Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Dec 18-25, 2017

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week.

Genealogy

Sunday, I finished up the KDP. I printed it out and put it aside to read in about a week when it might look fresher. I started working on the Case Study again. I thought it was almost done, but I have lots of work still to do on it. I might try different approaches and see which works out the best.

Working on the Case Study, brought out the need for a few documents from Todd County, Minnesota. There are no professional genealogists up there, nor none in the Minneapolis area willing to go up there. I made a request last summer for some deed records but they never got back to me. I’ll try once more with the request, then I’ll try a title company in the area. That email is all written and waiting in the draft box. I’ll probably have better luck if I wait until next week to make requests. It’s just that I want it now!

No Hangouts, but I did view a great webinar presented by Judy G. Russell, “The Law and the Reasonably Exhaustive Research.” It got some great tips, and the most important one, is to know the law that was responsible for every document created by a government entity. That way you know why the document was created and any limitations placed on the information found in the document. It’s too bad that some states don’t have their older statutes online. I think I’ll create a page for each state in my OneNote Toolbox, for the link to that state’s laws.

Family & Christmas Season Activities

This was a quiet week for us. We got the last of the packages sent to daughter in New York City and to grand-niece in Tracy for her birthday. Instead of going to the bookstore where I’d only get one or two books for her, I shopped at the Friends of Martinez Library bookstore and got her fifteen used books. Some were favorites of mine when I was nine.

With sadness, I have to report that our ten-year-old Australian Shepard, Sidney, became very ill and passed away on Tuesday. We took him to the vet and from an ultra sound we discovered he had two tumors on his spleen. It was a very difficult decision to let him go. We called our daughter, Margaret, so she could see Sidney for the last time. Everyone, with tears, said good-bye to our dear friend of nine years.

Birding

The feeders are attracting mostly lesser goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, and woodpeckers. An occasional scrub jay would come and scare them all off.

Christmas

Christmas was spent with just the two of us. We found a recipe in the bon appétit magazine for turkey thighs and legs, and for a turnip salad. Like most recipes in that magazine, it took longer than we expected, but was very tasty. I managed to listen to about 80% of the vinyl records during the day. I do love Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Roger Whittaker, Neil Diamond, John Denver, and others, singing Christmas carols.

Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.