Monday Genea-pourri, Week of February 4-10, 2019

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. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme.

Genealogy

Blog Writing: I wrote the following blog posts this week:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks For week 6, I wrote about “surprise” which was the awarding of honorary life membership to the PTA to my grandmother, Anna Sullivan Hork.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: We wrote out our longest married ancestors. My children had several who were married more than 50 years.
• I also wrote a “On This Day” blog post about the birth of my great-grandmother, Nell (Hutson) Johnston.
• I forgot to mention the “On This Day” post I did last Sunday about my 2x-great-grandfather, Joseph Heinrich Horoch’s baptism.
• Lastly, I did a guest post on Cheri Hudson Passey's blog, Carolina Girl Genealogy.  The title was "Tuesday's Tips-Lisa Gorrell, CG~Preparing for Certification." 

Webinars/Study Groups Attended

I attended two webinars week:

• Who Owned Solomon? A Case study of 19th Century African American Research by Janice Lovelace for Virtual Genealogy Association.
• DNA and the GPS solves a mystery: Hamiltons in Colonial New England by Shellee Morehead, CG, for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

Our Cert Peer Group met and we continued our discussion of our various projects and portfolios.

Family Writing.  I'm still working on writing the story of my parents' lives, though I have not yet begun the writing. I am also participating in The Family History Writing Challenge 2019 (with The Armchair Genealogist) and we receive tips and help each day. I’m reading these, getting ideas on how to approach this project. I do want this project to be more about the stories along with using photos to supplement.

Got some client work and took a trip to Fairfield to get various court records. It was interesting that each of the courts (criminal, civil, and family) had their own clerk and record’s office.

Other Activities

I went on my second bird watching trip with the Mt. Diablo Audubon Society. We birded in the Central Valley around Thornton and Consumnes River, as well as on Staten Island. Highlights of the trip were Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese (lots of them!), White-fronted Geese, Cackling Geese, and Tundra Swans. Watching the large flocks of snow geese pass over us was spectacular and the best part of the trip.

Sandhill Cranes

Friends of Alhambra Creek group is working on an updated flyer and I’m doing the edits in InDesign. We had a productive meeting this past week and are almost complete—only waiting on a couple of photos. I did phenology by myself at the meadow—there is spring in the air as some of the plants are leafing out.

My friend, Nancy, celebrated her 60th birthday on Sunday with family and friends. I met her about 25 years ago at the gymnastics place where our daughters were taking lessons. I heard her speak German to her daughter and struck up a conversation. Later they were at Creative Play preschool, then our girls took piano lessons from her, Margaret all up to senior year in high school, and then I took German at DVC from her after retiring. Now I attend weekly conversation classes in Oakland with her as teacher. It was nice seeing her daughter who lives in So. California, and her son, who surprised her by flying in from Chicago.

Nancy & I

 What a wonderful mixture of happenings this week!

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.