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. Genealogy I have written the blog post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks , this week about an heirloom made by my father-in-law. I also did a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post about which ancestors were alive in 1900. I used the 1900 U.S. Federal census records to determine this. No work was done on my portfolio, but I did meet with my certification discussion group this week for a short time. My internet connection was spotty on the train as we were passing through the rural areas outside of Santa Barbara. I continued to worked on the lesson plans, primarily for the Immigration and Naturalization class for the upcoming Intermediate classes that I’m teaching in March for the CCCGS and Concord FHC, and in May for CGS at the Oakland FHC. There is so much to...

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Where were your ancestors in the year 1900?  Make a list with their ages and location (with the street  address if you know it). 2)  Share your information in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a link to your post in a comment to this post. I used the 1900 census to determine where my ancestors were living.  I have a total of twenty-four (24) ancestors who were alive in 1900. Two of them were very young. I had a couple who had died just before 1900 as well. Paternal Grandparents William Cyril Hork , was just one years old, born 10 July 1899 in Hamilton, Ravalli Co, Montana. Anna Marie Sullivan , was seven years old, born 15 October 1892 in Anaconda, Deer Lodge Co, Montana. Paternal Great-grandparents Johan Anton “John” Hork and Julia Ann Sievert , were living in Hamilton, Ravalli Co, ...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by  Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either  Mam-ma’s Southern Family  or at  My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. While visiting a first cousin in Florida, we discovered several pieces of woodwork done by my husband’s father, George Joseph Gorrell (1915-2011). The first was a table, signed by him. It was believed that he gave the completed table to his parents, Joseph Norman Gorrell and Matilda Pearl Davey, perhaps after making it in high school woodshop. The cousin got the table after the grandparents died. She also had two other items made by him but not signed: a recipe box and a covered bowl. Someday the table will make its way to us so we can pass it down to our daughters. They would probably like to have a piece that their grandfather had made. Copyright © 2018 by L...

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 I have written the blog post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks , this week about events on Valentine’s Day. I also did a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post about female ancestors pretty hair. No work was done on my portfolio. I'm on vacation! I worked more on the handouts and lesson plans for the upcoming Intermediate classes that I’m teaching in March for the CCCGS and Concord FHC, and in May for CGS at the Oakland FHC. I still need to do some work on the Immigration class. Travel Monday we traveled from Orlando to Ocala to visit Norman’s cousin, Shirley. On the way there, we traveled along highway 441, making two stops to do some bird watching. The first stop was at Hidden Waters Preserve in Eustis, where we hiked to a sink hole. There ...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another great theme for this week: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  This week we're going to look for female relatives with beautiful hair in our photograph collections. 2)  Find one or more photographs of females in your ancestral families that have beautiful hair, by your own subjective beauty standards.  3)  Show the photograph(s) if you have it/them and tell us a bit about the person shown.   If you don't have a digital photograph, please describe the female and her beautiful hair the best you can. 4)  Write your own blog post, or a comment to this blog post, or a comment on Facebook or Google+. In one photo of Muriel, I am fascinated with her hair and the pose she was set up in. Muriel was the only child of my great-grandaunt, Mary Martha Gleeson and her husband, Warren Edmond Gilbert. Muriel Martha Gilbert was born 19 Oc...

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 I have written the blog post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks , this week my favorite names and making lists of names. I also did a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post about my grandfather’s beard. No work was done on my portfolio. I am still working on the handouts and lesson plans for the upcoming Intermediate classes that I’m teaching in March for the CCCGS and Concord FHC, and in May for CGS at the Oakland FHC. I also worked on the publicity write-up for the CGS class so it can be put on Eventbrite. We had an ICCP Conference Presenter’s Team conference call about the upcoming Call for Presentations that will roll out at the beginning of March. We have nearly everything all set. The conference will be in Sacramento in June 2019. I understan...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by  Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either  Mam-ma’s Southern Family   or at  My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Two very memorable Valentine’s Days occurred one year apart in our family. In 1979, my parents were hosting a Valentine’s Day dinner with our immediate family when we got the call that our Nana had died. One year later, my brother, Steve. married his sweetheart, Tami. Nana with 13 of the grandchildren Anna Marie Sullivan Hork was eighty-six years old when she died. She was living in a convalescent home when she died. She was the grandmother of sixteen children and mother of three daughters and one son. She spent most of her life as a school teacher, teaching in Napa, California at a one-room schoolhouse on the Silverado Trail, and later in Concord at Williams School. She also substit...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by  Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either  Mam-ma’s Southern Family  or at  My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Oh, to pick a favorite name among my ancestors or my children’s ancestors, would be like choosing a favorite child. Each of my children are favorites but in different ways. Surnames Now, I have favorite surnames that are nice to put into search boxes because the search returns are small in number, such as: COOR GLEESON GORRELL HORK HUTSON LUNDQUIST But then that really depends on the locality or database being searched. Looking for COOR in Copiah County, Mississippi brings up lots of COOR families. Search for them in Erath County, Texas only brings up a few. I have least favorite names, but there are just too many of them: JONES SULLIVAN JOHNSTON WELCH DAVEY ...

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 I have written the blog post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks , this week about Ellis Lancaster in the 1850 census in Lewis County, Missouri. I wrote a blog post for Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun about the upcoming Super Bowl. I completed the homework for Chapter 2 of Val Greenwood’s Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy for the DearMyrtle study group. The online broadcast will be February 21. No work was done on my portfolio, but I am studying the articles in the current issue of NGS Quarterly. There are some really interesting articles this month. I am working on the handouts and lesson plans for the upcoming Intermediate classes that I’m teaching in March for the CCCGS and Concord FHC, and in May for CGS at the Oakland FHC. Th...

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  The Super Bowl is on Sunday, 4 February 2018 in the USA.  The New England Patriots are playing the Philadelphia Eagles for the National Football League championship up in Minnesota (an indoor stadium!).  The winners get to go to Disney World.  2)  Predict the score for this game.  You have to predict the winning team and the closest to the actual score (point differential summed for both teams) to be the winner.  The winner of this contest gets announced next week in a Genea-Musings blog post.  3)  Tell a story about your experiences playing football or watching professional football games.  Did you go to football games? Who in your family was the real fan of the game?  What were the pre-game routines?  How do you, or your family, react to good plays or bad plays, or wins or losses? My responses: I don’t follow foo...