Blogging since 1999

Today (16 March 2011) marks the 3rd anniversary of the day I started blogging here on blogger as benotforgot . . . two years ago, on my 2nd blogiversary, I wrote about some of my blog firsts in THIS post . . . but . . . if you go by the following definition of a blog, I guess you could say I've been blogging since 1999 . . .

blog - website that allows users to reflect, share opinions, and discuss various topics in the form of an online journal while readers may comment on posts. . . . Entries typically appear in reverse chronological order.

1999 is the year I started setting up various free surname-specific sites at myfamily . com* . . . and I was basically doing there exactly what I do now . . . when myfamily . com* started charging for their sites a few years later, most of my individual blogs were allowed to sort of fade away . . . sponsors did step forward for a few of those sites . . . and the links below show which of my surname-specific blogs at myfamily . com* are still [as of 2011] alive and well . . . [*myfamily . com is defunct as of 2014]

rockdale . myfamily . com
27 April 1999
posted 1st news item

robertsgill . myfamily . com
15 June 1999
posted 1st news item

nettleswest . myfamily . com
26 June 1999
posted 1st news item

usmississippians . myfamily . com
28 June 1999
posted 1st news item

benotforgot . myfamily . com
04 January 2000
posted 1st news item

rhs1970 . myfamily . com
30 July 2000
posted 1st history item

journal . myfamily . com
08 January 2001
posted 1st news item

gonetotexas . myfamily . com
11 September 2001
posted 1st news item

bencoracing . proboards . com
August 2003 is when I started "blogging" at proboards to keep track of my late husband's racing results [retired]

benotforgot . proboards . com
January 2004 [retired]

gonetotexas.proboards.com
October 2004 is when I set up a proboards site for the purpose of posting about my genealogy on a site that was NOT password-protected . . .

 







benotforgot.blogspot.com
aka benotforgot.com
16 March 2008 is when I started posting on this blog about some of my ancestors . . .

benotforgot-calendar.blogspot.com
14 March 2009

rockdale-myhometown.blogspot.com
24 April 2009

benotforgot-journal.blogspot.com
16 January 2010

benotforgot-photos.blogspot.com
07 January 2011

So . . . while I've only been here on blogger for four years now . . . by the definition given above, I've actually been blogging for 13 years . . . with no plans to stop any time soon . . . e-y'all later . . . Vickie E. . . .

Wordless Wednesday :: Where I Blog

Where do YOU blog?

Click anywhere on the collage
to enlarge the image.

On this date . . . the 16th day of March

FYI . . . each link opens in a new window

On this date in our family history . . . the 16th day of March . . . in the year 1559 . . . Sir Anthony St. Leger dies . . . and on the same date . . . in the year 1583 . . . Daniel Horsmanden is baptized in England . . . and on the same date . . . in the year 1655 . . . Nathaniel Merrill dies in Essex County, Massachusetts . . . each of these gentlemen is currently believed to be a great-grandpa of the Keeper of this family history blog . . . and each of them individually was featured in a separate blogpost on the 16th day of March . . . in the year 2008 . . . the day this blog went live . . . most of the blogposts from the first year consisted of excerpts from various publications available for viewing online at Google Books . . . which were posted on the anniversaries of a variety of significant dates in the lives of our kith 'n kin . . .

• Almost exactly one year later . . . on the 10th day of March . . . in the year 2009 . . . They Were There for Each Other was compiled and posted as my very first entry for footnoteMaven's Smile for the Camera . . .
  
• A few days later . . . on the 13th day of March 2009 . . . Ripples in the Pool of Life became my Tribute to Women for my first entry in Jasia's Carnival of Genealogy . . .
  
• After almost one year of blogging here at benotforgot . . . on the 14th day of March 2009 . . . I decided to set up another blog . . . benotforgot-calendar.blogspot.com . . . where I began posting a daily listing of all of the births (deceased only) and deaths and wedding anniversaries of all of the people hanging out in my family tree . . .
  
• On the 16th day of March 2009 . . . the 1st blogiversary of benotforgot . . . I blogged about my first year of blogging . . .
  
• On the 18th day of March 2009 . . . a very young version of my Uncle Bob . . . running on the beach in Lynn, Massachusetts . . . was highlighted in my very first Wordless Wednesday post . . .
  
• On the 24th day of March 2009 . . . Texas wildflowers in a country cemetery were featured in my very first Tombstone Tuesday post . . .
  
• On the 18th day of April 2009 . . . I ventured into the world of Randy Seaver's weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with a quickly composed poem entitled Begotten & Never Forgotten . . . as it turns out, Randy is a distant cousin . . . Randy's 8th great-grandparents, Aquila Chase and Anne Wheeler, are also my 10th great-grandparents . . . and they are the 7th great-grandparents of the poet, e.e. Cummings . . . and the 6th great-grandparents of 1st Lady, Mrs. Grover (Frances) Cleveland . . .
  
• On the 24th day of April 2009 . . . I posted my first entry for Marie Reed's Postcard Friendship Friday . . .
  
