My 10 Favorite Blog Posts

In the five years since I started my genealogy blog, there have been more than 50,000 visitors to it. While I'm happy with this number, I hope people continue to find it and find it interesting and inspiring.

Some of my personal favorite blog posts are already included in the list of top ten visited posts. I'm not going to repeat those. I'm including only those of my favorites that do not appear in that list.

1. The Tom Doran Story - A Wild Character in the Wild West - My favorite blog post is the biography of Tom Doran, the outlaw of Junction, Texas. It is my firm belief that his story would make a great movie. It is my hope that I can make this happen some day.

2. Those Darn Dorans - My next favorite is the first description I found of the Doran family of Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois. Between Tom Doran, in the above post, the fight that resulted in the death of Henry Doran, and the story becoming clearer about "Old Uncle Tommy" Doran and his wife Catherine "Kitty" "Old Granny" Doran, this family is the stuff of legends.

3. Who Finds Who? - I love the coincidence of my cousin's son literally tripping over the grave of his ancestor when I asked his father to find this specific grave. Talk about genealogical serendipity!

4. It's a Small World - This post shows connections you wouldn't expect to find in different branches of a family tree and coincindental connections I've found.

5. Was My Unknown Great-Great-Grandfather a Philanderer? - One of my more recent posts and one that describes my quandry in finding the father of my great-grandfather. The number of common matches with my DNA matches that are likely descended from this person is amazing. They dwarf the number of common matches of people I'm much more closely related to.

6. Spur of the Moment Trip to Iowa - This post describes my genealogy finds during a recent trip to the birthplace of my father. This includes the discovery that the headstone of my uncle, who died at 17 months old, was sinking and the results of its restoration.

7. Photos - More than First Meets the Eye - This was a fun post, showing what you can see if you look closely at your photos. You might be surprised about what you can discover about your ancestors lives and personalities.

8. Learning About Their Lives - This post shows how much detail photographs can provide about the events in your ancestors' lives. I had heard about my grandfather's sale of his dairy cows but these photos really helped me understand the event.

9. Interview Your Elders - In this post, I encourage everyone to interview the elders in your family. You can learn details about their lives you likely have no other way of knowing and you have no idea how much longer they will be around to ask. Please talk to them today!

10. Müller Orphan Train Connection - This was about the discovery I made about the descendants of my great-grandfather, Charles Miller's brother and how one of his nephews was put on an Orphan Train to live out his life in Nebraska. I had no idea I had a connection to the Orphan Trains.

Extra - The Passing of My Mother, Agnes Catherine Panther Miller - I had a tough time narrowing my list down to my ten favorites and there was no way I was going to drop my post about the death of my mother. I believe this write-up gives the memory of my mother the respect and love she deserves. Reading this, I believe you'll understand a bit about my love for her.

--Matt