Throwback Thursdays

About a month ago I started writing Throwback Thursday posts on Facebook. If you know anything about social media you know what I'm talking about - on Thursdays you post an old photo of yourself with the hashtag #TBT or #ThrowbackThursday. It's meant to be fun and nostalgic.

For mine, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of photos of myself, I started posting photos of ancestors. Usually I would create a photo collage with 5-10 photos of the person in question. That person had to have a link to the date on which that particular Thursday fell. For example, in late October one Thursday fell on the day my third-great-grandfather, Jacob Reinig, became a U.S. citizen in 1858. For that one, I posted photos of his naturalization papers, as well as a paragraph about his path to citizenship.

Last week, I quoted a newspaper article published on the same date in 1903, noting the election of another third-great-grandfather, John D. Shaffer, to his first term in the Iowa House of Representatives. This week, It was the anniversary of the death of Mr. Shaffer's wife, Susan (Robbins) Shaffer.

I have enjoyed writing these and family members have commented on them as well. It only occurred to me this morning that they would make excellent fodder for blog posts! I have been woefully neglectful of this blog for some time, so I don't know why I shouldn't re-post my #ThrowbackThursday items here as posts at the same time.

I'll go post some now and backdate them so the stories link to the dates. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.