Top 10 Posts of 2024

I'm only a little late figuring this out.  We're just barely past halfway through January.  Now, if it were all the way at the end of January, that would really have been dragging my feet.  The big news is that this is the first time I've posted my Top 10 since the 2020 listing.  I guess I really did have a few rough years in there.

So, without further ado, what were the ten most popular topics (by readership) on my blog this past year?

Starting the list at #10 was the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to use FamilySearch Full-Text Search.  My searches didn't go well, but my frustrations apparently engaged people.

#9 was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, this time about the best newspaper article I had found for my family history.  One of the articles had a photo of me!

Coming in at #8 is one more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun story (are we picking up on a theme here?), with five "different" facts about family members.  This gave me an opportunity to mention that my maternal grandfather supposedly played baseball with Jackie Robinson.

Who could have guessed that a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post would be #7?  This one asked us to write about a day we had fun with genealogy, and it definitely was fun the day I found my great-great-grandparents' Russian marriage record.

The #6 post has nothing to do with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  It was when I celebrated my lucky 13th blogiversary (along with Lisa Hork Gorrell, of course).

#5 is my post lamenting some of the recent changes I have seen occur at the FamilySearch Center at which I volunteer, and pondering what might be coming in the future.

For the #4 post we return to Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, when I listed my genealogy goals for 2024.  I was trying to be cautious and optimistic at the same time.

And another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge comes in at #3.  This time it was the best research achievement I had had during the previous month.

The #2 post was when I noticed a problem with the year in the index of Russian records posted on JewishGen.  I haven't seen any changes to the index since writing about that.

And the #1 post in popularity on my blog in 2024 was when I explained all of the things I am not doing with AI in genealogy for, you guessed it, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  (And I'm still not doing them.)

So last year seven of the top ten posts were for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  That's still not surprising, not only because lots of people read Randy's blog but also because I was almost rebooting my blog after a few years of sparse posting.

I generally don't get a lot of comments on my posts, even those that are read a lot.  The #1 and #2 posts on the popularity list were tied for the most comments this year.

Top 10 Posts of 2020

The dawn of the new year is always the time to look back at the old year and see what you've done.  For bloggers, that usually translates into seeing which of your posts piqued people's interest the most.

Last year was another full of health problems for me, so I'm still posting only about once every three days, and most of those are Wordless Wednesday and Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  Maybe now that I've had my long-planned surgery I'll be able to get back up to speed.

Unlike 2019, when all of the top posts were from the first quarter of the year, in 2020 they were spread out through the first half of the year.  So I'm still benefiting from the long tail, but not in as concentrated a fashion.  Well, let's start counting them off.

In the #10 spot for 2020 is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise which was the second half of a two-part pandemic meme from Pauleen.

The #9 position is held by another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, this one about where I expect to find my ancestors in the 1950 census when it is released in 2022.  I have an address for only one of them, but I have a good idea where everyone should be.

#8 is a Genealogy Blog Party post (just to be different!).  The theme was "Create!", so I wrote about all the photo books I have created as gifts for family members.

A Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge came in at #7, this one about favorite sites for genealogy research.  Not unexpectedly, there's a lot of similarity between people's lists.

The #6 entry on the list is the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise for the first half of the two-part pandemic meme, courtesy of Pauleen.  Oh, for those early days when we were still getting used to the pandemic!

For #5 we find (yet another) Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, about a time machine to witness an event from my family history.  I wrote about wanting to witness the adoption of the son my aunt gave up in 1945, so I could find out who adopted him and what his name became.

#4 is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge (are we seeing a theme here?), the "Where I'm From" poem meme that was popular for quite a while.

Believe it or not, a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post is at the #3 position on the list.  This one was about my genealogy goals for 2020 (I'm not saying yet how I did on them).

I am happy to report that the #2 position on the Top 10 list has nothing to do with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (nothing personal, Randy!).  It's the post where I described the tortuous path I took to finally find my great-great-grandmother and her three youngest children arriving in the United States after emigrating from the Russian Empire.

