Redwood Retro

I have been having so much fun turning all my family history into a series of blogs. I find it a much easier and more interactive way to share my research. I love that I can add a post and share something exciting that I have found much faster than editing a website. I can post a photo in real time from an old cemetery and get reaction or questions about the post right away, something I couldn't do with a traditional website. I do plan to add a little more creativity to my blogs. I think I play more with the layout and features than I actually post at the moment. The amount of photos and records I have to scan are unreal and I want to make sure the layout is easy to navigate to find everything. Google Patents I have added a post on my Blakely blog about my great grandfathers inventions . I knew about the inventions from a newspaper story but I didn't know that my grandfathers drawings and patents existed on Google Patents. I found the link during a random name search

After more than 20 years of researching my family tree and procrastinating about publishing it, I have finally decided to turn my research into a series of blogs. I have far too much information to cram into a book and seeing that most of my family is online and on social media, doing it via blogs seemed to be the most logical way to go. I am going to do a blog for each main branch of my tree starting and I am starting with my maternal grandmothers side.  I have just started putting the first one together so check it out and let me know what you think.  http://bainthorntongenealogy.blogspot.ca/

I am in the process of scanning and retouching all of my war photos and keepsakes to make into a slideshow for various family members. So many family members served and my goal to to tell the story of every one of them. The person I am drawn to the most is a relative named Bill Blakely. His mom (my gr aunt) was a single mother during WWII and it was just the two of them. He was killed in Germany in 1941. I have a ton of his pictures and clippings about him but have no one to pass them on to. He had no children or siblings and anyone who knew him personally is long gone. Each remembrance day it is Bill that I honor and pay tribute to, just to keep his memory alive. I am trying to learn more about who he was as a person but I do not have much to go on other than a box of photos.

Added a new page this week of wartime advertisements from Canada . The ones I have added so far are all WWII and are from Canadian newspapers. I have also started scanning election and political ads and hope to have a page up soon.

I have started adding Vintage Canadian Travel related ads to my pioneer advertising blog. Most of these are steamship ads from the early 1900's.

I have started to transcribe photos of headstones I recently took at St Thomas Anglican Church cemetery in Belleville. It is a work in progress. Some of my photos are hard to read so I think I will have to take a few trips back and try to decipher some in person. To learn more about this cemetery and see the photos click here . Supposedly there are a few ghosts who hang out there so I think a nighttime trip is in order this summer.

I have started to update my page on Canadian Vintage advertising.  Most of these are from Ontario newspapers that I have collected over the years.