2024 has arrived and it’s now the first weekend of the new year. We all know what that means – it’s time for our first 2024 Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.

1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted an interesting question last week in Best Genealogy Find of 2023.

2)  What were your very best genealogy finds in 2023?  Elusive ancestors?  Hard-to-find records?  Family photographs?  Family stories?  Family artifacts?  New cousins?

I have to admit that I didn’t find many great genealogy finds in 2023. However, there were a handful.

1. I loved reading The Register and The American Genealogist journal issues and finding three articles about my ancestors that took some of my English lines back to the late 1300s. Thank you, probate records!
2. Last week on SNGF, I wrote about finding Anders Molin’s death and burial record in Lidköping, Skaraborg, Sweden. I thought that was a pretty great discovery since his descendants have been looking for years.
3. However, I have to admit I tumbled across another pretty terrific discovery last month. I’m not much for social media, but a new Facebook group was created called Historical Photographs of Udol. Udol is the tiny village that was home to my paternal grandmother’s Carpatho-Rusyn family. I actually had quite a bit of information about my Rusyn ancestors and even some current distant cousins. However, I also knew that my living cousins (of my generation) didn’t speak English. Well, Google Translate has solved that problem. Not only have I enjoyed seeing photos of Udol families, I’ve shared some of my inherited pictures dating back to the early 1900s AND I’ve made contact with two first cousins once removed and several other cousins who are all members of the group. This I’d have to say ties Anders Molin’s Christmas Eve gift to me!

That’s it for my 2023 discoveries, but I appreciate each one of them.

Thanks, Randy, for getting us started in 2024.