• And then on the 20th day of May 2009 I composed an entry for the very first Postcard Festival . . . hosted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault at her Canadian Family blog . . .
  
• On the 5th day of November 2009 . . . the premier issue of Shades the Magazine hit the digital stands . . . artfully conceived and compiled by the infamous footnoteMaven . . . and included was my very first Captured Moments column . . .
  
• On the 16th day of January . . . in the year 2010 . . . another benotforgot blog went live . . . benotforgot-journal.blogspot.com . . . highlighting the daily entries from a 150 year old journal that talks for almost seven years about an assortment of the kith 'n kin from our family tree . . .
  
• On the 17th day of January 2010 . . . I made my first Sentimetal Sunday post . . . about Missing My Dad . . .
  
• On the 22nd day of February 2010 . . . I was humbled and honored when notified that benotforgot had made the final cut for Family Tree Magazine's Top 40 Genealogy Blogs . . .
  
• On the 12th day of March 2010 . . . I submitted my entry for the very first Carnival of African American Genealogy . . . and . . .
  
• Also on the 12th day of March 2010 . . . I drove to Austin and my Mom and our cousin, Grace, and myself spent several hours with the real live original of the Journal (referenced on the 16th of January) at the Center for American History . . . and then we sat outdoors under the trees at Central Market . . . and we dined on apricot chicken salad sandwiches with a pile of fresh fruit on the side . . . and we drank peach mint tea . . . and we people-watched . . . and listened to the birds . . . and we chatted . . . and I made the comment that, "If I didn't have all these ancestors, I wouldn't have anything to blog about." . . . and Mom quipped right back with, "If you didn't have all these ancestors, you wouldn't be here!" . . . cute, Mom!!!

Soooo . . . that's a blog in March of 2008 . . . and another blog in March of 2009 . . . and yet another blog in January of 2010 . . . wonder what else I can blog about?

2011 update . . . FYI . . . I did indeed find something else to blog about . . . started a photo-a-day blog in January of this year . . . with the first post appearing on the 7th day of January 2011 . . .

Oh yeah . . . I'm also now blogging about the history of the small town near Austin, Texas where I grew up . . . and where assorted kith 'n kin have resided since before Rockdale actually became Rockdale in 1874 . . .

See also . . . Blogging since 1999 . . .

Top 40 :: Humbled and Honored

Congratulations to each and every blog nominated for the Family Tree Magazine list of 40 Best Genealogy Blogs. This blogger was extremely humbled and honored just to be nominated this past autumn (thank you, to you-know-who-you-are) . . . and never thought for a minute that benotforgot would be in the top 40! Thanks and {hugs} to each and every individual who took the time to vote, and helped benotforgot make its way into this illustrious company of geneabloggers.

As of just a few days ago, it has now been six (6) years since the word combination benotforgot popped into my head, and I immediately purchased the domain name, benotforgot.com . . . and it's almost two years since I made my very first post on this blog. Just about this time last year, in celebration of one year of blogging on this blog, I set up a 2nd blog . . . benotforgot-calendar.blogspot.com . . . where I post a daily listing of that day's events from the limbs and branches and leaves of my family tree (plus a few other trees in the surrounding forest). In January of this year, my 3rd blog went live . . . benotforgot-journal.blogspot.com . . . where I am making a daily entry from a 150-year-old civil-war-era journal that frequently mentions several of my ancestors. And the absolute highlight of all of this?

Making The List of  

• P.S. I tried to keep this Top 40 collage generic enough in case any of the honorees want to use it for something . . . you're welcome to it . . . enjoy . . . and congratulations! V.
• P.P.S. And thanks to Family Tree Magazine and Diane Haddad and Maureen Taylor for organizing the nominating and voting for this list, and for compiling the information and the write-ups about each Top 40 blog. There are soooo many wonderful genealogy blogs out there, so I know that was an awful lot of work! 
• P.P.P.S. Regarding benotforgot, they wrote that . . . "Vickie Everhart profiles relatives and relates her research in this beautifully designed blog. Memorial images accent each posting on a family member and each begins 'On this date in our family history …' We especially like the archive links organized by century, so you can read posts about family events during the specified time frame."
  

BeNotForgot ~*~ 1st Blogoversary ~*~

Today . . . March 16, 2009 . . . marks the one-year anniversary of the date on which I posted my very first item here on blogspot. This blog came about because I was searching for a convenient method of sharing our family history tidbits from Google Books, and this was the final choice. It was a good one!

And to celebrate my total enjoyment of this blogspot site, I set up another one over the weekend -- benotforgot-calendar.blogspot.com -- where I will strive to post from my family history files on a daily basis the anniversaries of that date -- whether they be birthdays or anniversaries of birth or marriage or death.

Thanks to the community members who stop by for a visit once in a while -- and y'all come back now, ya hear?

P.S. The "wordle" in the above collage was created at wordle.net. Randy Seaver over at geneamusings.com told us about this fun little word generator. I'm still playing!