2021 in Review

 

2021 is another year heading for the record books, unfortunately more due to disasters than for anything positive. Fingers crossed that 2022 will be a year that we can get back to something approaching "normal". In the meantime, here is a review of the topics covered in my blog posts in 2021.

As the year began, I was writing the story of my maternal grandfather, HS Chambers. My first blog posts for the year were inspired by the creative nonfiction work that I was writing about his immigration story and also by the research I had done on his family line which took me back to Northampton. I was able to visit that county in person in the 2000s and carry out research in local archives.

By March I was taking an NGIS course about non-conformist religion in England which led to posts about religion and about the many opportunities for genealogical education.

In May my interest was caught by World War II and how it had affected my family. This led to a plan to read all the books about WWII in my personal library. It turned out to be a bigger task than I thought. I'm still working my way through them.

By August I was thinking about travel, combining a trip to Victoria with looking up a directory entry for a place where my mother had lived at one time and also the place where she had worked. At that point I was also looking ahead to trips planned for 2022.

Towards the end of the year, the topics became more varied, inspired by the weather and books that I read related to genealogy or my family lines. I had also moved on to the planning stage of writing about another ancestor, this time my great grandmother on my maternal line.

As in years past, there were posts about DNA, although I don't seem to have made much headway on genetic genealogy. There is one aspect of genealogy that I have found of particular interest. That's epigenetics, which is basically the turning off or on of gene expression. I hope to explore more about this in the coming year and see if I can find out how it may have affected some of my ancestors.

Images:

Pier 21 in Halifax

Yelvertoft First Congregational Church

180 Shooters Hill Road, a tobacconist’s shop like it was when my grandfather had his shop in that location around the time of WWII

The Hudson’s Bay store in Victoria where I believe my mother used to work

Silhouette of my great grandmother

Books about epigenetics