At the beginning of this year, I began to receive feedback from family and friends that they were not receiving my posts by email when they were published on a Friday. I tried to understand the problem, but not only could I not solve it but it really was, to paraphrase one of my favourite radio shows from the 1960’s, beyond my ken.
When I started this blog, I chose WordPress because everything that I read about it, and was told about it, made sense.
How on earth I have achieved 4 years of posting on my website without a problem, I shall never know. Unless you are not technically challenged, WordPress and its mainly American community of online teachers, can be challenging and confusing.
Consequently, my regular subscribers have not been kept up to date with my stories, unless they have regularly visited Instant Cousins.
So, as a way of taking stock of stories this year and to, hopefully, celebrate the restoration of the subscription service, I thought I would help readers touch base with some of the stuff they have been missing.
The most interesting new category of posts that I introduced in January is The Wordsmith. My brother Peter died four years ago. His career was built upon over 20 years as a journalist. At the height of that career, he was a Parliamentary Lobby Correspondent. His family have no copies of his journalism because it was all pre digital. Now I have discovered much of what he wrote in the British Newspaper Archive. You can read the first post about Peter here.
My subscription to the British Newspaper Archive has been coming up with not only much of Peter’s political journalism but also valuable source information about other, distant, and sometimes unknown, family members.
The second area of interest, which has been generated by my wife’s cousin on her maternal side of the family, is about the Welsh family. They originated from Ireland four generations ago and came to live and work in Ayrshire in the iron ore mining industry during the 19th century.
The second generation settled in Saltcoats, and this is where my wife’s grandmother, Rachel Welsh was born. There is an interesting seam of stories to be told, and I started with this mystery about Williamina Welsh which may not have been a mystery but a love story instead.
My stories became a bit thin during the year, mainly because of the email blip but also because of other things in life that interrupt me. Now that you are receiving posts again this will hopefully generate energy for me to find new stories for you. Some of them will be previous stories that have been or will be worth revisiting when new information, documents and photos come to light.
So, I hope you enjoy visiting Instant Cousins and if you don’t already subscribe please do – it’s an incentive for me to write.
With kindness to you all and hope for all our future generations of family relatives
David
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