Sepia Saturday 823 and hopefully a return to more regular blogging.
Today marks twelve 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!
Endless enough that last year I decided to cut back on new blogging to compile some existing posts into a non-fiction book and use others as inspiration for a novel. So one year later, how is that going?
My Civil War ancestor’s story
The inspiration for my blog was my second great-grandfather Arthur T. Bull, who served in the Union Army’s 6th New York Heavy Artillery during the U.S. Civil War.
During the sesquicentennial of that conflict, I began telling his war story in weekly posts — eventually chronicling how I discovered him through family history research, his back story, his post-war life, and his struggle for an adequate pension.
Over time, I moved on to other ancestors and the years flowed by. Yet I wondered whether blogging was really enough to fully capture Arthur’s story. Wouldn’t a book be a better long-term memorial to his life? One family members could have, hold, and share down the generations?
Through the Capital District Genealogical Society, I signed up for a wonderful Writers Group where other genealogists and family historians in New York State’s capital region are grappling with the same issue — how to capture ancestral stories that last over time.
Their monthly facilitated sessions are helping me edit my years of blog posts about Arthur Bull into a footnoted book — a process that is still ongoing.
Fictionalizing a female ancestor’s story
In the course of blogging about Arthur Bull’s wife, my second great-grandmother Mary Blakeslee, I discovered that her mother Hannah (Hance) Blakeslee had left her father Zebulon in 1858 — and he later divorced her!
This discovery came after I found Hannah living separately from her husband in the 1860 U.S. Census and further research uncovered a Montrose, Penna., newspaper story announcing their 1866 divorce.
Following a trip to the Montrose court house in Susquehanna County, Penna., I obtained their divorce records. Unfortunately, they did not tell Hannah’s side of the story, since she had moved into New York State after leaving Zebulon and was beyond the reach of the court’s subpoena.
In 2019, I blogged about their divorce, but intriguing questions remained. Why did Hannah leave her husband? How could I tell her story without her voice — such an interesting tale of a nineteenth century divorce? Well, perhaps I could fictionalize her experience — and maybe make it a mystery!
Thus I embarked on fiction writing — and genre fiction at that — and a new learning curve unfolded. Thankfully, after taking a course in novel planning, a few of us from the class formed an online accountability group, and we meet weekly to bolster one another in our creative writing projects.
Where does blogging fit in?
Which brings me back to the Twelfth Blogiversary of Molly’s Canopy’s. It’s a whole new world when you move from careful citations to making stuff up — and I am still adjusting to the transition.
Over the past year — as I toggled between the documented facts of my ancestor Arthur Bull’s story and the creative fiction of Hannah (Hance) Blakeslee’s tale — Molly’s Canopy clearly suffered.
My original plan was to blog monthly instead of weekly to allow time for other writing — but alas, that did not work out as planned. When I sat down to write this post, I was surprised that I had produced only four blog posts in the past year — well below my projected goal!
In last year’s blogiversay post, I wrote, “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.” That remains true — and this year I hope to do better!
Daily word quotas, dedicated writing time, and connecting with communities of writers are techniques that established authors use to move their work forward. Over the past year, I began putting some of this in place — helped along by a monthly Writers Circle of fellow creatives in multiple genres that dates back to my early blogging days.
My hope for this year is to embrace those techniques in a way that allows me to work on my three projects — a non-fiction book, a novel, and regular blogging — in a way that does justice to them all and still let’s me lead my non-writing life.
Wish me luck and stay tuned!
Up next, “Part 3: Where Uncle Fred served during 1942-43.” Meanwhile, please visit the other intrepid bloggers over at Sepia Saturday.
© 2026 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.
Congratulations on the Blogiversary. Don’t be too hard on yourself but, please, blog occasionally.
As you undertake new challenges it’s ok to blog less often and devote your energies elsewhere. Best wishes for your writing endeavours.
Happy blogiversary! I do certainly miss your blogs, but congratulations on pursuing these 2 very worthwhile projects, along with your blogging! Since you have so many letters on your Uncle Fred and and his time while he served during WWII, are you thinking of writing a book for him as well?
