Update to Funeral Programs Database

It's been a while since I posted the link to my (Mostly) African American Funeral Programs Database. This seems like a good time to share it, since I've just added two more programs, one of which is for a public figure - who was also a dear friend.

Calvin W. Pearson, Sr.

Front cover of Calvin Pearson's funeral program

Calvin was a noted historian and researcher, who was known, first and foremost, as the founder and president of Project 1619, a nonprofit that has played a crucial role in teaching and correcting the narrative about the arrival of enslaved Africans in English-speaking North America, for over 20 years. We became friends through our involvement with the Hampton Roads Chapter of the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS); and, we subsequently discovered, through DNA testing, that we were also family - although we hadn't yet discovered who our common ancestors were.

Calvin's final arrangements were entrusted to Perkins Funeral Home, in Hampton, Virginia. To sign his guestbook and/or to view his obituary, click here. If you are interested in his funeral program, please visit my database and contact me via the link provided there. 

Here is the permalink to my database: https://tinyurl.com/SandersFuneralPrograms

Frances Lee Alton Hill

Front cover of Frances Hill's funeral program

I mentioned that I've just added two funeral programs to my database: the second was for my beloved Aunt Frances, wife of my mother's late brother, Howell Webster Hill, Sr. My aunt was a very special person, who God blessed to see almost 93 years, here on Earth. She had a quiet spirit (but she loved to talk!) and she loved and was loyal to all of her family and friends. I will likely write more about her on my family-focused blog, Into the LIGHT, so I won't say much more here. Her services were handled by Riddick Funeral Service, of Norfolk, Virginia. You can visit her memorial page, here; and, if you're interested in her funeral program, please reach out to me via my database, which (again) you can access by clicking on this link: https://tinyurl.com/SandersFuneralPrograms

Screenshot of a snippet of my database

As a reminder, my (Mostly) African American Funeral Programs Database is just that - a database. When you visit the link, you will find an excel spreadsheet that gives vital information about persons for whom I hold a physical (hard copy) of their funeral program. The information in the database will include names, birth/death dates and locations, names of spouses, and sometimes additional information such as nicknames or titles. When you see information for a person of interest, simply email me at yarsan@aol.com, to request a scan of the actual funeral program, which I will send to your email address. In some cases, if I have multiple copies of the program, I will gladly send a hard copy via U.S. mail. Also, if you have funeral programs that you would like to contribute or add to the database, please reach out to me at the same email - yarsan@aol.com. Those contributed to me are added to my page of the database; however, you will see that I allow others to add theirs, just as my friend, Adrienne Johnson, has done on Sheet 2 of the database, where she has added 198 (to date) additional programs! Be sure to check hers out, also!

Thank you for reading! Don't forget to check out the database!

Renate

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Where Have All the Readers Gone?

Wow! I cannot believe it's been almost 8 months since my last post! I have GOT to do better!

I know what the problem is, though -- it's FACEBOOK. See, once upon a time, I used to share my research discoveries, and other genealogy-related musings, here, or on my less personal, "Genea-Related" blog. For years, I felt a sense of kinship and belonging within a large, supportive group of genealogy bloggers. But, then, two things kinda happened at about the same time, and those concurrent events seemed to work together to lure me (and perhaps many others) from posting (regularly) to our blogs.

In my opinion, the BIG thing that happened was that more and more genealogy groups began to pop up on Facebook. These groups started off with broad-topic ranges, but over time, the groups became more and more specific in scope - categorized in a variety of ways, by ethnicity, location, social/civic involvement, military service, and/or DNA-focused interests. As these groups grew larger in membership, I noticed a decline in the number of comments on, and visits to my blogs. Instead, people drifted over to the instantaneous feedback that Facebook allows, along with its ability for users to engage in "conversation" with each other about, and directly under each post. At first, I was reluctant to join in. After all, I'd been on Facebook since 2007, when I'd joined during my youngest's first year of college, just so I could see some pictures shed wanted to show me. At that time, very few "people my age" were even on FB, but over the next couple of years, my "real" friends began to join, and the site began to serve as a place for sharing pictures and daily happenings with my family and friends.
As time went on, I began to miss the feedback I'd been used to getting when I would post to my blogs. Comments became sparse, to none, and I guess I started feeling like no one was reading. (I know that the purpose isn't supposed to be to entertain others, but we all need a little support, and the feedback was invaluable.) Anyway, I eventually began to poke around in some of the Facebook
groups, and soon, the old,"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" adage won out. So, I dove in, joining groups for the NC counties from which my ancestors hailed, groups for African ancestry, for genealogical societies to which I belonged, and MORE! I began to notice that those people who were still posting on blogs, would publish the links to their posts on Facebook, and all of the commenting was being done there, instead of on the blogs. I became so active, so fast, that genea-matters began to totally consume my feed, and I was hardly ever seeing posts from my original friends. Not only that, I became a bit self-conscious about my hundreds of new "friends" being privy to my personal life, etc., so I decided it best to create a separate Facebook profile, just for genealogy. And, that was all she wrote! :)

The second factor which led to a slowdown in blog-posting, and surely contributed to the decrease in number of readers and commentary, was the demise of the very popular, Google Reader. The majority of us in the blogosphere seemed to have used this platform to organize and deliver the posts of the weblogs we each followed. When Google announced that its Reader was being discontinued, several options were given for new readers to which users could transfer. I chose Feedly; but it just hasn't been the same, and the transfer did not work, 100%. My guess is that this is true for many, and that's probably why we've all lost readers. Also, the interface is quite different, and in order to comment, one must click out of the program, to go,directly to the blog site, and then come back. I also find it frustrating that only small sections of posts open at one time.

So, why am I writing about all of this? Well, honestly, I hadn't planned to. I came here to write a post
about finding my dad's Marine Corps dog tags, but when I saw how long it had been since I'd posted,
I decided to "say something", and it turned into this post.  I'm still going to write that one; and I will share it (and this one) on Facebook (lol), but I'd like to ask just ONE favor of everyone who's actually ready this. Please ma'am, please sir: Just leave me one tiny comment here on the blog. I'd really like to get an idea of who is still even reading, so that I can make some decisions about how I'd like to go forth with my writing. Oh, I am going to renew my commitment to writing, the only question is, "What will my platform be?

Thanks for reading!
Renate