Well here I am getting started at the end of the week, but none the less I am starting out on my very own 52ancestors journey. So many noteworthy things occurred after my previous blog post in June 2017, but you never heard about them here because I dropped the ball. And I am deeply sorry about that. My hope is that with this 52ancestors series I will share with you some of my research finds as they are hot off the press and of course there will be some from the archives as well, but the point is that they will be shared here.
The theme for this week was simply to start and as with all themes to interpret the theme as you wish. So for this first post I’d like to step backwards to one of those highlights in 2017 that I missed blogging about in real-time.
Nigeria.
Last September I took a trip with my family to visit my husband’s family in Nigeria. It was my first time traveling to Lagos and our children’s first as well. The experience as a whole was so exhausting that I am still wiped out from the excursion. However, one of the highlights of this trip was finally having an opportunity to force folks within my husband’s family to chat family history. No one ever seems to have time, but meeting face to face always seems to produce better results. And a few really good things occurred because of this trip as seen in the picture included here.
The first being we all took a trip to Iperu, where the family originates for as long as anyone can remember. The torrential downpour that took place during this brief visit really hindered a trip to the cemetery and the old family home, but we did see the church the family would attend. My husband’s grandfather pictured above was the son of a man who was very instrumental in bringing Christianity to the area. The second was that my husband finally brought home some old family photos like the one of his grandfather attached to the church photos.
One of my goals this year or next is to produce a multi-generation family history book starting at my husband and working my way back on both sides of his family. Basically it would be the same type of work I put together for my family history, but for his family and mainly for my children. I likely will not be able to go back a complete five generations as I did with my own family book, so I really hope to create a robust set of family stories with what ever may come way from my husband’s family.
Big hopes for 2018! Let’s see how this plays out.