Beads in a Necklace Ready for the Printer

Earlier this week, I got together with fellow authors Sandra McHugh and Claire Lindell to go over the (almost) final draft of Beads in a Necklace: Family Stories from Genealogy Ensemble. This collection of 49 short stories, written by myself and eight other family historians, will soon be a beautiful, 250-page hold-in-your-hands paperback book. 

Some of these stories were first published on Writing Up the Ancestors and/or our collaborative blog https://genealogyensemble.com. Genealogy Ensemble – recently named by Feedspot.com as one of the 100 top genealogy blogs – has been online since 2014. Things were going so well with it that we decided to choose some of our favourite stories and put them together for posterity. 

L to R, Janice Hamilton, Sandra McHugh, Claire Lindell

For the book, I chose Montreal-based stories, including two about merchant, tavern-keeper and canal-builder Stanley Bagg (1788-1853), one about Irish-born hardware merchant Henry Mulholland (1809-1887) and one about his daughter Jane (1847-1938), my great-grandmother who lived in her own world in a big house on the slope of Mount Royal. I also included two new stories. One explained why my family remained in Montreal throughout the difficult years of the referendums on Quebec sovereignty, and the other described how I grew up surrounded by the portraits of my ancestors. I knew very little about them, but eventually they inspired me to start researching my family’s history.

The launch of the limited edition print copy of Beads in a Necklace is scheduled for Nov. 15. We’re all super excited about sharing this achievement with friends and family members. I’ll let you know soon how to obtain a digital or print copy of the book, so check out this blog, or Genealogy Ensemble, for further details.