The Puckerbrush Blog Award for Excellence

It is indeed an honor to have received this award from Denise Olsen at Family Matters, Gini at Ginisology, and Harriet at Genealogy Fun. Thank you, ladies, one and all.

Terry Thornton at Hill Country of Monroe County Mississippi created the Puckerbrush Blog Award for Excellence last month, saying:

In honor of our absent friend, Janice Brown, whose delightful blog Cow Hampshire continues to inspire through all her archived articles, is my attempt to recognize a few writers and their blogs ---those I consider the best in the blogging world and whose work has influenced me the most.

In a comment, Terry explained:

On any land allowed to go fallow and left untended, a wild assortment of wild plants grow --- in some areas, this wild growth results in such a thicket of plants that it is almost impossible to push your way through the growth.

So it is with the growth of blogs --- so many that it is impossible to read them all. But in the puckerbrush eventually a few plants/trees become dominant and influence all who view them through the thick surrounding puckerbrush.

And it is those outstanding blogs whose influence spreads beyond just the surrounding rabble of puckerbrush that I'm honoring.

Sadly, it has been over a year since Janice's last post and, as Bill West wrote recently, her blog has apparently been removed from the Internet. It's gone. All of those wonderful articles. Gone. We can only hope that Janice is alive and well and simply gave up on blogging. Godspeed, Janice, wherever you are now.

Most, if not all, of the blogs listed below have already received the award, some several times over, but I selected them in the true spirit of this award: because they have inspired me and influenced me, or in some way have helped me to become a better blogger. To me, they are the heart, the core, of the bloggers who write about their family history and they were all blogging before it became "the thing" to do. I value their online "friendship" and appreciate all of the moral support they have given to me and to so many others.

Without further ado, my ten selections are:

I don't know if it is "legal" or not to give the award to the one who inspired it, but Cow Hampshire was one of the blogs that I read regularly when I first discovered blogging a little over 3 years ago. Janice's writing was outstanding and she has (had?) a marvelous sense of humor. Her Jib-Jab videos using the heads of genea-bloggers were a hoot and were instrumental in providing us fledgling bloggers with a sense of community. I'm very saddened to know that they no longer exist. So it is with a heavy heart that I "posthumously" give the Puckerbrush Award to Janice Brown at the now defunct Cow Hampshire!

At Creative Gene, Jasia has written some very poignant and touching stories of her family that tug at the old heart-strings. In addition, as everyone should know by now, she was also the creator of the Carnival of Genealogy which gives us all an opportunity to write about a topic that we might not ordinarily tackle. The COG was really the beginning of the genea-blogger community and is a great way for new bloggers to be discovered.

Miriam Robbins Midkiff at AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors has not only provided us with some wonderful, well-written, stories of her ancestors, but has also given us a boatload of great research tips - especially for file organization. I've never attended one of the monthly Scanfest sessions but they've been a hit with many genea-bloggers.

We all felt the disappointment and horror with Cheryl at Two Sides of the Ocean when her original blog somehow disappeared and she lost 18 months worth of posts. Cheryl plans to reconstruct as many of those posts as possible, but it will take a while. She is a master at integrating photographs and documents with her posts to make them visually appealing.

In addition to presenting some interesting family tales, Craig Manson at Geneablogie, is also our resident go-to legal guy. His interpretations of copyright and other issues pertinent to genealogy are highly regarded and greatly appreciated.

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings writes about his family history but also provides detailed evaluations of software, opinions on news releases from the "corporate" world of genealogy, and is the instigator of the weekly "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" challenge. I'm sure it's a challenge for Randy to come up with his challenges each week! I also look forward to his weekly "Best of the Genea-Blogs" posts. He almost always has several posts listed that I've missed.

I don't have any Polish ancestors, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the posts written by Steven Danko at Steve’s Genealogy Blog. He does write about things other than his Polish roots, like his visits to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. And he's shown that he is more than a little talented behind the camera.

Tim Agazio at Genealogy Reviews Online often has a different take on genealogy issues. Different is good. And refreshing. But he hasn't been posting as often as he used to. Hope everything's okay with Tim.

Apple, over at Apple's Tree, has diligently been transcribing family letters that she discovered last year. Those letters, as well as the posts that Apple has written about her family, are a delight to read. They provide us with a glimpse into what life was like in the past.

When I first discovered Walking the Berkshires, written by Tim Abbott, I think I turned just a little green from envy. The treasure-trove of family documents and photographs that he has custody of is quite amazing. I especially loved reading his stories about Windrock, the family home.