Skip to main content

Monday Genea-pourri, Week of March 13–20, 2023

I have completed one hundred fifty-eight (158) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, bird watching, and working the train club weekend shows.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

  • SNGF: Are/Were You a Wild and Crazy Genealogist? I wrote about the time my husband and I searched through eight cemeteries in Faulkner County, Arkansas. Bless his heart!

Meetings/Discussion Groups
This week I met with Jacqueline, attended the Kinseekers military SIG, and met with my certification mentee, and another Northern California APG member about rekindling the NorCal group. The AppGen founders had a brief meeting and will meet again on Monday.

Volunteer
John and I worked some on the library inventory, and I worked on foldering a new collection that came in. Next up is to write a finding aid and enter it into Past Perfect. I took the minutes of the historical society’s board meeting and the Sonoma County Genealogical Society’s board meeting.

Client Work
This week, I mostly finished working on the curriculum for the Probate class I’m teaching this coming week. I sent out an email asking the students about their experience with probate records along with the syllabus. The students have a wide mixture of experiences.  

I gave a presentation on using city directories for the Sonoma County Genealogical Society on Saturday. It only took me 40 minutes on zoom. I need to add more content. When I used to do these presentations in person, it would take over an hour. I think the difference is, I took questions during the session and asked the audience questions. It’s too hard to do that on zoom, so I just go through the slides and take questions at the end. Still, the whole thing took just an hour.  

Own Work
I did little work this week but discovered a new database with images at Ancestry: “Illinois, U.S., Catholic Diocese of Joliet, Sacramental Records, 1800-1976.” They have color images of St. John’s church in Joliet and I can’t wait to dig deeper. I have the information already, as I had written to the church when I first started doing genealogy and they sent me the data. Now I’ll have images of the actual church record. Yeah! Who knows, I might find more relatives.

Webinars Viewed. None.

I am reading:

  • Gateway to Victory: The Wartime Story of the San Francisco Army Port of Embarkation by Captain James W. Hamilton
  • Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage by Nathalia Holt
  • Researching U.S. WWI Military Members by Margaret M. McMahon, PhD.

Other
I went bird watching with the Mt. Diablo Audubon Society on Friday at Valle Vista, a staging area of the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s site near the San Leandro Reservoir. I saw about thirty-six birds and the highlight was the band-tailed pigeon. We also saw several American Kestrels, which was pretty cool, too.

Photos for this week. From my own yard:




Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great at 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 © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

Post a Comment

All comments on this blog will be previewed by the author to prevent spammers and unkind visitors to the site. The blog is open to other-than-just family members particularly those interested in family history and genealogy.

If you are family and want to be contacted, contact me at snrylisa @ gmail.com.