My Trails into the Past

Outside activities included a hike at Briones, volunteering at the History Center and the Oakland FamilySearch Center, yearly physical with my doctor, and lunch with Nancy and Terry.   Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: Monday, John and I met at the History Center to roughly inventory and clear a space for the Betty Maffei collection. That involved moving boxes around to make room and rehousing some of the collection into banker boxes for better stacking. I opened the History Center on Tuesday again. I started work on the extra boxes of Pleasant Historical Society Collection we found the day before. Our board meeting was canceled due to lack of members available. At the Oakland FamilySearch Center, I showed Laura how to find baptismal and marriage records when she had the old microfilm number. I attended Linda’s presentation on writing. Genealogy Meetings:  On Monday, I attended the NARA SIG meeting. We ended up talking a lot about military records and why there are...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, is to: 1)  Are there ancestor's occupations that you know nothing about? 2)  Pick a great-grandparent or earlier ancestor who held an unfamiliar job (cooper, cordwainer, hostler, etc.). Look it up and write a short description of what their daily work life might have been like.  Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this week's SNGF challenge! Here's mine: One of my husband’s family kin, Joseph McFall (1836-1908), was married to his great-grandfather, Frederick N Davey’s, sister, Catherine Rose Davey. On the Civil War draft registration, Joseph was listed as a caulker. [1] He lived in Jeffersonville, Clark County, Indiana, which is located on the Ohio River. There is a wonderful website, “Dictionary of Old Occupations: A-Z Index,” on Family Researcher ( https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/glossary/Dicti...

Outside activities included a hike at Pt. Pinole, volunteering twice at the History Center, and two days of train club show.   Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work:  I opened the History Center on Tuesday and closed on Wednesday. I worked on a query looking at deed indexes and court records. On Tuesday, I took minutes for the Sonoma County Genealogical Society board meeting. Genealogy Meetings:  On Monday, I attended the renewal accountability meeting and the military SIG. Josh and I met on Friday, catching up on our activities. Sunday, I attended book club and we discussed Paper Bullets. Genealogy Writing/Research : I attended two sessions of writing with the Level Up group. For  12 for ‘26, I did some full-text search on Ebenezer Loveless and wrote that up. I started writing up the timeline for his father, Jesse Loveless. Blog Posts Published: Searching in Cave Hill Cemetery for Vohringers For the theme of “at the cemetery,” I wrote about our visit t...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  Determine where your ancestral families were in May 1876 -- 150 years ago. 2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).   Here’s mine: I tried to get RootsMagic to put out a report, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I had to work this out by hand. Since I research both my lines and my husband’s lines (or more simply put, my children’s lines), I’ll list both sides of the family. The bold names are direct lines. Husband’s Paternal Line My husband’s 2x-great grandfather, Amos Gorrell, Jr. (1837-1928) was living in Cooper County, Missouri, with his wife, Catherine E. Shotts (1835-1918), and children, Louella R (1866-1938), Linnie Sarah (1868-1950), Joseph N (1869-1960), and Ada Leah (1872-1967), and Catherine’s son, Ma...

Last year after attending the National Genealogical Society’s Family History Conference, my husband and I visited Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, to locate the gravestones of his Voehringer/Vohringer family members. I had a list created from their Find a Grave memorials and stopped by the office. I am glad I did, as I received paper copies of the cemetery records. He also marked on a map where the locations of the stones were. That cemetery is huge and it is easy to get lost. The marks on the map were in the general location but I still had to walk around a bit to find them. Yellow marks the spots Mary Agnes Vohringer, born 3 Aug 1811 and died 25 Dec 1898. Her stone is shared with her bachelor son, Fred Vohringer (1849-1895). [1] She was born Mary Agnes Reiff, and is my husband’s 3x-great-grandmother. [2] Mary and Fred were not the only people on this stone. On the opposite side was the surname Nolting. [3] On the side was the name: Rosina Nolting (1843-1915). [4] ...

Outside activities included a hike at Mt. Diablo again, volunteering at OFSC, a bird count on Mt. Wanda, and a train club meeting.   Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: I worked on the BCG webinar press release and will send it out this coming week. At the History Center, I got there after lunch and worked on entering books into the library database. On Wednesday, I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch Center. Genealogy Meetings:  Jacqueline and I did not meet this week. I attended the APG NorCal meeting and we merged with the Southern California group and selected a new logo. The Labor SIG met on Thursday this week and we had a great discussion in the 90 minutes about lots of different topics. Genealogy Writing/Research : I started a new surname for 12 for ‘26, beginning with my 2x-great-grandfather, Ebenezer Loveless. As I have done in past months, I first created a timeline with what records I already have collected. This week, I’ll finalize the full-text and n...

Full-text search has been a game-changer in genealogy research because it pulls up names and phrases in documents that have no index. I have found some great treasures using it in my own family research. However, after using it for the past year, I realized that not all records are searched using this new tool. So I have a strategy I use. First, use the FamilySearch catalog to get to the place of interest. Second, check the type of record you’re interested in and see if they are digital (ie. a camera is showing) and that they are not locked from home. If the camera is showing a lock, then full-text won’t show any results from those films while viewing from home. For the court records in Erath County, I see some of the films are locked and some are open from home. Third, check that the symbol of a sheet of paper with the + sign is showing. That means the film is full-text searchable. If there is no symbol, then those records won’t turn up in a search. In the image above, the last f...