Wishing You a Happy 2026

    ©  Kathy Duncan, 2026

Oddly, this year flew by even though each day seemed like a week long.

I managed to write 25 posts and have done a lot of research that has not been written up yet. This year, there were 123,781 page views, ending in a total of 392,237. That is not as exciting as it sounds since it is obvious that there are days when foreign entities are sending their webcrawlers to collect data on who knows what. 

This year's most popular posts in order:

1. Elizabeth (Powers) Piper, Plot Twist: This post was probably only popular because there is a famous person also named Elizabeth Powers, so a lot of people must have landed on this post by mistake. This was an important post in my research into James S. Piper's wives. I was happy to uncover Elizabeth's identity with the help of the full-text search on FamilySearch. However, the discovery of her identity indicates that there must be yet another wife, who was the mother of William H. Piper.

2. John Byrum, Bastardy Bond: This post was the most eye-opening one for me. Illegitimate births were more common in this time period than I realized, especially among widows. Unfortunately, most states were not keeping the level of records that North Carolina was. I was eventually able to uncover the identity of John Byrum's out-of-wedlock child and the correct Elizabeth Webb with the help of a group of Webb researchers on Facebook. Of course, I still need to write the follow-up post for that. 

3. Samuel Moore's Connections: In this post, I examined Samuel Moore as a candidate for the father of Arsena Moore and her siblings, and I tracked him back to Pitt County, North Carolina, where I was able to connect him to his parents and siblings. However, I do not have enough information to prove that Samuel was the father of Arsena (Moore) Barber.

My favorite blog posts:

1. Joseph Barber and the Moore Family: This post represented a breakthrough in connecting Arsena Moore to any other Moore. I had started to wonder if she really was a Moore. In the process, I found Arsena's siblings. Now I have a group of siblings looking for their parents. 

2. Nancy (Johnson) Brown and Elizabeth (Johnson) Selvy, sisters: This post centered around my breakthrough in locating Nancy (Johnson) Brown's long lost sister, Elizabeth Johnson. The Johnson name is so common that I did not think I would ever figure out what happened to her. This brick wall was broken down by one of those town gossip newspaper columns that recounted Cade Selvy's visit to his Lacy aunts and uncles in Kansas. Researching Cade Selvy led to his mother, Elizabeth Johnson, and her reunion with her sister, Mrs. J. D. Brown [Nancy (Johnson) Brown]!

3. James S. Piper Goes to Philadelphia, 1876: This little post recounts James S. Piper's trip to Philadelphia to celebrate the nation's Centennial as a representative of the Mexican War Veterans. This is the event for which his medal was created. That medal was the catalyst for my research into James S. Piper, my first cousins' ancestor. James S. Piper and his family have taught me a lot about various record groups.  

In the new year, I have plenty more posts about James S. Piper and family to write up, which is going to be my focus for a while. I also have a lot of information to post about the Selvys and the Brown's son Joel Herbert Brown. Finally, I need to follow up with the illegitimate child of John Byrum.