243 Years Ago

 Hello, cousins!

243 years ago, in October 1777, my 5th-great (that's great-great-great-great-great!) grandfather, James Callin, was a private in the 4th Virginia Regiment of Foot, serving under a Capt. James Lucas. The Battle of Brandywine had taken place on 11 September, and while that battle was a loss for the American Continental Army, everyone had been impressed by the performance of a French soldier, the Marquis de Lafayette, who helped prevent the defeat from becoming a total rout. General Washington, realizing that the Continentals had been lucky to avoid complete destruction, decided to take advantage of the winter to regroup, and to train at Valley Forge with Lafayette and a Prussian drillmaster, Baron Friedrich von Steuben.

When we headed into the spring of this year, I had hoped that by this point in the fall, I would have finished the battle of editing the manuscript for the Callin Family History. If you've been following along on our Facebook page, Twitter, or the private Callin Family History group, you've seen me struggling to keep everyone posted on my progress. If you haven't been following along on social media, here's a distillation of my updates:

Timeline of Editing the Rough Draft:

• 27 May: person #93, Lillian May "Lillie" Campbell (1871-1946)
• 7 Jun: person #122, Sarah Elizabeth Scott (1869–1948)
• 14 Jun: person #142, Emma A Reed (1865-1934)
• 23 Jun: person #163, Dorothy Mae Ferguson (1889–1967)
• 28 Jun: person #177, John Ora "Jack" Copp (1881-1972)
• 2 Jul: my great-grandpa's brother, Byron Herbert Callin 
• 9 Jul: I DID IT!!! Generation 5 is done! 
• 21 Aug: person #257, Christina Agnes Urich (1903- 1998)
• 7 Sep: person #284, Fay Eleanor Richards
• 3 Oct: person #314, Raymond Ernest Hodges (1905-1970)
• 11 Oct: person #324, Alva Sylvester Stine 

While the scope of the task was more than I expected, I'm still pleased with the progress. I seem to average about 12 biographies per week. Sadly, that means it will still take several more months to get close enough to "Done" to think about launching our Kickstarter campaign.

So...

While I'm toiling away "off-camera," I don't want to lose you, my audience. I know that when a blog like this one sits idle for too long, it gets harder for possible cousins to find it in a search in the older posts. So I've decided to try something to help keep you all informed and involved.

Starting next week, this blog will put out two posts per week, late on Monday and Thursday nights. The book is structured using the NEHGS Register format, which assigns every descendant of James Callin with a number (thus, the "person #"). Each post will feature one numbered person and their immediate family from the First Draft version of the Callin Family History. 

In some ways, this will duplicate some of the content that you've already seen on this blog before, but it will be a lot more detailed and more deeply researched than the earlier posts. Because I'll be sharing the stories from the First Draft, you'll see a preview of what will end up in the final version of the book - and you'll have a chance to help me make any remaining corrections before it goes to publication.

I don't expect this to take a whole lot of time to do - the "content" of the posts is done, and I can automate things so that you see the posts here and on social media without taking a lot of time away from the main editing task.

If you want to volunteer to help with the editing - fact-checking or just pointing out typos - maybe this will help you zero in on those relatives who are closest to you. Maybe, if you've been wanting to try your hand at editing WikiTree, this will give you some content and sources to add there.

The blog format doesn't easily allow me to include footnotes, so each post will link to the Ancestry profile for the individual cousin featured that day. I believe I've set that tree to "public" so that any of you can view the research I've done - though you may need to create a free Ancestry account to view it. If any of you have trouble seeing the Ancestry profiles or any of the sources I have attached to them, please let me know.

The best way to reach me with any feedback is at my Mightier Acorns Gmail address - you should also see a Contact Form to the right of this post on this page, which sends a message directly to that email address. I look forward to hearing from you!

Here's hoping that if we can get through the winter, we'll be ready to start a winning campaign next spring.