I am starting 2025 with a genealogy challenge – Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” Challenge. I tried to meet this challenge in 2021, but many things got in the way, and I did not get very far. This year is the year. I am planning on following the prompts and sharing stories of 52 ancestors, as timely as possible. As a professional genealogist who researches for clients, the ancestors I write about may not always be my own.
Week 1: In the Beginning
When I started this challenge 4 years ago, I wrote about my paternal grandfather from Palestine as the inspiration for my lifelong interest in family history. This year, I will start with one of my maternal great-grandfathers, Austin Miles Taylor, the first ancestor I researched in a genealogical education program.
In 2019, I transformed my genealogy hobby into a professional business. For decades, I had been delving into my own family history—starting with handwritten notes, camcorder interviews, and using dial-up internet to track down addresses for genealogical societies in places like Oregon and Missouri. I sent letters requesting family group sheets and handwritten census records, evolving over time to downloading international records and seamlessly syncing family trees across multiple platforms. By 2019, I had also started to research for friends and family who were not directly in my own line, so I updated to the latest copy of Family Tree Maker and decided to tune up my skills by taking the Boston University Genealogical Research Certificate program, a 15 week for those interested in professional genealogy education. Without delving into the extensive amount of time and effort I dedicated to this course, I will say it marked the beginning of my professional genealogical education. It also highlighted the significant depth and breadth of knowledge required to excel as a professional in the field.
This beginning started with an assignment to write a genealogical research question. My question asked, “Who was the father of Austin Miles Taylor (born 1873, Benton Co, Oregon, died 1925, Benton Co, Oregon)?” Before looking at his father, as the question asked, I decided to start this week with my great-grandfather Austin Miles Taylor. He was born in 1873 in Alsea, Benton County, Oregon. Austin, often known as “Ott,” was the son of Nathan Taylor and Emily Daniels. He was the fourth of nine children in his family. He married Fannie May Hoover in 1898 in Benton County, Oregon and they had 4 children between 1898 – 1912, all in Oregon. He was a farmer and registered a land patent in 1904 in Roseberg, Oregon, for the “South half, of the South West Quarter, and the West half, of the South East Quarter of Section twelve in Township fifteen, South of Range Nine, West of Willamette Meridian in Oregon, Containing one hundred and sixty acres.” He had a large family in Oregon, and many attended a family reunion at his mother’s home in 1924 in Lobster. He died by gunshot, in 1925, at home in Wren, Benton County, Oregon – shot by his own hand while on cleaning his gun.
Of course, there is much more to his story and the research involved, but this 2025 challenge will hopefully inspire a closer look at 52 ancestors this year and allow me to share a bit of their stories.
