One Rhode Island Family

I asked my blogger friends on Facebook and Google+ to let me know about a favorite post from their own blogs that might interest my readers.  These are the posts, and I really enjoyed checking them out; I hope you do too.

• Bill West made a fortunate find of his gg-grandfather’s reminiscences in Jonathan West of Upton, Maine, from his blog West in New England.
• Bernice Bennett sent a post from her fairly new blog, “He Woke Me Up This Morning”.  I LOVE a post that tells a whole story, which is what you’ll find in What’s In A Name in which she reveals the process of taking a parent’s remark and turning it into a thorough genealogical search.
• John Tew of Filiopietism Prism has chosen a Rhode Island-based set of posts concerning the 1840′s voting rights controversy in Rhode Island known as the Dorr War.  Echoes from the Dorr Rebellion: The 1842 Aplin/Carpenter Correspondence (featuring his article in the NEHGS publication American Ancestors) and What Is A Dorrite? The 1842 Aplin/Carpenter Correspondence chronicle his ancestor’s experience as a “Dorrite.”

From the book Early Rhode Island

• Constantly Surprising Me, From California to Massachusetts is Barbara Poole’s contribution from her blog Life from the Roots. Digging deeper for the real story can yield amazing results.

• A bittersweet moment is captured in September 23, 1942 – Red letter day (Roscoe) in the WW2 letter blog by Deborah Sweeney, Genealogy Lady.

• Blogger Carol A. Bowen Stevens Found Those Hiding Turners, Yes, I Did, FINALLY! and reported on what she found on her blog Reflections from the Fence.
• Debi Levy Austen gives us a countdown of her Top 10 Genealogical Finds of 2012 on her blog Who Knew?  What a great idea, and a very entertaining read.

One of Debi Austen’s top 10 finds from her blog post, above. Photo courtesy of Debi Austen.

• Randy Seaver (who just celebrated the 7th birthday of his blog) answered a reader’s question in a recent post Dear Randy – Why Does LDS Church Exert So Much Control over Genealogy?  Randy offered an informed, intelligent evaluation of the state of things, and there was some additional discussion in the comments. His blog is Genea-Musings.
• A couple of recent posts were submitted by Magda N. from GenealogyWorks.  I liked her take on Zen & the Art of Genealogical Maintenance and her spirit of gratitude in Do you know what your ancestral home looks like?
• Pam Seavey Schaffner offers an interesting tribute to an aunt she is too young to remember in Fearless Females Blog Post: March 1 ~ Favorite Female Ancestor.  Her blog is Digging Down East.  

• Midge Frazel has updated her blog post on the cemetery kit; I have gotten some very valuable ideas from this post on her blog Granite in My Blood: 2013 Cemetery Kit.  
• Andrea Kelleher has a story about one of those surprising connections we sometimes find, in her posts about Dave Sampson a True Riverdale Character – Part One and Part Two.  Her blog is How Did I Get Here, My Amazing Genealogy Journey.
• I always love how Linda McCauley tells you the whole research story on her blog Documenting the Details.  This time it’s Uncle Elvie’s Story Part One and Part Two.
• Thanks to Lynn Palermo of The Armchair Genealogist for her story telling insights and advice in Turn Family Lines into Story Lines.
• You may find an ancestor in Heather Wilkinson Rojo‘s story of the Free Soil Rally, Boston, held in 1850. Heather did!  The list and story are in her post Free Soilers in Boston on Nutfield Genealogy.

In closing I would like to make a recommendation of my own; that you enjoy “History Radio Live Every Thursday at 1:00 EST”, on Marion Pierre Louis‘ radio show, Fieldstone Common.  The shows are also recorded for listening any time, and you currently have 30 or 40 to choose from.  Nothing improves your research more than understanding the times, places, and situations in which your ancestors lived.

I have learned some things from perusing these posts, and I hope you do too.  To contribute your own blog post to the next edition set for fall 2013, write to me at the email address in the side column giving your name, the title of your blog, and a link to the post.  thanks!

The post you are reading is located at: http://http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2013/04/17/the-bloggers-best-spring-2013/

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I asked my blogger friends on Facebook and Google+ to let me know about a favorite post from their own blogs that might interest my readers.  These are the posts, and I really enjoyed checking them out, and in fact I learned a lot.

• Lynn Palermo of The Armchair Genealogist, who has a special interest in helping people write their family stories, suggested a post that has been very helpful:  A Writing Tool that Adapts to Every Kind of Genealogist.
• Sara E. Campbell shared with us a chronicle of her remarkable aunt Mary Meeneghan from her blog Remembering.
• Christine Woodcock sent Tombstone Tuesday -and the Travels of a Taphophile from her blog Genealogy Tours of Scotland.
• Heather Wilkinson Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy had a helpful post last Spring concerning an important  issue to those of using a variety of social media in our genealogy: Pinterest, Ancestry, and Copyrighted Images.