And of course the #1 post on my blog for 2020 was . . . something for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (that makes eight of the ten, for those of us who are counting)!  This one was when Randy shared a meme from Jill Ball to focus on what we had accomplished with our family history during 2019.

This was another year when my posts did not generate many comments.  The post with the most comments was #6 on the list, the first half of Pauleen's pandemic meme, which I did as a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise.

Top 10 Posts of 2019

The new year is a time for retrospectives, and I have been looking at my top 10 posts for the past few years.  I still haven't gotten back to a regular rhythm with my blog, and I only posted about once every three days in 2019.  On the positive side, I am still posting, so I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself!

Like last year, posts for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges figured prominently on the list—six of the ten, in fact.  A big change is that no Wordless Wednesdays are on the list at all, whereas three appeared in the 2018 list.

I noticed that all of the posts were from the first quarter of the year.  I think that has more to do with the "long tail", where stories continue to engage readers well after their initial posting, than with the actual content of the stories themselves.

Two posts tied at #9 in 2019.  First was the listing of significant anniversaries I found in my family tree for the year.  Second was a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to find my longest ancestral marriage (which turned out to be 61 years).

At #8 is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, to choose an ancestral line and determine the birth order of each of your ancestors in it.  I was able to put together seven generations.

#7 is another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun entry, this one to post a favorite photograph.  At the time I posted it I did not know who the family members were in the photo, but one of my cousins recognized her grandmother and grandaunt!

At #6 is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to put together a line of photographs through multiple gneerations.  I was able to find eight generations of photos on one of my Jewish lines, which really surprised me.

#5 is yet another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, about how my parents met, timed right after Valentine's Day.  Both of my parents are dead now, so if I want any more details about their meeting I'll need to talk to my cousin, who was there when they met.

The Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge that came in at #4 asked everyone how they got started doing genealogy research.

At #3 we take a break from Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, because that post celebrated my 8th blogiversary.

#2 was the top Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, where Randy asked readers about their best discoveries in 2018 and research challenges for 2019.  I have to admit that I'm still stuck on the research challenges I listed then.

I'm actually quite happy that my #1 post last year was the one for my mother's yahrzeit.  I write annually about my mother on her yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death.  It is Jewish tradition to commemorate a deceased family member on that person's death date on the Jewish calendar.  My 2019 post was about advice my mother gave me on the ten things you should always carry with you (even though I only remembered seven of them!).

My posts didn't generate a large number of comments last year, but the one with the most was when I discussed my very, very blended family.

Top 10 Posts of 2018

It's the thing to do at the end of the year:  tote up the numbers and make comparisons.  But it is sometimes surprising to discover what topics people found the most interesting on my blog during the year.

I knew that this year's results would be substantially different from those of previous years because I've had somewhat of a rough year and have not written as much for my blog as I would have liked.  One huge thing missing is any commentary on two entire seasons of Who Do You Think You Are?  Half of the top ten for 2018 were Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts—not actually too surprising, since Randy Seaver has good readership, and that gives everyone's posts an extra boost—and three were Wordless Wednesdays, so my family photos must attract attention for some reason.

A couple of unusual facts about this year's Top 10:  The numbers were all fairly close; #1 had only 10% more views than #10.  And all ten of the posts fell during the six and a half weeks from June 12 (#5) to July 28 (one of the #8 posts).  I don't know if that's significant, but it's definitely intriguing.

#10 on the list is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post where Randy asked people to write about their second-most recent unknown ancestor (who in my case happens to be the father of my most recent unknown ancestor).

Two posts tied for #8 this year.  The first is a Wordless Wednesday photo of my mother and her brother standing in front of the family home, probably in Florida, circa 1950.  The second is another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge, this one to determine how many generations in their family my parents and grandparents knew.

At #7 is a photo of my Canadian cousin Ben Kushner in his apartment, another Wordless Wednesday post.

#6, the third Wordless Wednesday and the highest ranking of those on the list, is a class photo of a bunch of mathematics enthusiasts (including me) at a Math Institute held at Auburn University in 1978.

I was very happy to see that my annual tribute to Loving Day made it onto the list for the first time, coming in at #5.

A Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge holds the #4 position on the list.  That week's challenge was to determine how many individuals were in my largest family tree file.

#3 is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post about events that happened on the day my grandmother was born.

Ranking #2 is the most viewed Saturday Night Genealogy Fun of the year, this one Randy's "Ahnentafel Roulette."

And #1 in popularity on my blog for 2018 was when I announced that I had had two talks accepted for the 2019 Ohio Genealogical Society conference.

The most commented-on post this year was for my 7th blogiversary, in January.  It was great to hear everyone's good wishes.

Top 10 Posts of 2017

It's the last day of the year, so it must be time to do the accounting for my blog.  What did readers think was the most interesting?  What garnered the most commentary?

Just to show that you can't rely on past years as a guide, the top 10 posts this year for my blog went in a very different direction from what has gone before.  Six of the ten were Wordless Wednesdays, which are family photographs.  And only one episode of Who Do You Think You Are? made the list.

#10 is a Wordless Wednesday post with two photographs of my cousin Ben Kushner.

#9 is my comments about the first two days of the 2017 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, which took place in July in Orlando, Florida.

#8 on the list is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post where Randy Seaver asked his readers to write a 100-word story about an interesting ancestor.  I wrote about an 8x-great-grandmother who was a Quaker preacher.  Apparently other people found her interesting also.

Now there are three Wordless Wednesdays in a row.  #7 is another cousin, Fannie Perlman Amron, at the beach in the 1960's.  #6 is not actually of my family members, but those of a friend.  Edgar Orloff is the young boy, and the man is his uncle Izzie Oberstein.  For #5, my hypothesis is that this woman is related to my Szocherman cousins because the photo was with other ones from that branch of the family, but I don't actually know who she is.  I wish one of the people who saw this post could tell me!

#4 is a post I did for Elizabeth O'Neal's Genealogy Blog Party.  The theme that month was "How I Did It", and the point was to explain the process behind a discovery.  I wrote about how I identified the individuals in a photograph from Russia.

Then we return to more Wordless Wednesdays.  #3 is a photo of my mother when she is about 2 years old, with her parents in New York, probably Brooklyn.  #2 is my paternal grandfather holding his youngest daughter, my aunt Carol, with his dog Judy at his feet.

My #1 post for 2017 was my write-up and analysis of the season opener for Who Do You Think You Are?  Courteney Cox had 40% more views than the next closest post.  Surprisingly, the other three episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? that I posted about didn't even come that close, having only about half the number of views and far from being in the top 10.  I don't know if that's a reflection of interest in Cox as the subject compared to the other celebrities, waning interest in the series, or something else.

The most commented-on post this year was a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, which is what happened last year.  This year's post was a list of the places to which I have traveled.  Apparently I'm far above average as compared to most Americans.

My overall most-viewed posts have again not changed from previous years.  Readers are still interested in potentially gaining dual citizenship via descent (also maintaining its lead with the most comments), followed by the Lionel Ritchie episode of Who Do You Think You Are?  Their leads might be unreachable at this point.

Top 10 Posts of 2016

It is very close to the end of the year, and it's natural to look back at one's work over that time.  This year's most viewed posts fall somewhat between the results from last year and those of the year before.  In 2014 the top posts covered a wide range of topics, while in 2015 the list was solidly populated by Who Do You Think You Are?  This year half the list is WDYTYA, and the other half is all over the place.  So it appears I still have my mandate, but people are reading other topics also.

Tied at #10 are an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (no surprise), the one about Scott Foley, and a post about one of my family mysteries, the question of whether the biological father of my grandfather Bertram might also have been the father of Bertolet, the daughter my great-grandmother had three years after her husband had died.  It's nice to see that a story about my family can compete with WDYTYA.

The next two are more episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?:  Katey Sagal at #9 and Chris Noth at #8.  They were were within just a few views of each other.

Coming in at #7 is when I worked out several generations of my female ancestors' ages at death, one of my posts for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun meme.  (The corresponding post about my male ancestors' ages at death had a 10% lower viewing count, possibly because it was published a week off schedule.)

