52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: Secrets

The prompt for Week 22 of 52 Weeks of Personal History & Genealogy, by Amy Coffin of We Tree, and hosted by Geneabloggers, is: Secrets.

Describe something about yourself that won’t be found on any record 100 years from now.

One hundred years from now, you will not find a record of this: I used to be too shy to blog! When I first heard of blogging, I thought that I would never be able to have the skills or confidence to write a blog post. The Archivist/Librarian at our library created a blog about the historical items in our library and archival collections. Before long, I began helping to create posts for the blog at the library, and now it is one of the biggest joys of my time at work at the library.

Terry Thornton saw the blog from our library, and commented on it, and soon we struck up an online friendship. He introduced me to the Geneabloggers group on Facebook. Terry invited me to create a blog for the Graveyard Rabbits. I agreed to this, and then quickly told him “It must have been temporary insanity,” and I decided not to join the blogging world. As time went by, I got braver, and I did create the Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay blog. I so enjoy walking through area cemeteries, taking digital pictures, and researching facts about the people whose lives are honored by the many tombstones in those cemeteries. My family members and friends tease me about how much I love “dead people,” but it is finding those stories about people that I find most rewarding.

Today I ran into the name of Thomas Reber. Thomas Reber was an Ohio Civil War officer, who later moved to Mississippi. Thomas Reber liked Mississippi so much that he wrote a book about the history of Natchez, Mississippi. His personal and military papers are now part of the Special Collections of the University of Mississippi Libraries. I just know that Terry would have gotten such a kick out of that find....we both appreciated that though the Civil War had "sides," we both knew of folks we loved and appreciated from both the North and the South.

I shared this “find” with Footnote Maven, and said that I wish there could be emails to Heaven, so I could share this information with my former blog mentor, Terry Thornton. So, if this message does find its way to Heaven, Terry, thanks for all your encouragement in my early blogging days, and I hope you run into Thomas Reber, who loved both Ohio and Mississippi, just as you and I do!