A good question!

Here’s the answer – Over the last 18 years, I have been writing a family history book that now contains about 500 pages. It has never been my intention to have this book published and sold.

The original plan was to print off and supply copies to my relatives in Great Britain, The United States of America, Canada and Jamaica. This would have been maybe 20 or 30 copies for me to self print off. The idea of making a profit never motivated me. All that interested me was to get the story out to my relatives.

Never Ending Research

I have always researched and found new items to add to my book on a regular basis. The thrill of finding new stuff intoxicates me, so this has made it very difficult for me to stop researching altogether and just concentrate on publishing the book. I could never quite seem to finish my book, It is never-ending and has really concerned me that nobody is ever going to read what I have found.

Over the last 18 years, relatives have sadly passed away. Some of them made excellent and important contributions towards the story. They never saw my work -or their input – in print.

Ran A Website

In May 2006, I started a family history website called southfieldhodgsons.com. It ran for 5 years but was costly and not too easy to use.  I uploaded family history video’s and posted various articles to the world-wide web. Eventually the internet company closed down, so that was the end of that.

Back in those early days, not everyone had access to the internet so there was a lot of people that never saw it. However I did receive good responses from a few English relatives but predominantly the comments came from my American relatives, including Aunt Hortense’s family who really enjoyed reading it.

May 2006: A nice message from an American cousin, the late Elinor Samuels of America.

Hi Robert,

Just wanted to say you have done such a wonderful job of putting together a web-site for the Hodgson family. My children love it.

Elinor Samuels née Hodgson, deceased (daughter of Maurice Hodgson, Cecil’s brother)

Started Blogging

Fast forward to today 2018. Internet technology has rapidly advanced. Especially social media. I began looking into running another family history website, but this time the blogging world caught my eye. I thought “wow what could a blog do for me?”

Blogging appeared to be an ideal platform for my work – a more modern way to put my history out there for family members and others to share. Another difference compared to publishing my book, was that with a blog I can now easily edit or update my story whenever I find more new stuff. So here I am blogging – Perfect!

 

Next up – 1939 – The story begins….