Welcoming 2024

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2024

Once again it is time to say goodbye to one year and hello to the next. 

Here is a look at 2023 in review. The year ended with 204,317 page views, which was an increase of 52,449. It would be amazing if those figures were accurate. However, they are not. This year foreign bots were trolling the internet and driving up the page view count. There are ways to filter those numbers out, but that is beyond my expertise.

This was not a very year productive in terms of writing new posts. I only managed to write and publish twenty-one. Of those posts, the three most viewed were as follows:

1. Daniel A. Lewis, Son of John D. Lewis. This post was a continuation of my Lewis family research. Daniel is one of the most controversial since family researchers are not in agreement over what happened to him after his first marriage. 

2. Squire Brown, Brother of Issac S Brown. This was one of my favorite posts. I was able to link Issac S. Brown to at least one other family member other than his own children. As a result, I was contacted by another Brown researcher who has a photo album containing photographs of the Brown family, including my husband's 3X great-grandmother, Catherine E. (Hay) Brown. 

3. Wiley Lewis, Son of John D. Lewis. This was another in a series of posts on the children of John D. Lewis. Wiley turned out to be one of the most interesting of the Lewis sons. He appears to have been a good person who lived large - probably a little too large for his father's approval.

My favorite posts for the year, in no particular order:

1. Mollie F. Brown's Photo Album was a favorite because identified photographs are so difficult to find. Plus, this experience gives me hope that more photographs and family bibles are out there waiting to be shared.

2. Joseph Rutherford Cawthron Returns on the Wheaton was a favorite because it added so much more information to what seems like a small event - a brother's body returned for burial in the U.S. 

3. The Bedside of M. P. Kelley was a favorite because newspapers continue to be one of the most valuable research tools available to us. This small clipping told me that my 2x great-grandfather, M. P. Kelley, had been sick for a few months before his death and that his family was traveling to visit him. 

Even though this has not been the most productive year in terms of publishing, it has been a very productive research year. I have been researching my cousins' ancestor who was a Mexican War veteran. At first, there was not much information about him, and it seemed like not much more could be learned about him. Then the floodgates opened. And I do mean a flood of information. He has turned into the most interesting individual I have ever researched. He is teaching me more about research strategies. Right now, I am organizing and refining the information that I have and plan to write about him in the new year.