• Bill West shared the lovely story of his grandmother Aggie from his blog West in New England.  From the early days of his blog (2007), there are just some stories that are written in your heart long before you start a blog.
• Debi Levy Austen sent Veteran’s Day 2012 – My special veterans edition  from her blog Who Knew?  Debi is an excellent writer and storyteller. 
  
• True Lewis of NoTeS To MySeLf has two lovely posts which introduce her new blog fairly well: I’ve Been Thrown Into the Threshhold of Blogging! and The House That Built Me, about what family history means to her.
• John Newark of Transylvanian Dutch: Genealogy and Family History shared August 31, 1902, about a family wedding at The Great Synagogue, London, in 1902.  Reading the post, you can just see his curiosity growing, and the more he knows, the more he wants to keep exploring.  I think we can all understand that feeling.
• From her blog Reflections from the Fence, Carol Bowen Stevens shares the rather amazing story of her great grandmother, Lorena Estelle Eley Norsworthy Dews Harlow Lenahan Collins.  That makes how many stories, here, of incredibly strong women who took care of everything?
• Top Ten — Brick Walls is Barbara Poole’s contribution from her blog Life from the Roots. I love this idea of posting top brick wall problems; Barbara is even offering a reward!   Heather Wilkinson did something similar on Nutfield Genealogy, and I have such a post which has already brought me one success story (to follow soon).
• When you read Andrea Kelleher’s heartfelt series Thank Goodness I Began My Blog Part 1  –  Part 2  –  Part3  from her blog How Did I Get Here?  My Amazing Genealogy Journey   YOU WILL BEGIN BLOGGING IMMEDIATELY.

• Laura Cosgrove Lorenzana offered a post she wrote while attending the National Genealogy Society 2012 conference in Cincinnati, Friday Funny – You’re Supposed to USE What You Learn at #NGS2012?  I think it gives a lot of insight to the conference experience from sessions to blogger pix to stepping out for a bit of research (armed with newfound knowledge!) in a local repository.  It’s from her blog, The Last Leaf on This Branch. 
• Jenny Lanctot of Are My Roots Showing? has done an amazing job with a project of transcribing an index of some vital records from the Church Registry for St. Columbia (South Dakota) Parish Church (includes the Yankton townships of Walshtown, Mayfield, Idylwilde, Jamesville (Sigel)).  There are about 20 posts for this, but see A – L and M – Z for a quick check.
• Erica Voolich has some news for her children, revealed in her recent blog post Contrary to my Kids’ Assumptions, I’m only 2.1% Neanderthal! from her blog Erica’s Adventures in Genealogy.  As I read more and more about the DNA testing, I am getting curious.
• And lastly from Pam Schaffner of Digging Down East comes a well-told story about a bygone industry in her family – ice harvesting and delivery – The Ice Man Cometh – Arch Hamilton and the Orange Independent Ice Company.

I have learned some things from perusing these posts, and I hope you do too.

To contribute your own blog post to the next edition set for April 2013, write to me at the email address in the side column giving your name, the title of your blog, and a link to the post.  thanks!

The post you are reading is located at: http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/12/15/the-bloggers-best-selections-winter-2012/

Images from (in order) Dover 1565 Spot Illustrations and Motifs CD-Rom and Book, Dover Full-Color Old Time Vignettes CD-Rom and Book

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1. Choose the right theme.  When you choose a theme, be aware that the pages, menus, colors, and navigation vary widely from theme to theme.  Since on Day One of blogging you barely know the difference between a page and post, it can be hard to choose wisely.  Things to look for:

• will posts go in one column or two, or even more?
• will widgets go in one column or two?
• which side are the widgets on?
• where will comment links go?
• where do the widgets (custom pictures, links, menus, and icons) go?  Are they limited?
• can you choose the text colors for the header?
• can you have a header graphic?
• what color will other important text go in?
• are all “Pages” linked up top, or down the side?
• is the date of each post really prominent?  Do you care?
• do you like the bullets?
• If your blog is not too old and set in its ways, preview some new themes by using Appearance -> Themes -> and under one of the other themes, click Live Preview.

2.  Customize the background.  If the background can be edited, you have two choices:  choose a solid color, or add an image.  If you add an image, you have several choices for “tiling” vs. “not repeating” it.  I made a collage in Picasa for the background, which I saved in sepia and faded by adjusting the light settings in Picasa.  I ended up having to make my image quite small to get the tiling to look right. See tip 5 for making a collage.

my background. Its true size is about twice this big.