I am very happy to see that the post about photos of "contraband" scholars that were appraised on an episode of Antiques Roadshow placed high, at #6.  I keep hoping that someone will find a photograph of an ancestor in that collection.

Returning to Who Do You Think You Are?, the episode with Aisha Tyler placed #5 on the list of most-viewed posts.  She was the opening episode for this year's season and generated a lot of interest.

A big surprise was that how many place names appear in my Family Tree Maker family database came in at #4.  This was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, which certainly helps garner more viewers, but that's a pretty narrow topic.

Neoklis Girihidis

Another surprise, but a good one, was that one of my posts about opportunities to volunteer or share information placed #3 on the year's list.  The number of views was significantly higher than any other volunteer post.  I suspect one of the projects particularly caught people's attention, but I have no idea which one.  I hope it was the one about the Greek man looking to contact the Jewish boys he helped escape during World War II.

This year the highest an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? placed was again #2.  My review of the Lea Michele episode was extremely popular, even though I wasn't able to post it until more than a month after the program aired.  I transcribed all the documents that were shown, however, and I'm sure that helped bring in readers.

Warming my little editor's heart, the #1 post on my blog this year was about copyright.  Yes, the post wherein I chastised two genealogical societies (not by name, of course) for abusing others' copyrights was well ahead of #2, by a good 10% more views.  I hope the post helps people think more carefully before they just copy things from the Internet and put them into their society newsletters.  No, just because it's on the Internet does not mean it's free, and the author didn't put it there so you could copy it.

Now that I've gone through the list, the final surprise is that not a single post about newspapers made it into the top 10.  Considering that two did last year (and three were in the top 12), I wonder what happened.

I checked to see how many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? were aired this year:  a grand total of six.  And five of those made it into my top 10.  For some reason, Molly Ringwald didn't interest people anywhere near as much as the other celebrities.  But now I know why other topics were able to do as well.

I wasn't able to compare the number of shares this year, because Blogger/Google no longer seems to provide that statistic.  The most commented-on post was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun one, where Randy asked everyone to write about their most recent unknown ancestor.  That generated almost 40 comments, most from a very generous woman who looked for newspaper articles to help me in my search.  It worked — I think I've identified my grandfather's father.  I'm now searching for a likely Y-DNA candidate for testing.

Something that has not changed since last year is my overall most-viewed post.  That, now with about 67% more views than the runner-up (Lionel Ritchie on Who Do You Think You Are?, the same as last year), is the discussion of the potential of gaining citizenship through descent for people wishing to reclaim ancestral connections.  That post about citizenship is also far in the lead in the number of comments, with more than 150.

Top 10 Posts of 2015

Yes, it's that time of the year when everyone looks back, and I'm doing my retrospective look at the past year's posts to see what people found the most interesting and comment-worthy.  Unlike last year, when the posts ranged over a few topics, this year it's much more clear-cut.  Of my top ten most-viewed posts, two were about online newspapers and eight were reviews of Who Do You Think You Are?  Even the next two in popularity, which were very close behind and tied for the same number of views, were newspapers and WDYTYA.  That almost sounds like a mandate!  So, counting down from #12 to the top, we have:

11.  Who Do You Think You Are? - J. K. Rowling

11.  Big Trouble with Newspaper Digitization (which was second for the number of shares)

10.  Who Do You Think You Are? - America Ferrera

9.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Tony Goldwyn

8.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Sean Hayes

7.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Ginnifer Goodwin

6.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Bill Paxton

5.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Julie Chen

4.  New links added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page

3.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Josh Groban

1.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Angie Harmon

1.  New links added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page

You'll note that two posts tied for #1 also.  They had the same number of views, but newspapers came out on top because of more shares.

Two seasons of Who Do You Think You Are? aired during 2015:  TLC's season 3 had eight episodes and season 4 had five, for a total of thirteen, nine of which made it into my Top 12.  I was surprised Angie Harmon was the most popular episode for views.  I have no idea whether that was occasioned by interest in the woman or the episode itself.

