My Trails into the Past

Randy Seaver for Genea-Musing has another great mission for us this week: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1) Did you make any New Years Resolutions, or state Goals and Objectives, for genealogy research in 2018? If so, tell us about them. 2) If not, then make ONE resolution, or state one goal, for your genealogy research that you are determined to keep during 2018. We'll check on progress toward that resolution/goal during the year in SNGF (if I remember!). 3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status post or Google+ Stream post. I have never been one to have "Resolutions." They are so easily broken before the end of January. But I truly like the idea of goals. I have many goals: exercise more, eat better, write more in my blog, find more birds this year, etc... But my main goal this year is to turn in my BCG portfolio. I think I can make this hap

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Genealogy Sunday, I finished up the KDP. I printed it out and put it aside to read in about a week when it might look fresher. I started working on the Case Study again. I thought it was almost done, but I have lots of work still to do on it. I might try different approaches and see which works out the best. Working on the Case Study, brought out the need for a few documents from Todd County, Minnesota. There are no professional genealogists up there, nor none in the Minneapolis area willing to go up there. I made a request last summer for some deed records but they never got back to me. I’ll try once more with the request, then I’ll try a title company in the area. That email is all written and waiting in the draft box. I’ll probably have better luck if I wai

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Genealogy The big news this week was finishing up on the last story of the KDP. I still have a few holes to fill on the second and third stories. The probate records from Merced County, California and the land record from Montgomery County, Iowa, should come in this week and that will be extremely helpful. I’ll need to do some editing and proof-reading both the text and footnotes. It feels good to be nearly 90% done with this part. The online session with the Mastering Genealogical Documentation hangout went very well. We were talking about Chapter 13, citing original online content. I focused on recording negative searches done online. If you’re interested in the recording, check out DearMyrtle’s YouTube channel. I worked at the desk at the California Ge

Randy Seaver has another great SNGF this week. Our instructions are: Pauleen Cass (Cassmob), who writes the  Family history across the seas  blog started a Christmas meme in 2012 - see  Deck the Halls - 2012 Christmas GeneaMeme . So we will use that for SNGF this week (since very few readers did it in past years!): 1)  Copy and paste the meme questions into your blog or word processor, and then answer the questions.  You could use short statements, long paragraphs or provide a link to one of your earlier posts. 2)  Tell us about your meme answers in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. 3)  Be sure to leave a comment on Pauleen's blog post about your entry in this Christmas 2017 Geneameme.  She'll be surprised! Here's mine (questions in green, answers in red): THE 2017 CHRISTMAS GENEAMEME Do you have any special Xmas traditions in your family?     Growing up when the children believed

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Nature/History I took my camera to the Meadow this week and got some interesting shots. The sun was shining nicely on the wooden cows at the fence. The Baccharis (coyote bush) was in full seed dispersal mode which made everything white. The moon was setting behind Mt. Wanda and I managed to get a nice shot. Also a shot of a California Scrub Jay. Wintertime, the recording of the phenology study goes pretty quickly, as many of the plants are in dormant mode. I also went on the first tour of John Muir’s grave site. A van took us out to the site and we learned a little about each family buried there: The Strentzels, the Muirs, and their children. We learned also about the Sierra Club coming to the site after Muir’s death. The large eucalyptus tree h

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Genealogy The online session with the Mastering Genealogical Documentation hangout went very well. We were talking about Chapter 11, citing online sources and the exact place where the document was found. If you’re interested in the recording, check out DearMyrtle’s YouTube channel. I worked a bit with the KDP element of my certification portfolio, using the many documents that I photographed from Norman’s cousin. It gets very tedious reading it on the computer, so I have printed out the document in order to see it in a new light. I am about three-quarters of the way done—only one more person’s story to write. Most of the docs from the cousin will help fill in this story. The Friday chat with my certification buddies went really well. We’re reading No

