Monday Genea-pourri, Weeks of Oct 21-27, 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:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 43--Travel. I wrote the third installment of the adventure of my aunt, Lorene Hork and her travels around the world in 1953 with three other friends.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Photographs of Heirlooms. I had five heirlooms that I wrote about and included photos of.

Webinars/Study Groups Attended: 

I attended my Thursday evening  online study group, and Kim, Linda, and I had a very engaging conversation about the KDP. In my Friday group, after everyone checked in, we discussed DNA standards.

I attended the Sacramento German Genealogy Society to listen to Dr. Roger Minert speak about his project, German Immigrants in American Church Records. He spoke about the start of the project, how he has kept it going while working at BYU, and how he would continue the project after being retired. He created a 501(c)3 organization and I wrote a check for his project. He pays students to extract the information from microfilm and from photocopies of church records they can find. It’s a worthwhile project, as these records often give the German hometown.

I attempted to watch the NARA virtual presentations on Wednesday, but our internet was not working. Instead, I had previously downloaded the handouts which included the presentations and viewed most of them. I can still go to YouTube and view the recordings. I still need to view the Homestead presentation.

Client Work:

No client work this week.

Volunteer Work:

At the History Center this week, I worked only a couple of hours before heading up to Sacramento. I also worked at the Oakland FamilySearch center. I helped one woman who wanted the original record to back up derivative papers she had. I found the records on FamilySearch for her.

I visited two historical societies this week to write articles for the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society’s newsletter. Friday, I went to Moraga and had a nice visit. On Saturday morning, the Walnut Creek Historical Society let me view their history room and it was a pleasure to meet the two volunteers there. Moraga’s article will be in the next issue and Walnut Creek’s will be in the first issue in 2020.

Own Work:

I did no genealogy research of my own family this week.

I taught the last Acalanes Adult School class on genealogy this week. We studied the Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org websites live, as I demonstrated how to use various areas of the site – searching on specific databases and using the catalog at FamilySearch. Those that filled out the final evaluation all gave kudos to the class and are looking forward to next quarter.

Other:

I attended the Pacific Coast Region of the NMRA board meeting on Saturday. It was my first as Director. We meet two times a year and the next meeting will be at the PCR convention in April.

Sunday, Elizabeth had to evacuate from her town of Sebastopol and the place in Santa Rosa where she was staying and come here. We had planned to go up to Sacramento to spend the day with Norman’s brother, Brian and wife, Linda. We toured first the California Museum, located at the State Archives. There were some very interesting exhibits on Japanese-American interment, California's remarkable women, and mural art in East Los Angeles. We had dinner at One Speed, an Italian restaurant, where I ordered a very delicious gluten-free pizza. It was a very nice day, but the wind on the way up was so strong. Tree branches littered the streets in Sacramento and adjacent to the freeway in places. 

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