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Family History Episode 39 – How to Start a Genealogy Blog, Part 2
Listen to the Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke. It’s a great series for learning the research ropes and well as refreshing your skills.
Family History: Genealogy Made Easy
with Lisa Louise Cooke
Republished July 8, 2014
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Download the Show Notes for this Episode
Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008-09. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.
Episode 39: How to Start a Genealogy Blog, Part 2
This week we continue to explore the world of family history blogging, a terrific way to share your findings, connect with other researchers and long-lost relatives, and pass on your own research experiences. In the last episode The Footnote Maven advised us on how to get started blogging. In this episode I interview TWO more successful genealogy bloggers:
- Denise Levenick, author of The Family Curator Blog and alter ego of “Miss Penny Dreadful,” who writes on the Footnote Maven’s Shades of the Departed blog. Denise will tell us about the origins of her Family Curator blog, and why she feels motivated to write it. And she’ll also share some of her top tech tips!
- Schelly Tallalay Dardashti, author of the Tracing the Tribe blog. She’ll tell us how she got started blogging, and what really got her hooked on it. She’ll tell us about her process for posting articles and how much time she spends blogging, and will dispel the myth that you have to be technically inclined to have a blog.
This episode is your personal genealogy blogging training with some of the best in the biz!
Denise Levenick: The Family Curator
Denise, a native Californian, has worked as an editor and journalist since publishing a neighborhood newspaper in grade school and has taught both journalism and literature in Pasadena schools for 19 years, so it’s no wonder that she took to blogging.
Here are some highlights from my conversation with Denise:
- She says that “each of us is a family curator with responsibility.”
- Use a free downloadable software program called Transcript. I found the most recent version available and described online here.
- She mentions a blog called Family Matters on the Moultrie Creek website.
- Denise mentions Evernote, free software helps thousands of genealogists keep their research organized and their sources (online and offline) at their fingertips. Want some help using Evernote for genealogy? Click here to read some of my top tips.
- She also mentioned Scribefire. (Update: Scribefire is now a web browser extension. Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/scribefire There is also GenScribe here: http://genscriber.com/genapps/start)
Schelly Talalay Dardashti: Jewish genealogy specialist
Schelly Talalay Dardashti has tracked her family history through Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Spain, Iran and elsewhere. A journalist, her articles on genealogy have been widely published. In addition to genealogy blogging, she speaks at Jewish and general genealogy conferences, is past president of the five-branched JFRA Israel, a Jewish genealogical association, a member of the American Jewish Press Association, and the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Highlights from the conversation with Schelly:
- “You don’t have to be a techie to blog!”
- She mentions using Feedburner for headline animation. Feedburner was bought by Google; learn more about headline animation from Google here.
- Schedule blog posts in advance for your convenience.
- Got Jewish DNA? She recommends testing through Family Tree DNA because they have a critical mass of Jewish DNA samples already in their system.
- Genealogy conference recommendation: The Southern California Genealogy Jamboree.
Who Do You Think You Are? Story Website Coming Soon
Findmypast 
in conjunction with Wall to Wall, the makers of the popular television series Who Do You Think You Are? in the United Kingdom will soon be launching a new commercial website called Create Your Family Story. The site will offer a “quick, free and easy way to produce your family story.”
The website’s launch is coinciding with the ten year anniversary of the British program. According to Who Do You Think You Are? magazine’s recent blog post, “the resource will enable fans to enter details of their immediate family and create a personalised ‘episode’ that can be shared with friends and relatives.”
While the website will not be going live for another few weeks still, you can head to www.whodoyouthinkyouarestory.com and sign up to receive news about the launch.
Twins Reunited 78 Years After Separation at Birth
Two women born from the same womb lived their lives entirely separately–until recently, when these long-lost twins reunited.
TheBlaze.com reported on and followed up with a BBC video of the happy reunion. The article says the women set a world record for the longest-known separated twins. The women are likely fraternal twins, but at the time of the article, were awaiting DNA test results.
According to TheBlaze, “Both women were born in Aldershot, England, in 1936. Their mother, a domestic servant, decided to give up one of the girls after their birth father fled. [Elizabeth Hamel, the twin who was not adopted out] said she [the mom] kept her because she was born with curvature of the spine, which would have made it more difficult for her to be adopted.”
The article explains that Hamel grew up knowing she had a twin but never expecting to see her. Eventually she married an American and moved to the U.S. Meanwhile, her sister, Ann Hunt, was adopted and raised in England. She only learned about a year ago that she had a twin.
What a moving story! Ann and Elizabeth sure have a lot to catch up on. And how interesting to see sleuthing skills we use in genealogy–like a search for a mother and DNA testing to confirm relatedness–put into action to strengthen ties among living relatives.
