have lived for as many as 200 years … so everyone is close to home. Then it hit me. I was moving some books…
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Good deeds … the 52 ancestors week 8 theme … is an easy one for me. When my grandpa would tell stories about his family, his grandfather, Thomas James Rains, would always enter the tale. There are many characters that intertwine in stories of the Rains family, so I will…
Love is an apropos theme for week 7 of the 2015 installment of 51 ancestors … the week of Valentine’s Day. Of course, the theme draws me toward ancestors who fell madly in love with their spouse and lived happily ever after. Well … that would be too predictable. On Saturday, February 12, 1910, two…
Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small gave us a new 52 Ancestors challenge for 2015. Each week, we have a different theme about which to write. It’s quite the challenge, but I love meeting it and reading how everyone interprets each week. Week six is “so far away”. “So far away” conjures many things … the…