Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 15-21, 2019

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 Jurisdictions” byTeresa Steinkamp McMillin, CG
• “Scrivener for Easier Family History Writing Projects” by Lisa Alzo
• In Thursday’s cert study group, we discussed client reports. Everyone shared samples and it was great looking at the large variety of work everyone does for clients. It was decided it was best to find a pro-bone client where the researcher has total control on the output.
• In Friday’s certification study group, we spoke a bit about our own work and then about the chapter in the ProGen book on editing genealogical work.

I volunteered at the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s History Center on Tuesday. I worked on some queries and then unloaded boxes of books from the old location for our bookstore and put them onto shelves in the new location. I also attended the Board of Director’s meeting and took minutes as secretary.

Own Work.

I continued scanning and gathering items for the personal archives. I found old stamp envelopes to put the photos with the black back into and then I can number and label the photo on the envelopes. This is very time-consuming work. I will write up the procedures and perhaps either write an article or create a presentation to share what I did.

I also got the homework done for the next two DearMyrtle study group sessions, as I will be in NYC without a computer. The first was on women and property rights, and the second on church records. I found several documents to share for both assignments.

Other Activities

I worked the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plants booth in the afternoon at the John Muir Earth Day Birthday at the John Muir National Historic Park in Martinez. It was mostly nice weather, but the wind kicked up a bit in the afternoon, blowing our things off the table. It was fun talking with people, trying to convince them to plant native flowers and grasses.

I also went on a wildflower searching trip with friends to Mines Road in Livermore. We hit the jackpot finding fields of gold, yellow and purple flowers. I got some good close-up shots, too!

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.