My Trails into the Past

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 ...

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 Mot...

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 of...

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 biga...

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-raisin...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another great activity tonight. Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1) Have you created a Timeline for one of your ancestors using a genealogy software program (e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, Legacy, Reunion, etc.) or an online family Tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree, FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni, MyHeritage, etc.), or in a spreadsheet (e.g., Excel)? 2)  If not, try to create a timeline using the program/website of your choice.  If so, create another one for the ancestor of your choice! 3)  Show us your Timeline creation, and tell us how you did it.  Which program/website, the process you used, and how you captured the images to display your timeline. 4)  Share your Timeline creation on your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+. I’m working on writing up a story about Per Alfred Lundquist, the great-grandfather of my...

This is republished from 2015. Today is November 11, a day we honor veterans who served in the Armed Forces. I do not have many direct ancestors who were veterans, but I still want to honor those who were. This list includes those ancestors of my husband (in blue) and mine (in red). World War II Tom J. Johnston Jr. Tom J. Johnston Jr ., U.S. Navy. He served just a short time and was discharged due to a medical disability. He had been stationed in Idaho. George J Gorrell George Joseph Gorrell , U.S. Army. He was a staff sergeant with the 913th Air Engineering Squadron. He served in England and Germany. World War I William Cyril Hork William Cyril Hork , U.S. Navy. He served in submarine service and was last stationed in Long Beach aboard the submarine tender,  USS Alert . Civil War Amos Gorrell Jr. Amos Gorrell , Jr.,  Union Army. Co A, 18th Ohio. 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, October 29, 2017. My husband, Norman, and I drove up to Sebastopol to visit our daughter, Elizabeth, to purchase some local apples, and to eat at Lowell’s where Elizabeth works. We have an electric car (Nissan Leaf) and stopped in Vallejo to charge it up to 90%. We had thought the trip wasn’t going to happen and so had not fully charged the car overnight. On a full charge, the car can make it to Sebastopol with no problem. There are chargers at a parking lot downtown where we usually charge the car for the trip home. It takes two and a half hours and we usually eat dinner while charging the car. We learned on this trip that two more charging stations had been installed since our last trip: a level 2 charger at CVS and a high-speed charger at Lucky market...

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Elizabeth Swanay O'Neal has a monthly blog party for geneabloggers to write about a certain topic.  This month the topic is "What genealogy 'resource' are you thankful for this year?" 2)  Please join the blog party and write about your response on your own blog post, in a comment on this post and/or Elizabeth's post, or on Facebook.  I am most thankful for the website FamilySearch . Each day, more and more records have been digitized and put online. These are not just indexes, but actual images of original documents! It has made researching so much easier. I can either find records from my own home, or if the image is locked, go the eight miles to the local Family History Center and view the images on their computers. So now there are three ways to view records at FamilySearch: Microfilm, not yet digitized. Must view at the Family History Li...

I have been reading Janine Adams' blog "Organize Your Family History" and she conducted a 30 x 30 challenge in August. What she did was take thirty minutes every single day for a month to conduct genealogy research. She is doing the challenge again and are asking others to join her. In today's blog post titled, "The Value of Daily Research," she gave 6 reasons to do some genealogy every day. Check out her post here . I have not joined her challenge, but I try to do some genealogy task everyday. Sometimes I'm finding documents on Ancestry  or FamilySearch . Other times I'm entering data from my "To Be Filed" folder on my computer. Mostly, though, I have been focused on my portfolio for BCG certification . I am currently working on my Kinship Determination Project (KDP) and in the process of writing the biographies/stories of the three generations, I end up researching to find missing documents, new interesting tidbits of their lives...