Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 5-11, 2021

I have completed fifty-six (56) weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. This past week, I volunteered at the History Center, taught at the Adult School (on Zoom in an empty classroom), and went to the meadow for phenology.

 Genealogy

Blog Writing:

• Week 14: Great—How Many Great-grandchildren Did Warren Lancaster Really Have? I discovered a discrepancy in the number of great-grandchildren in the Warren’s obituary and tried to analyze why that could have happened.
• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – The Games Your Family Played. This was a repeat from the year before so I didn’t write a new post but posted this one instead. We played Scattergories before the Parker Brothers games was invented.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended: I met with Jacqueline on Tuesday and Amigos on Wednesday. I had other tasks to do during the other group meetings. I also attended the California Genealogical Society’s board meeting on Saturday, and Book club on Sunday.

Webinars & Classes Attended: I attended several webinars this week:

• Keep Calm & Cite Your Sources by Alice Hoyt Veen
• Learning More About American Female Ancestors Prior to 1850 by Gena Philibert-Ortega
• Allied with the Allies by Debra M Dudek
• Review of DNA Testing Company and Tools by Mark McClaren
• Record As You Go-Cite As You Go by Cyndi Ingle
• Write As You Go by Jill Morelli

I also attended an all-day class put on by the BCG Education Fund with Tom Jones and Harold Henderson. It was a fantastic class about writing tips and putting together evidence. Tom gave us two problems to work on before class that were really tough for me—I wished I had had more time to put into it.

Client Work/Presentations:
I taught my first day of classes at the Adult School. I have 17 in the beginning records class and 8 in the writing workshop class. Although I have the hang of teaching these classes on Zoom, I am looking forward to in-class sessions again, where I can share documents and books, and have people work in groups.

Volunteer & Own Work:
I worked at the History Center on Tuesday sorting the library spreadsheet so we can begin the inventory process. We hope to intermix our books in with the books we received from the public library, first creating Dewey Decimal call numbers and labeling the books before shelving them. We also will move all of the library materials into Room 3, enabling us to have everything in one place.

I created memorials at Find A Grave for the three of my husbands’ family and added the photos that Jacqueline took for me at Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose.

Other: I attended the 2021 PCR convention practice session. I will be working the conventions as a moderator for three of the clinic presentations. Classes started this week in both the Intermediate German and Advanced German Conversation. We’re reading the first Harry Potter book in German with Nancy class. Baseball season has started so I got in a few Giants games.

I’m finished reading D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose for Gena’s Book Club and am working on the following books:

• 1919, The Year of Racial Violence by David F. Krugler
• The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati (which I had to return and will request it again)

Photos taken this week: Native plant flowers from my garden.

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.

Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.