Randy Seaver’s mission this week is to: 1)  Is your genealogy software family tree database perfect?  With no errors or inconsistencies?  Yep, mine isn't either!  Big time.  With over 49,000 persons there are bound to be some errors in my tree.  Even 1% would be 490 persons or 1,500 events! 2)  This week, find your genealogy software's "Problem Report" or something similar.  Tell us how you found it, and what it tells you about the problems in your family tree database. 3)  Share your results with us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post. I also have RootsMagic as my genealogy program and followed the same directions that Randy gave. I used the following criteria to find the errors: Criteria I used for the error report And my report came back with 21 errors. I have 7091 people in my database with 16,627 events. Twenty-one errors about of sixteen thousand or so events comes out to 0.126%, which is a pretty

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Instead of writing about each day this week, I’ll take it by subject: Genealogy   I worked mostly this week at the computer on my KDP (Kinship Determination Project). I have made a lot of progress, writing probably about two-thirds of it now. Wednesday I drove up to Sacramento to my husband’s cousin to take photos of Lundquist paperwork she has stored. I took 153 images of miscellaneous documents (deeds, checks, certificates, photos, etc). There are quite a few things that can be used for both Per Alfred and David’s stories. I completed the MGD (Mastering Genealogical Document) homework for Chapter 11 but when we tried to have the Hangout on Wednesday, Myrt couldn’t get the Hangout to start recording. So we’ll do this chapter next week. I am also p

Another challenge from Randy Seaver of  GeneaMusings . This sounds really interesting! Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Drive down Memory Lane - what were your family cars - from childhood to now, year, model, color, features.  Can you remember? 2)  Share your memories with us in your own blog post, in a Facebook post or a comment on this post.  Please comment on this post if you write somewhere else. This is a great meme and I had written about cars a few years back with the Book of Me . I probably have more photos but they haven't been scanned yet. The first car my parents had when I was a baby was black. The shot I have of it is when my parents left for the honeymoon.  The first car I remember was a Chevrolet station wagon, probably a Nova . I remember riding in the back with my younger siblings and waving to people in other cars. Then my parents got an American Motors Rambler station wago

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Sunday, November 12, 2017.  Most of the day was spent at the computer. I worked hard with my KDP, writing the story of the first generation and working on the introduction. I also wrote and published my homework for the DearMyrtle Mastering Genealogical Documentation Hangout on Wednesday. Monday, November 13, 2017.  The second Monday of the month is our Monday Morning Meeting at Susan’s house where fellow genealogists meet to discuss their genealogy finds or to ask questions. Several members had great things to share that they had found. Peggy had the best stuff—her great-uncle had  been a fireman in Santa Cruz. I shared some photos of me at the National archives. Shooting Civil War pension files Completed a client’s report before going off to German cl

Our assignment from Randy Seaver today is: 1)  Jill Ball created a 40 question "Ancestors Geneameme" in 2011, and Linda Stufflebean recently expanded it to 70 questions on her Empty Branches on the Family Tree blog.  2)  Let's do Linda's expanded list this week for SNGF. 3)  Copy and paste the list of questions below and replace my answers with your own. 4)  Share your answers as a comment on this b;og post, in your own blog post, or on Facebook or Google+.   Please leave a comment and al ink to your answer in a comment on this blog post. Here are mine: Can name my 16 great-great grandparents.   YES Can name my 32 great great great grandparents   No.  10 of my paternal, 8 of my maternal Can name over 50 direct ancestors  YES Have photos or portraits of my 8 great grandparents  YES, seven of them Have an ancestor who was married more than three times No Have an ancestor who was a bigamist   NO, not that I know of Met all four of my g

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. Sunday, November 5, 2017.  I worked most of the day at the computer, catching up on a variety of projects, such as completing my Mastering Genealogical Documentation homework for the DearMyrtle  Hangout on Monday. I also helped my husband pick the rest of the pomegranates on our tree. We have gathered four bags this year to give to our neighbors. Monday, November 6, 2017 .  I got into a cleaning state today (actually it had started the day before). I recycled some things and took some things to Goodwill. Feels great to have some more space. German class was fun because everyone was there. Tuesday, November 7, 2017. Spent several hours with fellow board members of the Contra Costa County Historical Society discussing how to conduct fund-raising. After a qui