Seventeen Years of the Nutfield Genealogy Blog

Seventeen years ago I was writing short sketches on local history for a Londonderry website. I submitted the stories each month, and learned that I was part of something called a community "blog". It was easy to do, and I thought "I can do my own blog" and so I started Nutfield Genealogy on July 27th, 2009. The first story I wrote was about my long time brickwall ancestor project that started in the 1970s when I was in high school - all about my great grandmother's stories that we were related to a Queen in Hawaii. I remember being very nervous about pushing the publish button. The rest is history (pun intended). The first people to read my blog were my mother and other other family members. I remember being quite shocked to learn that complete strangers were reading and commenting on my blog posts. Who were these people? That experience was weird, but fun. And even more fun to learn that some of these strangers were distant cousins. Making cousin connections is still my favorite part…