Sepia Saturday 772. First in what will now be monthly blog posts.
Today marks eleven years since I launched Molly’s Canopy on April 24, 2014, to begin documenting my ancestors’ and relatives’ stories — and for more than a decade there has been an endless supply!
A shout out here to my parents Norm and Peg (Laurence) Charboneau for providing me with a sufficiently diverse heritage — French, English, Irish, Welsh, German, Italian and Swiss — to keep things interesting as I blogged away, placing each ancestor in historical context.
To be honest, maybe my folks bequeathed me too diverse a heritage. Because despite blogging weekly for over a decade, there are still entire family lines I’ve yet to explore and more stories to tell. Which leaves me wondering, “How I can possibly share them all?” A quandary that is not mine alone.
Turning to story
Lately in the genealogy community, and its publications, societies, and workshops, there has been a general turn toward the ancestral story.
New digital tools have become available to help researchers go beyond the records to position forbears in their time and place, and to better chronicle how their daily lives fit into the history that unfolded around them.
Other family historians are concerned with how to pass on their decades of research in a popular and accessible way to future generations.
Then there are genealogy bloggers like me, who have been writing their ancestral story for years and now want a permanent way to share the family history stories they have discovered.
Genealogy by the book
I began blogging eleven years ago because I wanted to write a family history book but found the solitary writing experience too isolating.
Much better (and more fun!) to post stories one by one, receive comments and feedback, and read what other genealogy bloggers were writing. (Not to mention being able to post clickable links to sources.)
In retrospect, this was my best path at the time. Each week, like a family news reporter, I would turn research into story, then into more research — often unfolding an ancestor’s saga over several months in a series of connected blog posts. Step by step, I moved forward for more than a decade and accumulated a substantial body of work.
Last year, I took stock and happily discovered I have enough material for several family history books as well as inspiration for fictional characters in at least two novels — if only I can find the time and discipline to write them! So that is my new challenge.
Molly’s Canopy still has my heart
To switch focus, I reduced my blogging to twice monthly last year. I plan to reduce it still further this year, to once a month, to see how that goes. This will allow me more time in writing groups, workshops, and at the keyboard as I learn to transform blog posts into continuous, thematic prose — both fiction and non-fiction.
That said, Molly’s Canopy still has my heart. Without my blog, which connected me to the genealogy blogging community and my beloved blog readers, I might never have gotten this far or been so inspired to move in a new direction.
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who read my posts and left comments like, “Wow, I’d read a book about that!” To you I say, “Hang in there, a book is coming!”
See you next month. Meanwhile, please visit the other intrepid bloggers over at Sepia Saturday.
© 2025 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.