3.  If you want people to subscribe…  Take a good look at your blog’s main page.  Is it perfectly obvious how a reader should subscribe by a feed, and email?  There should be a total of three or four such links.  Use the Follow Blog widget and also RSS Links widget, and anything else you can think of.

4. It’s your side column.  Why not use it?  If you are displaying enough posts to make a very long initial screen, you can also use more of the side column, too.  Widgets are unlimited in my theme.   So I created one that displays a feed of other people’s blogs, that are in my Google Reader.  On WordPress.com, this is called the “RSS Links” widget.  How did I get that RSS feed URL?  Just opened that section of my RSS feed and copied the URL from the browser.

RSS feed of recent posts from my favorite genealogy blogs, in my sidebar

5. Place a custom image in your header.  If your theme has a header image, you can replace it by using “Header” under “Appearance.”  I find it easiest to create my own collages in order to get the size, color, pictures and text that I want in a header.  I do this in Picasa, which is free software.

• Open Picasa, choose the picture or pictures you want from your computer, and once they are in the tray, click the “Create photo collage” button.
• Once in Collage, under Settings choose an arrangement.
• Most arrangements allow you to re-arrange pix by clicking on a picture and you can change the angle, and scale the size, with that handle.
• You can move pictures off to the “Clips” box, or back on again.
• Under Page Format, make a custom size to match what’s needed in the blog header (find that size under Appearance ->  Header back on your blog screens).
• Choose background, etc.
• “Create Collage.”
• This throws you back on an edit screen where you can add “Text.” Choose a font in a large size, but remember once typed, the text should be grabbed by the handle and enlarged.
• Text has a filler color and a border color for each letter.  When setting text colors, hover over the colors to watch them change on your collage.
• Save the collage.

6.  Comments are good, but contact is good too.  Of course you will encourage comments.  But sometimes readers, particularly unknown relatives, will want to contact you directly and it’s awkward for them to do that as a comment on a post.  Try to give a way to email you either on your sidebar or on your About Me page.

7.  Customize your favicon.  Wait, what?  The little W that appears as the tiny bookmark and tab icon  in a browser can be customized by adding a picture to the General Settings page under Settings.  Once uploaded, a 16 pixel square version appears as the tiny icon.

100 pixels

16

8.  What more can you do on the About Me page?   Your main blog page is for everybody.  Your About Me page, however, is for new readers who might have an interest in knowing more about your blog and your research.  Use that page to add messages about your business, your family history, your favorite causes, whatever.  I figure people looking at it are probably fairly new to my blog, so I link to a few of my favorite posts, which they probably missed.

9.  Pictures + text = post.  I believe that blog posts should be attractive and easy to read.  I’m sure I don’t always meet that goal, but I try by placing pictures throughout the post, with captions.  Believe me, plenty of readers just like to look at the pictures and captions.  Sources of pictures include your own photos (see Marian Pierre-Louis’ post on taking lots of pictures) and out-of-copyright photos by others.  One source of such out-of-copyright images is the Dover Publications CD-Rom and Book “electronic clip art” series.  Alternately, you can scour the web for your own pre-1923 publications and use a snipping tool to copy images to your own computer.  For instance, if I was writing about the Battle of Gettysburg, I would search Archive.org, and look through the pre-1923 books that came up, for suitable images. Readers like it better if you give a source for each picture.

from Dover Full Color Men and Women Illustrations CD-Rom and Book

10.  Avoid accidents.  It happens to every blogger.  You are sitting bleary-eyed blogging away at midnight, and instead of saving your work, you post it.  That half-finished post, which you might have decided later is mindless drivel, has now been emailed to your subscribers, and put on the RSS feed of your feed subscribers.  There’s nothing you can do about the email, and you can’t actually remove it from the RSS feed by deleting it, but since the RSS feed will give the most CURRENT version, most bloggers will copy over the text to a new post, and delete all the text from the old post, and change the title to something like – “Sorry – accidental post.”  I avoid this altogether by scheduling each post, at the time I begin it, for three years later.  Since I almost always blog ahead, I have to adjust the date before posting anyway. I learned this the time I posted “10 Free Rhode Island Resources” when I had only entered 8 so far (I later added one more, making it nine).  Ah, great moments in blogging!

The post you are reading is located at:  http://wp.me/p1JmJS-K4

Eleazer Arnold House, c. 1693. An example of a photo I took myself, from the street. Of course, it later turned out I wasn’t a direct descendant of Eleazer Arnold. But I still like the picture.

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