I mentioned above that "Big Trouble with Newspaper Digitization" came in second for shares.  It turns out the top position in that also had two posts tied:  "Slaves Listed in 1839 Virginia Will", and "Wedding Wednesday", which was about my parents' 1961 wedding.

None of the most-viewed posts was in the list of most-commented on, where this time I had a three-way tie:  my 4th blogiversary, my impressions of the joint FGS/RootsTech conference, and the lovely compliment I received from a family member of one of the WDYTYA celebrities.

I also checked posts from earlier years for most shared and most viewed overall.  The 2014 post about Dick Eastman not posting a comment of mine that he apparently didn't like is still tops in the number of shares.  But whereas last year Lionel Ritchie's appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? was the most viewed, the new leader, now almost 30% higher than Ritchie, is my post about gaining citizenship through descent.  That post also by far has more comments than any other during the past five years.  I think that's what's called a "perennial."

Top 10 Posts of 2014

I'm still very new to blogging, but it occurred to me that I'm coming up on my fourth blogiversary and I've never looked to see which of my posts people had found the most interesting, based on the number of views.  These are my ten most popular posts for 2014.  I have to admit, some of the results surprised me a little.

Would you have guessed that transcription could be a popular subject?  Well, #10 on the list is my commentary about the episode of Antiques Roadshow when we finally saw an appraiser suggest on air that a guest transcribe his important historical materials.  Sure, the guest wasn't excited about the idea, but baby steps, right?  At least genealogists know that transcription is important.

Now, a story about a bride I definitely can see generating interest, especially when a mystery is attached.  #9 in popularity is the story of Sheri Fenley and her family's search for a photo of Jeanette Augusta Meir wearing her wedding veil.  (The best news about that story is that a photo was found, a great Christmas present for the family.)

It appears that forensic genealogy is interesting to a lot of people, as my review of the sessions in the Advanced Forensic Evidence Analysis track at this year's Forensic Genealogy Institute came in at #8.  I'm particularly happy to see this, as I am a proud member of the Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy and want people to recognize the difference between real forensic genealogy and merely matching the edges of photographs.

Another surprise for me is that a family photograph I posted for Wordless Wednesday was the #7 post of the year.  It's a nice photo of part of the Sellers family, but I don't know why this one caught people's eyes more than any other.

These four posts were all relatively close in the number of views.  The top six had significantly bigger gaps between them.

Speaking of forensic genealogy, I was not at all surprised that my post about how Dick Eastman declined to approve my response to his item came in fairly high, at #6 to be specific.  This post also had the highest number of shares that I could track.

Many people have told me that they enjoy reading my write-ups of Who Do You Think You Are?, so it makes sense that three of those posts placed high:  Cynthia Nixon at #5, Jesse Tyler Ferguson at #4, and Valerie Bertinelli at #2.  It's no mystery to me that the McAdams sisters didn't do as well, as I didn't think the episode was that compelling, but I thought Kelsey Grammer would have been up here also.

Another surprise for me in the top numbers was that #3 is a post about the new newspaper links I had added to the Wikipedia page I regularly contribute to.  It's gratifying to see such interest in newspaper archives, but none of the other newspaper update posts during the year came close to this one.

And at #1, with 25% more views than the next closest post, not Who Do You Think You Are?, but the Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown episode that was part of of CNN's "Roots:  Our Journeys Home" series.  The surprise for me about this is not only that it came in at the top, but that it continually adds significant numbers of new views.  That's interesting, considering how little genealogy was actually in the show.

What did I learn from this?  First of all, I noticed that half of my top posts are about television programs.  To me, that indicates the recent explosion of programs about genealogy really is a great way to connect with other people who are interested in family history.  I hope people who come to my blog and read those posts stick around and find other interesting material.  Second, the only other topic with more than one post in the top 10 is forensic genealogy.  It's hard to say how much of a groundswell of interest that indicates, but I'll take it as a positive thing.  And third, as with the family photograph, you never know what will pique people's interests.

While I was looking at these numbers, I also figured out my top post in the past four years.  Would you believe Lionel Ritchie on Who Do You Think You Are?