Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 8–14, 2023

I have completed one hundred sixty-six (166) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included teaching at Acalanes Adult School and working at the History Center.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

The Many Hats of George Gorrell. For week 19 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote about my bald father-in-law and how he dealt with it.

SNGF: Then and Now – Source Citations I wrote about the evolution of how I handled source citing in genealogy software and in my writing.

I also posted a postcard and a photo on both blogs for Mother’s Day: Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Mother’s Day.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
This week I attended the Kinseekers Military SIG on Monday. On Wednesday, I met with my mentee and discussed her portfolio progress, and in the evening, I hosted the CGS Roundtable discussion group, where the nine attendees shared interesting stories. On Thursday, the CCCGS had its annual meeting and several members shared stories of their research.

Volunteer
The Sonoma County Genealogical Society board met and I took minutes. We still don’t have a president or programs chair. At the History Center on Tuesday, I worked on processing a collection. There were quite a few newspaper articles that I photocopied instead of inserting each into Mylar. On Saturday, I was the Zoom host for Stewart’s CGS class on Excel for Genealogy.

Client Work
I taught the third genealogy class at the Adult School and the writing group met for a discussion of Lynne’s work. Nancy shared some timeline tips she got from Canva. I also updated my AppGen page for the upcoming fall class which will be announced soon.

Own Work
I continued working on the Arkansas birth records I found last week on Ancestry. I visited and then wrote an article about the Clayton Historical Society for the next CCCGS newsletter. Lastly, I read through a few more pages of the St. John the Baptist church in Joliet locating records of Sievert families.

Webinars Viewed.

• Tracing Your Doughboy Online: WWI Muster Rolls, Rosters, and Morning Reports by KB Barcomb (Kinseekers)

I am reading:

• An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear—FINISHED!
• Purple Crayons: The Art of Drawing a Life by Ross Ellenhorn—FINISHED!
• Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf
• The Wounded World: W.E.B. DuBois and the First World War by Chad L Williams

Other
I had two wildflower outings this week. The first was a 2+ mile hike in Morgan Territory Regional Park. I saw my first larkspur and there were numerous Mt. Diablo Fairy Lanterns. Although it was cold and windy, we saw some nice displays of color in the fields. The second outing was a car trip to Colusa County where we drove on dirt roads in the backcountry. Saw lots of jewels and fields of Goldfields. It was a long day (especially as we went on the wrong road at one point and lost over an hour of backtracking).

Photos for this week I had two trips this week looking for wildflowers and these are a few of the highlights:

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.