Congrats!!!
Happy blogiversary! And thank you for your update on the status of your projects. Your writing will be a resource to future generations, whether as a blog, historical book or historical fiction book.
Thanks, Ed! Hoping to preserve as much as I can for posterity.
Remember, writing is winning! You’ve got 3 great projects. You can’t wrong working on any of them as you’re inspired. Congratulations on 12 years of blogging!
Thanks, Corrine! Great having you along as part of my novel writing process. Writing is winning, but support also leads to succeeding.
Hi Molly! Moving forward is always a good strategy. I like the idea of books as your vehicle. I love historical fiction and hope you can weave your family details in with history. Just a note that imagination can be thrilling, but wholly inaccurate. My husband’s grandmother created an entire narrative around her life which, through genealogy, was found to be pure fiction. I look forward to your continuing work.
Cousin Barb
Thanks, Barb! That’s exactly why I turned to fiction for Hannah’s story. There is no way to reliably document her actual experience without records, a diary, letters — something tangible to go by. So her story becomes part of the general female experience during that time, which historical fiction could tell. A challenge, but an exciting one.
Happy blogiversary and best wishes as you continue your writing projects! I hope you are able to uncover more about Hannah as time goes on.
Thanks, Marian! I also hope to discover more about Hannah in the writing, or at least more about the environment in which she was living that may have prompted her departure.
I very much enjoyed reading about your blog to book journey. I set up my blog in 2010, partly inspired by a blog being set up at my work, and also by an article in a woman’s magazine. I think blogging is an excellent way to start writing bout our ancestors. For my part I was, even at school, not good at creative writing, so I moved from blogging to writing family narratives about my ancestors, particularly in “bringing women out of the shadows”, so your story of Hannah had immediate appeal. Good luck with your other projects which I look forward to reading.
Thanks so much! I indeed hope to bring Hannah out of the shadows, at least as a strong fictional character. Stay tuned.
I’m looking forward to your next blog featuring Uncle Fred & where he served during the war. 🙂
Don’t worry, there will soon be more about Uncle Fred and where he served during WWII.
Life would be boring if we didn’t explore new things! Congratulations on your blogiversary, and good luck with your new endeavors. 😊
Thanks, Elizabeth! And you’re right about new things — challenging but definitely not boring!
As we say in the blogging world, thank you for sharing! Having read your stories on these ancestors, Molly, both of your projects sound like very worthy projects to expand. I look forward to how you progress.
As it happens, I have been considering a change of directions, too, as I approach my #800 blog post in a couple weeks. Like you, I’ve learned a great deal from blogging but I feel that some of my stories deserve a different and expanded treatment. A few weeks ago I had coffee with an author and journalist who I had met at a book talk a few months ago. He has written several lengthy histories on subjects like the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the Revolutionary Battle for Norfolk, VA. I was excited to learn that he lived just a few houses up my street and I had already met him casually in the neighborhood.
I want to quiz him about how to market my idea for a book (or books) that focused more deeply on my longer photo stories. While he was encouraging for my writing, I was discouraged to learn how long the process of getting a book published actually took. Even selling an idea for a book to an agent or publisher seems very daunting. He was also discouraged himself with how the demise of magazines and journals, not to mention the rise of A.I. material on the internet, has changed how people read.
I’m not giving up, as I still feel my research on my eclectic photo subjects has merit, but I’m torn with how best to present them. This summer I hope to organize myself to decide which story or stories I want to expand. I’ve even considered historic fiction as another route. All this is to say that it was bloggers like you, Molly, that inspired me to find the stories hidden in old photos. Thank you, and keep us posted on Sepia Saturday.
Thanks for this, Mike. You should definitely take the book plunge. The musical focus of your blog would certainly attract a niche audience for a book (or books) on the same topic(s) — particularly with so many amazing photos from your collection!
Good luck with all of your projects!
Thanks Kristin! I hope you take the book plunge one day as well. You have such a rich ancestral legacy.