Do you have an ancestor or two that you are totally fascinated by? And by that I mean you spend ten times as much time on just that one person, than you do for whole other branches. Well I do. I have two of them in fact, and great grandpa Otto Rafael Winter is one of them.

I have written before about Otto Winter (see the links below), though not for a while as I’ve not done much research on him for quite some time, but I have recently come across a ‘new-to-me’ photo which I think may be him.

Anyway back to my fascination and a little intro: So why him? Well possibly because he’s from Finland for a start, as opposed the most of the rest of my ancestors who were largely from the UK, so researching him has been quite different. But also because there’s so few photos of him, and he wasn’t a diary-keeper, he’s always seemed a bit of a mystery. 

I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like sitting down with an old photo album and flipping through the pages, wondering about people, the places, and life as it was back then … reminiscing. And any historian and/or genealogist know that learning about the history of a region where your family (be it YOUR own family, or the generations before you), is such an important aspect of it research. But just how do you find out the history and people of a town or area?

Well until relatively recently there’s been two options. Firstly look around to see what books have been produced on the area and try to track them down, either through libraries, or secondhand bookstores), or secondly visit (or write if you’re not local) the genealogy or historical groups that are in the region.

Spring is here, and after having the wettest winter for eight years or so in in South Australia, you can imagine that everything in my garden is growing like crazy. So now is the time to be outside out in the garden. I’m no gardener. I don’t make any claim to be. I’m the type of person who likes to plant things, and hopes for the best. And as about 50% of what I plant lives, I think I’m doing ok. 😉

Given that I live on a 1 1/4 acre property, with about half of that being garden, and the other half bushland it’s too much for Mr Lonetester and I to manage as we both work fulltime, so we have a gardener. But at the moment we’re between gardeners, and in the meantime the weeds keep multiplying, I’ve been making an effort to get out there and stem the tide.

How did you get into blogging? It is an interesting question, and one that I do get asked from time-to-time. So today I thought I’d write the story down publicly.

Blogging was something that I never wanted to get into … yes, I know, I know … says she who is now rather addicted to it. But it is true. It was decided (though not by me) that my work needed a blog, and I was given the task of being the writer for it. I did start off very tentative wondering what to even write about, and what would be useful to let people know about, as well as figuring I didn’t have any interesting news to tell people …