When the annual A to Z Challenge begins on April 1, 2021, Molly’s Canopy will participate for the fourth time in the month-long blogging marathon. My theme this year is Endwell: My Early Teen Years — where my genealogy journey germinated.
In 2017, I blogged about Whispering Chimneys: My Altamont Childhood, where my genealogy journey began in our Albany County farmhouse — sharing stories about my earliest sense of family and relatives.
In 2020, during the Coronavirus quarantine, I returned to my childhood in Endwell: My Elementary Years to explore how my interest in family, ancestors and heritage germinated once my family moved to the suburbs circa 1957.
In 2021, I am going back again to explore my early teen years in Endwell — rolling out the next chapter of my own story from A to Z at one letter per day (minus a few Sundays) throughout April.
- My inspiration: Genealogy bloggers who wrote about their own lives during previous challenges.
- The rationale: We spend so much time searching for our ancestors and telling their stories that we forget to tell our own. As family historians we owe it to posterity to include ourselves in the mix.
- The urgency: Not as great as last year with vaccines now in play. Yet there are still those COVID-19 coronavirus variants to worry about — so there is no time to waste in getting these stories out there.
Leaving an ancestral diary
Have you ever wished your ancestors had left letters or a diary — some tangible record in their own voice? I know I have, and I don’t want to be guilty of the same omission. So I intend to tell the next part of my own story during this year’s #AtoZChallenge.
My plan is to blog about my early teens in Endwell, N.Y., the Broome County suburb where I grew up with my parents, two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Along the way, I’ll examine how my heritage quest intersected with my early teen years.
- Time: The late early to mid 1960s.
- Setting: A small upstate New York suburban community.
- Backdrop: Malverne Road, a dead end street one block from the Susquehanna River and packed with more than 50 children during the Baby Boom years.
- Players: Me; my immediate and extended family; some of my ancestors and relatives; neighbors, friends, classmates and visitors.
Please take a seat and get comfortable. On April 1 the curtain rises on Endwell: My Early Teen Years. See you then!
© 2021 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.