The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is for bloggers who wish to participate, by publishing a blog post every day in April except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B, April 3 will be C, and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been published.
April is now over so that means the end of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. This year is the tenth year that I’ve participated, but only the first year on my One Place Study. The theme that I chose for 2024 was Haverfordwest in the News. Each day, I posted a newspaper article about Haverfordwest. My One Place Study, is in it’s infancy, so I was keen to examine the newspapers, looking for articles about the people and the places of Haverfordwest. I am planning on re-visiting my A to Z Challenge posts, to expand on information found in the newspapers.
I began this One Place Study, because my 2x great grandparents, who came to Australia in 1842, were born there. There is very little information to be found about them in the archives, so I knew that studying the town in detail, may give me further information about the lives they lived and the people they knew.
I had one find during the challenge, that I was quite excited about. That was when I was researching the letter “Y”, and found the article that I would go on to use – Young Ladies College at Haverfordwest. This article was about a ladies college at Hill House Haverfordwest. Immediately I was interested as my 2x great grandmother, Martha LLOYD, was a domestic at Hill House, at the time of her marriage, in 1839. I had presumed that she was a domestic for a wealthy family. As I read the newspapers, it was mentioned that the Ladies College had begun operation, before 1820. I was quite excited to see that Martha, had been working as a domestic at the Ladies College.
As I usually do, I had my posts all written and ready for publication before 01 April. I find it necessary to be organised, before the challenge begins. I know that if I wasn’t to do that, everything would go topsy turvy, as life definitely would get in the way. Even though I was organised with my posts this year, life did get in the way to a certain extent. One of the things that I love most about the A to Z Challenge, is discovering blogs about very diverse topics. Other than during the challenge, I wouldn’t be reading these blogs. I had a plan of the number of blogs that I planned to read and comment on, each week., but wasn’t able to keep to that plan. I’m now catching up on those blogs and hope to visit every blog in the challenge, at least once.
I was especially interested in the family history blogs, and very much enjoyed visiting regularly and reading about their approach to their theme. Other than family history and genealogy, the blogs that I have read so far were on topics such as other areas of history, gaming, books and reading, home schooling, fiction writing, and travel. A blog that I unexpectedly enjoyed was Tim’s blog The Other Side about Dungeons and Dragons. This is a topic I know nothing about, but I loved his enthusiasm, and was quite amazed at some of the information I was learning.
All being well, I’m sure I will be back again next year, but as yet I haven’t decided on which blog I will participate. I have a few ideas, but as I have multiple blogs, the first thing to do before planning starts, is to choose the blog that I’d like to use for the challenge. I do also wonder, if I should dare to participate on two blogs. Only thinking, not deciding at the moment.
Link to my A to Z posts for 2024
A: Attempted Murder at Haverfordwest
B: Burial Scandal at Haverfordwest
C: City of Dogs – Haverfordwest
E: Elopements at Haverfordwest
G: Gallant Conduct of a Haverfordwest Man
H: Haverfordwest Court Proceedings
J: Jealous Man’s J: Jealous Man’s Revenge
K: Keyboard Invention at Haverfordwest
L: Life in Haverfordwest College
M: Murder Attempt at Haverfordwest
O: Old Woman Murdered at Haverfordwest
Q: Quarter Sessions at Haverfordwest
T: Train Passenger in court at Haverfordwest
V: Visit to Haverfordwest by a Reverend
W: Welsh Goodwill at Haverfordwest and District
X: Xmas Show of Stock at Haverfordwest
Y; Young Ladies College at Haverfordwest
Z: Zoo and Circus at Haverfordwest
I’d like to give a big thankyou to all who visited and commented during the challenge, and also to those who subscribed for future posts. Thankyou also to the A to Z Challenge team, who give bloggers the opportunity to participate in this challenge.
© 2024 Copyright. all rights reserved: haverfordwesthistory.com
6 thoughts on “AtoZ Challenge: Reflections”
I’m sure I will be visiting you during the year too Molly. Thanks for your kind comments. I did the first challenge with nothing prepared and it did my head in. I swore never again. Preparation works better for me.
Hi Liz, I said I would never do the AtoZ on two blogs in the one year, ever again, but I feel the calling to do it. Won’t be deciding until later in the year. At the moment, I’m having a great time caching up on reading blogs.
Hi Kristin. I’m pleased you found me. I’m very behind in catching up with blogs, but working on it this week. I’m so pleased for the Road Trip, to give me the chance. It’s been a crazy month in many ways.
I guess I missed you because you were in history instead of genealogy. Glad I found you now. Exciting to find your 2X great grandmother working at the girl’s school.
Congrats on making it all the way through. April can be a busy month, so it can be hard to keep up with all the aspects of the challenge. As someone who did once participate with two blogs (in 2017)–it’s a lot of juggling to keep up with both. I wouldn’t recommend. (And the 2nd blog I did it with was a collaborative effort, so I only wrote about 1/4th of the month. Still a lot.)
I loved your A to Z series, Jennifer. Some of the news clips were amazing, particularly as they pertained to just one place — showing all facets of life there. Every year, I say I’ll do as you did: prepare the posts ahead of time. Yet there I was, launching my theme with not one blog written — which made of a hectic challenge. Hopefully, lesson learned for next time! Thanks for your visits and comments, and I’m sure I’ll be visiting one of your blogs during the year.