My Trails into the Past

The Book of Me, Written by Me is a blogging theme where one can write about their own life using blog themes posted each week. More information can be found at Anglers Rest here . This week's prompt is - Hobbies. Childhood hobbies & collections Did you share a "passion" with a family member or friend? Tell us about it - How, why, where Do you still have any old hobbies - the ones that have been with you since childhood? Do you still have those childhood collections? I have had many hobbies over my lifetime: collecting stamps, postcards, and lapel pins, model railroading, writing, bird watching, and genealogy. Some I did as a child and some I took up in adulthood. Collecting . My first true hobby was stamp collecting. I was introduced to stamp collecting by George Ann Olander in the 4th or 5th grade. She gave me a little bag of cancelled stamps and my parents bought a small world stamp collecting book. Some of the stamps I remember were the old Wo...

The Book of Me, Written by Me is a blogging theme where one can write about their own life using blog themes posted each week. More information can be found at Anglers Rest here . This week's prompt is - Easter Memories What does Easter Mean to you? A religious event? The first main break (in the UK) since Christmas and New Year A more general Spring/Autumn event Easter Bunnies Eggs Chocolate Traditions Easter has always been a fun holiday for me. Family got together and the weather was nice enough for all the children to play outside, even if we were all dressed in our best Sunday church clothes. Easter meant a new dress for Easter Sunday Mass. My birthday is also in the spring and often my new birthday dress doubled for a new Easter dress, too.  Easter 1957, Dad, me, brother Steve, Mom Some fun memories include dyeing hard-boiled eggs using the little cardboard kits with the colored dye tablets.  My mother always used coffee cups to fill with the diff...

This is week 11 of the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge” by Amy Crow from  No Story Too Small .  I am a bit behind but intend to catch up. This week I’m writing about Martin Gleeson (1859-1924). Martin Gleeson was born 25 Jan 1859 to John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney. [1] He was their first child. If they used common Irish naming patterns, they named their first son after John’s father, Martin Gleeson (1787-1859). Martin would have never known his paternal grandfather who died in October of the same year he was born. baptism at St. Philips Church, Richmond, Ontario Martin lived on the family farm in Carleton County, Ontario until about 1879, when they all moved to Dakota Territory. On 7 October 1880, he presented himself to the clerk of the District Court in Davison County with his intention to become a naturalized citizen. [2] He became a citizen on 6 November 1886. [3] The five Gleeson sons of John & Margaret Gleeson. Not certain which one is ...

The Book of Me, Written by Me is a blogging theme where one can write about their own life using blog themes posted each week. More information can be found at Anglers Rest here . Home means different things to different people, so this week we are going to explore what it means to us: What does it feel like? How do you recognize it? What makes it home - people, place, time? Home first of all is in Contra Costa County, California. This county is located in Northern California and is part of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We have a temperate weather—not to cold and not too warm overall. In winter, though, it can be pretty frosty in the morning. Sometimes the Tule fog can linger for many hours after sunrise or appear just at dusk and that keeps it pretty cool. In summer, if the coastal fog remains off shore, our high temperature can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit until the hot central valley heat finally draws the fog from over the ocean into the Bay Area and c...

The Book of Me, Written by Me is a blogging theme where one can write about their own life using blog themes posted each week. More information can be found at Anglers Rest here . This week’s prompt is “Who Do You Miss?” People who live elsewhere and that we will not see over the festive seasons People that have passed away. Who do you miss? Why do you miss them? People who have passed away that I miss: My mother . I miss being able to pick up the phone and ask for her advice. I miss playing games with her such as Scrabble, Gin Rummy, and Categories. I miss her big pot of vegetable (actually she called it ‘refrigerator’) soup that she would cook all day on the back of the stove. It was so good on a good winter day. My grandmother, Nana . I miss her reading stories to us, singing to us as we washed dishes, and the candy jar on her desk. I miss the new pajamas every Christmas that we opened on Christmas Eve. I miss lighting votive candles in church with her...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing encourages us every Saturday to have a bit of Genealogy Fun. Today's event is about finding statistics about the sources in our genealogy database.  He wants to know: How many sources do you have in your database? What is the source to person ratio? Which master source do you have the most citations for? Then we're to tell about it in a blog post.  So here goes: I use RootsMagic for my genealogy program. I have a total of 1123 master sources with a total of 6727 citations and I have 6170 people in my database.  So my source to person ratio is 6727/6170 = 1.09. Now, my number would be a lot higher, except many of my sources are still listed in the person notes and have not been moved to the individual events.  When I used PAF, I kept my sources in the person notes in chronological order.  As I work through a family, I convert them slowly to event sources. My most used source is Find-a-grave with 446 citations.  Comin...

This is week 10 of the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge” by Amy Crow from  No Story Too Small .  I am a bit behind but intend to catch up. This week I'm writing about my husband's great-uncle, David William Lundquist. David William Lundquist was born 3 Oct 1898 in Stanton, Montgomery County, Iowa to Pehr Alfred Lundquist and Mathilda Lovisa Eriksson-Holm. [1] Dave was the youngest of three children. He had a brother, John Edward and sister, Agnes Hilma Carolina.  Alfred, Dave, Agnes, John, Lovisa Dave grew up on a farm and was 17 when his father sold the farm and the family moved to Merced County, California where he purchased land in the Hilmar Colony. They attended the Hilmar Covenant Church. His sister, Agnes married the oldest son of the minister. Dave attended Heald’s College in Oakland and lived during that time with his sister, Agnes and her husband, Arthur Nilsen. [2] He worked for the Standard Oil Company following his schooling....

I am accepting the 3-2-1 RAGU Challenge of Dear Myrtle : Take three sources and write two paragraphs about one event. This is a great challenge. Instead of just inputting the information found from a single source (like a birth certificate) into the genealogy program (I’m using RootsMagic), I’m taking the information found from multiple sources and correlating them. Through writing the paragraphs, I can explain my reasoning as to why I think the information is probably correct for the one event. However, I don’t think I can write this out in only two paragraphs. The three sources would need a paragraph each, at least. The birth event is for my great-grandmother, Anna Marie Gleeson Sullivan. She was born 13 Feb 1860 in Carleton County, Ontario, Canada.  The first source for her birth is the baptism record from St. Phillips Church in Richmond, Carleton County, Ontario, Canada. [1]  This source is the parish records where baptisms, marriages, and deaths were recorded...