Celebrating a Giant Year
A Report to our Readers
We began the Journal: Life and Times of the Kentucky River Giant published on-line on Medium.com about one year ago. We wanted to share with you our progress to-date and directions for our future. So far, we have published 6 stories that have had extraordinary interest from you, our cousins, as well as the public.
What we wanted to accomplish with the Journal was to collect direct, primary sourced stories and tales from family members/cousins. We wanted to make sure that these stories are carried forward within our family traditions and not lost to eternity.
We believe our children and grandchildren can benefit by reading and understanding something about who our ancestors were, and in turn, learn a something about us and perhaps recognize themselves as well. What can I say… it is a Bates/Wright thing passed around for generations?
Below is a table reporting views and reads. (Apparently Medium.com can tell if people read an article by how long they stay on the page viewing the article).
We began our year with I Discovered my Great-Uncle was a Giant which has had over 1,200 views and 394 reads with 7 recommends. Our most successful stories of the year have been told by Lois Wright Tweedy who has had a remarkable 4,400 views and 1,700 reads and 33 recommendations with her Oral History: A Double Murder on Beefhide. Her story about the death of “Curly-haired” Sam Wright (Bad John Wright’s brother) was equally popular… Gunfight at Reynolds Store with 1,500 views and 446 reads and 4 recommendations. And our genealogist cousin Rhonda D. Cookenour with her story Our Genealogist Explains Family Relationships has drawn curiosity from many of our relations seeking to find their verified connections too, with 713 views, 231 reads and 4 recommendations. Overall, I would say that we have had a very good start — perhaps a grade B with kudos to both Lois Wright Tweedy and Rhonda D. Cookenour for providing excellent, well prepared, fascinating materials.
With a total of 8,604 views and 3,236 reads and 54 recommendations, I would say we have reached a sufficient number of people for a first year and created some curiosity in The Giant and our relatives. Well done — Cousins!
But we are just underway, and you can help us to become better and more valuable. First, you can recommend The Journal to your children, family members, cousins and friends. This will allow us to expand our audience and reach more people. Send them a note saying… read about my (your) relatives. Second, you can give us feedback … write us responses at the end of the article that adds more detail; share comments that provide a different perspective; or, encourage us to write more by recommending the story. Third, you have stories and tales to tell about your own family members. We want you to share them with your cousins and others by working with us to publish them. You can write us to suggest what stories might be of interest you or give us leads to who might be able to provide more information.
Finally, we want to initiate a series of stories called Who We Are that provide brief descriptions of our lineage as cousins related to Martin Van Buren Bates. We will soon publish an example to illustrate our method. Hopefully, the story will be interactive and you will find it relatively easy to describe your lineage with pictures that place in context who you are, in relation to The Giant. An important benefit of this process is that you can discover cousins you never knew you had when everyone reads it in our Journal and responds.
So, thank you, our cousins, and our readers for supporting us during this first year of operation. I am personally grateful to each of you for your thoughts and comments as we move forward. We have many more exciting things ahead. Keep reading… and recommending!
Please follow us as we discover and reveal the history and fascinating details of the Bates/Wright family life and times as we identify new relatives along the way. We will report to you though our Face Book page as well as this publication on Medium:
Finally, we would love to know what you think about our adventure. Please ask us questions and give us feedback…
What do you think?
