Monday Genea-pourri, Weeks of May 20-26, 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:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks For week 21, the theme was “military” and I wrote about the beginning of Amos Gorrell’s entry into the Civil War based from his diary.
• A blog post continuing the story of Joe Gorrell being sued.
• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun I wrote about one of my first tough genealogy problems.

 Webinars/Study Groups Attended: 

• I participated in two certification study groups. Thursday night, we spoke about the current issue with DNA testing sites and their use by Law Enforcement. The discussions online have become very abusive between genealogists disagreeing with each other. I somehow have missed the discussions and I’m glad. I don’t like fighting. On Friday, we spoke about chapter on publishing books in the new Professional Genealogy book with me moderating.  Both Dennis and I had published books so we compared our experiences.

• Webinars I viewed:

• “Valid and Unsound Assumptions: What Was She Thinking?” by Jeanne Bloom, for Legacy Family Tree Webinars (LFT). This was a BCG-sponsored webinar.

• “Google Drive: An Office in the Cloud” by DearMyrtle and Cousin Russ for LFT.

• “Compiling a Military Service Record,” by Craig R Scott for LFT. This was packed with lots of sources for Revolutionary and Civil War resources. I’ll watch it again.

• “The Anatomy of BMD (Birth, Marriage, and Death Records) by Gena Philibert-Ortega for LFT. I watched this one to get ideas for my own presentation that I do for CGS. 

Volunteer Work:

• I worked at the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s History Center on Tuesday, working on some queries and returned on Thursday morning to finish up another query. 

• I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch Library on Wednesday. I did a tour of the center and helped a researcher looking for ship records.

Me at the Oakland Family Search Library,
photo taken by Jane Lindsey

Own Work:

 I worked on blog posts, American Gen Study Group homework, and reviewing and correcting the presentations and handouts for the upcoming Intermediate Skills Class for CGS to be held at the Oakland Family Search Library starting on Wednesday. I currently have 7 signed up and hope I have a couple more from the staff at the OFS Library.

Other Activities:

• Thursday I attended a retirement party for a former co-worker who recently retired from BART. It was fun seeing other co-workers I hadn’t seen since I retired.

• Did the phenology study at the Strentzel Meadow without Shirley and by using the new app from Nature Notebook. I liked the new app and thought it was easier to use.

• We visited our daughter, Elizabeth on Saturday, eating lunch at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant. It was delicious.

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