My Trails into the Past

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. His parents did not approve of the marriage. Amos Gorrell, Jr. married the former Catherine Elizabeth (Shotts) Sayre on 6 February 1866. [1] They secretly traveled into Chillicothe (Ross County, Ohio), were married by the Methodist-Episcopal minister, Rev. Mr. Creighton, and then returned to their respective homes without telling anyone. [2] The reason is unknown. Perhaps it was because she was a Civil War widow with a six-year-old boy. The Shotts family lived in the same vicinity. Amos’ brother, Joseph married Catherine’s sister, Eliza Shotts two months later. [3] So the reason was unlikely that the Gorrell family did not care for the Shotts family. Anyway, by the end of the month, they decided...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. My father’s side of the family were Irish and German immigrants who were all Roman Catholics. We were all baptized as infants and when we were in the 2nd grade, we took our First Communion. I was attending Catholic school, so it was all part of the curriculum. My siblings, however, attended CCD and completed their First Communion classes either after school or on Saturdays. I have the photo collection of my family, so have quite a few First Communion photos, taken on the same day (none are actually taken in the church). The first photo is of my two aunts, Lorene and Virginia Hork, and their cousin, Mary Patterson. Their First Communion was held in 1931 at St. George’s Catholic Church in Ontario, Calif...

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. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog post this week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 16, our theme was “out of place.” I wrote about how another researcher helped me find out what happened to my 2x great grandmother, Martha Jane (Polly) Lancaster. For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , I wrote about the day my paternal grandfather, William Cyril Hork, was born, by looking at newspapers and online sites about events on 10 July.   Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   "Transcribing Documents" by LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, CG "Tracing Female Ancestors in WWI Military and Non-Combatant Records" by Debra M Dudek, MSc “Boost Your Germanic Research: Understand Historical Juris...

It's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!! For this week's mission from Randy Seaver , is to answer the question: 1)  What day of the week was your Grandfather born (either one)? Tell us how you found out. 2) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandfather's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events. 3)  What famous people have been born on your Grandfather's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them. 4)  Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook. We did a similar exercise on 11 Oct 2014 and I covered my maternal grandfather. This time I will use my paternal grandfather, William Cyril Hork, who was born 10 July 1899 in Hamilton, Ravalli County, Montana. [1] 1) July 10th was a Monday. I found out the day of the week by typing in “1899 Calendar” into Google and many images of calendars come up. I...

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. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog post this week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 15, our theme was DNA. I described what I’m doing to learn more about using DNA in genealogy research. For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , I wrote about my paternal grandmother, Anne M. Hork, whom we called “Nana.”   Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   I attended the Monday Morning Genealogy Group of the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society and we had nice discussion about lots of topics. We viewed a video of a new Italian LDS temple, spoke about searching in Ancestry and FamilySearch, as well as lots of other topics. Most everyone went to lunch together afterwards. I participated ...

It's Saturday Night , time for more Genealogy Fun !! For this week's mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing , is to answer the question: 1)  Memories of the ancestors we knew and loved need to be told to the younger generations.  2)  Tell us about your memories of a grandparent that you knew and loved.  If they all died before you knew them, tell us about a parent or a favorite aunt or uncle. 3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. My Nana My grandmother, Anna Marie Sullivan Hork, was born 15 October 1892 and died on Valentine’s day in 1979. I remember because my parents had a party for the immediate family and Dad got the call from one of his sisters telling him Nana had died. The funeral was a few days later at St. Matthews Catholic Church in San Mateo, California. Afterwards, we went to my Aunt Virginia’s house where the after gathering could have been called an ...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have been a bit behind in studying DNA for genealogy. I have done some self-studying but have not taken a DNA class yet. Education The books I’ve read include: The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy by Blaine T. Bettinger. This book gave me a basic understanding of the different types of DNA (Y-DNA, autosomal DNA, X-DNA, and mtDNA) and how they are used to solve genetic problems. Genetic Genealogy in Practice by Blaine T. Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne. This workbook allowed me to work through exercises in the use of DNA in genetic problem solving. I have also viewed several webinars on DNA. Especially helpful were these webinars from Legacy Family Tree Webinars that...

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. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog post this week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 14, our theme was Brick Wall. I wrote about trying to find the father of David Shotts, my husband’s third great-grandfather.   Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   “One Touch Genealogy” given by Thomas MacEntee at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. He had great pointers about culling all of the information you can from a document and to place “to do” items that you think of onto a separate sheet so you don’t get distracted until you are done. In my Thursday evening certification study group, we spoke about transcriptions to abstracts. It was a good discussion and I shared my homework from Chap...

This is my second year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I smiled when I saw "brick walls" as the theme for this week. This is going to be a difficult topic because I have many brick walls (as many of us do). I can just open up my RootsMagic database program and check out any line, and there will be a missing parent at the end. Some of my lines, I’d like to keep my research close to hand and not spill it out just yet, in case I wish to write articles about my findings, especially those that were difficult to solve with indirect or negative evidence. However there  are other lines that I can probably share and perhaps this blog post will help. Someone out there might have a clue to help me, or actually have the answer. The third great-grandfather o...

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. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog post this week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 13, I wrote about my husband’s grandfather who was sued but the husband of the woman who was killed in an auto accident. For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , we were asked to write about our ancestor’s occupation and I covered my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   I attended: I participated in the DearMyrtle AmericanGen study group as we worked on Chapter 21, about transcribing and abstracting deeds and probate records My Thursday evening certification study group spoke about conferences. Our assignment next time is to read the chapter on Transcr...