My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!   Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has our first assignment for the new year. 1)  What are your genealogy goals for 2026?  Consider genealogy research, education, organizing, service, writing, and whatever else you care to share . Here’s mine: I delayed working on this because I just bet this would be the theme for today’s assignment. I have reviewed last year’s goals here: Revisiting my 2025 Genealogy Goals . This is always a good start, as we often have left over goals we did not finish. This year, I am going to break up my goals into different categories: Education, Organizing, Research, and Writing. Education Under Education, I have signed up many of the upcoming Legacy Family Tree Webinars . I do not always watch them live, except the BCG-sponsored ones, because I am usually busy when they first air. I started a Wednesday Webinar meme this past year, where I tak...

To start off this monthly task, I selected twelve of my daughters’ sixteen 2x-great-grandparents. Using a random number generator, no. 10 was selected, which is Nell L. Hutson, who married Thomas Newton Johnston. I will deal with her life as a married person when he is selected. For now, I will focus mostly on her parents and work my way back. This will include Hutson and Selman lines. Background Information This first part will cover what I already know about the family of Nell and her parents. This covers census, marriage, deeds, obituaries, death certificate, and cemetery markers. Laying out the background information will help see the holes where more research is needed. These will be listed as action items. Nell was born on 8 February 1888 somewhere in Texas. This information is from her gravestone. [1] Other documents point to 1889 as the year of her birth. Her parents are Peter H. Hutson and Sarah “Sallie” Selman, though no document states this. [Action1: write proof summar...

It is time to revisit my goals for 2025 and see how well I did (see “Goals for 2025” ). Looking back, my genealogy goals were: Organization . Continue organizing and reducing files. I have new archival boxes to store these items and I can donate the plastic bins. Writing . Create 2 books about my grandparents, Tom J Johnston & Pansy Lancaster, and William C Hork and Anna Sullivan. Do the same as I did the parent's book, using blog posts and photos.  Renewal . Decide on a subject for the KDP I can use for my renewal. I have played around with some starting points but have not decided yet. Presentations . Create 1-2 new presentations. One should have a case study within. Revisit I had these goals written on a bright yellow 3 x 5 card posted on the bulletin board above my computer. I do not think I ever looked at them the whole year. So, it will be interesting to see how well I completed each goal. Organization . I was to work through more surname paper files in my plastic bi...

My grandmother, Anna Marie Sullivan Hork, was born 15 October 1892 in Anaconda, Deer Lodge Co, Montana, and died on Valentine’s Day, 1979 in Santa Clara, California. [1] I remember because my parents had a party for the immediate family and Dad got the call from one of his sisters that Nana had died. The funeral was a few days later at St. Matthews Catholic Church in San Mateo, California. [2] Afterwards, we went to my Aunt Virginia’s house where the after gathering could have been called an Irish wake. We all spoke of the great memories we had with our Nana. She was buried next to her husband in the Los Angeles National Cemetery. [3] She had married William Cyril Hork in Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana, on 30 November 1922, which was Thanksgiving Day. [4] They had five children, four who lived to adulthood. Cyril had problems with alcohol, so she left him and took her children to Napa, California, to live with her sister’s husband and start a new life. After working in his co...

This past week, I have been watching recorded presentations from the Texas State Genealogical Society’s conference. Craig Scott gave a presentation about  Fold3 , and since that site is not easy to use, I always watch a webinar on it, as I will learn of a new database or a new way to locate items there. This presentation did not disappoint me. He showed examples from the “Confederate Citizens File.” I found it by clicking the browse feature, selecting Civil War, Confederate, and then typing “citizen” in the keyword search. There are three categories: Business, Citizen, and None. Each have thousands of records. I did locate Jesse Loveless. It is one record, where he sold on 6 Dec 1863, 30 bushels of corn at $2 per bushel and 1900 pounds of hay at $2.35 per hundred, for a total of $102.75. The quartermaster, Captain T.C. Burch signed the receipt. It was received near Rome on 6 December 1863. It looks like Jesse Loveless signed it, but there is also a cross after his name. [1] S...

Outside activities included two trips to the Oakland FamilySearch Center, phenology at the Meadow, and the doctor’s office for labwork. Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: Because of the holiday, there was no volunteer or work activities. Genealogy Meetings:  The Renewal Accountability Group met and I asked about what to do about sources for a genealogy summary when it really needs to be a proof argument. No one really had a complete answer. I’m still researching it. Roundtable met and we ran out of topics before the two hours were up so all said Merry Christmas and we ended the call. Jacqueline and I talked for a little bit after her yoga. I had watched the NGS class on Airtable but she hadn’t yet. Genealogy Writing/Research : I had more free time this week to work on genealogy. Two days, I scanned photo albums and loose photos at the Oakland FamilySearch Center, which was only open for staff to come in and and work on their own research. I scanned four Creative Memori...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. Here's your chance to tell us about the neat genealogy and Family history gear you received over the holidays. 1) Was Genea-Santa good to you?  What genealogy gifts did you receive for Christmas this year?   Here’s mine. I did not receive any genealogy-related gifts from Santa, but rather from the director of the Oakland FamilySearch Center when he scheduled the Center to be open 4 days during the break for staff to come research. I took advantage of two days this past week to do some scanning. First, I scanned four Creative Memories scrapbooks. Two were ones I created for my youngest daughter and two were ones I had created for myself. I also found some old photo albums that I scanned. First, I’d scan the whole page and then each individual photo. I also fo...