My Trails into the Past

I have completed two hundred and thirty-five (235) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside home activities involved volunteering at the History Center, attending the CCCHS Board meeting, train club meeting, and the train club show, where I worked as the trackwalker.   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   Jacqueline and I met on Zoom and discussed new iPads for use with the Family Tree Notebook sheets. We planned our trip to RootsTech 2025 during Amigos. For the Kinseekers Military SIG, I asked a question about the WWI Bakers & Cooks schools. I attended the first of what I hope are many peer-support & accountability group meetings for those of us CGs who want to work on our renewals. Roundtable met and the five of us shared what we were working on. Lastly, I attended Book Club and we discussed the book, American Fly Girl by Susan Tate Ankeny. Genealogy Writing/Research: Most of my writing this week was centered around the articles for Der Blumenbaum and Nugget. I subm

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has our assignment for tonight:   1)  Have you used "Helps" such as Tree Checker on Ancestry, Consistency Checker on MyHeritage, or the Family Tree Analyzer program to check for errors in your family tree?  [thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]  Here's mine: I have never used a tree checker on trees at Ancestry or MyHeritage, as I uploaded trees to those sites from RootsMagic and do not add to them from those websites. I have used Problem Search for RootsMagic. Before running it, there are several options to select, such as locating people without a sex, the proper order of events, being born before parent’s marriage, before parent’s birth, after mother’s death, missing a surname, to name a few issues. I have run the program before and fixed some items. Let’s run it today to see what errors it can find.

I have completed two hundred and thirty-four (234) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside home activities involved volunteering at the History Center and the Oakland FamilySearch Center, running trains at the gallery in Pleasanton, and visiting the San Francisco Public Library history archive by riding BART. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   This week, Jacqueline and I met on Zoom and I helped her fix a table of contents in a Word document. On Wednesday, I went to San Francisco with the NorCal chapter of APG to tour the history archive at the San Francisco Public Library. The five of us then had lunch at food trucks in the Civic Center Plaza. Linda and I rode BART in for easy access. Genealogy Writing/Research: I got started on a couple of articles I’m writing for Der Blumenbaum and Nugget . I also worked on some research and document transcriptions for my Lancaster and Davey families. Blog Post Published: What We Don’t Talk About Enough . For 52 Ancestors’ theme of

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings :  1)  Which of your ancestors lived a life of hardship or sadness?  Who had few possessions or resources, was involved in violence or war, lived through a famine, or suffered forced immigration?   Here's mine: I have a story from an interview with a great uncle, O.D. “Pig” Johnston. Yes, that’s his name and what he had been called since a toddler. The interview was conducted by Jewell Dukes Huddleston and published in two installments in the Comanche Chief in her column called “Wagon Wheels keep on turnin’” on 29 November 1979 and 6 December 1979. He was 81 at the time of the interview. Here is the transcript of what he said about his maternal grandmother, Amanda A. (Haley) Jones. “. . . a twice-told tale recalls the trials experienced by Johnston’s maternal grandmother in her trek to Texas. Her husband [Benjamin W. J

Learning about our family history is exciting. We’re hoping to find interesting people who have done interesting things--maybe even outstanding things. We’re hoping to connect to famous people in history. Sometimes we do, but most of us have ancestors and family members who just lived normal lives, working hard at surviving and making a life for themselves and their families. Along the way, we discover family members who struggled with surviving and supporting themselves or their families. They may have even abandoned their families. We ask ourselves why? Often these stories don’t get passed down through the family and we don’t learn why. Often the root cause is mental illness, something we only recently talked about in our culture. In the past, a person with mental illness may have been sent away to a hospital or home and forgotten. It’s a shock when we discover a family member in a mental home or hospital through a census record or an obituary. My first experience with this is

I have completed two hundred and thirty-three (233) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside my home activities included volunteering at the History Center, running trains at the gallery in Pleasanton and the Walnut Creek club, and attending the RootsMagic SIG at the Oakland FamilySearch Center. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   Monday Morning Group met on Zoom and I spoke about my trip to Texas. Jacqueline and I spoke on the phone for a bit. RootsMagic SIG was held live at the Oakland FamilySearch Center and there were at least fifteen present. I hope some decide to attend our Zoom meetings in the future. I will be leading the discussion while Keith is on vacation. Genealogy Writing/Research: I worked on cleaning up my download folder from past research sessions and entering data into RootsMagic. I researched some on the Davey family and wrote my 52 Ancestors post about the search for Thomas Davey’s parents. Blog Post Published: Common Surnames Can Cause a Mix-Up When T