T is one of the few letters that I knew right from the beginning what I wanted to right about – annnnd have stuck to it. So for T in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge, I would like to say that

T is for TEDDY BEARS

I don’t there’s too many of us that weren’t given a teddy bear, or something similar as a baby. But how many of you still have your treasured teddy? I know some would, but in asking that question an awful lot of hands would have gone down.

I wanting to share two very special teddy bears with you today – these are heirloom teddy bears.

As has happened many times throughout this Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge already, I changed my mind of what to write about for this letter. I was going to write about the Star of New Zealand ship, but have decided to save that one for another day. So now …

S is for SEARCHING

Putting it simply genealogists are searchers. We are detectives, we hunt down all the clues and piece them together one by one, which ultimately makes our family history, and to help us do this we use the internet, naturally. But with the many, many millions of genealogy websites, big and small, together with all the message boards, forums, blogs out there just how do you find what you’re looking for? The answer is to learn the art of searching … that’s how. Because HOW you search can radically change the results you get, and help narrow your focus.

Behind every researcher there is a great big, huge, pile of reference books that they constantly use to help them along the way. This pile of reference books can start right from the beginning when you are an amateur researcher, and continues right through to the professionals. And just to be clear, I’m not confining this habit of collecting reference books just to family history researchers … but shall go as far as saying that it encompasses ALL researchers, in ALL fields. So for R my post in the Family History Through the Alphabet challenge

R is for REFERENCE BOOKS

Now to bring this topic back to genealogy … well, I for one know that I would be lost without my reference books.

While thinking about options of what to write about for Q in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge, the one word that kept popping into my head was quest. So for my Q post …

Q is for Quest

I really don’t need to tell you all that researching your family history is a never-ending journey – one that takes you places you never thought you’d go (figuratively, and sometimes physically), and leads you to discoveries about your family that is far better that fiction … so I believe ‘quest’ is the best word to describe the journey.