Monday Genea-pourri, Weeks of July 8-14, 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

Education

I attended the monthly meeting of the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society’s meeting to listen to Gena Philibert-Ortega talk about library research. She also attended the pre-meeting dinner and it was good to have conversations with her. I gave the Teaching Moment on the different views of the tree at FamilySearch Family Tree and how to research  from the tree.

Blog Writing:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks For week 28 our theme was Reunions. I wrote about my husband’s Nilsen Family Reunions, held yearly.
• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun We continued the series of questions posed by Ellen Thompson-Jennings and completed the eleven through fifteen.

Webinars/Study Groups Attended: 

I missed both of my certification study groups this week. I did attend the Monday Morning Genealogy group and shared my NYC trip photo book and the huge court file I received on Joe Gorrell and the electric company.

Volunteer Work:

At the History Center, I finished pulling non-area clippings from the Contra Costa Times clipping files. I have a young volunteer consolidating the remaining files and creating new labels. The space planning committee met and determined our immediate and future needs for space. We decided on two plans: our best plan of having 3x the space we currently have with space for large meetings and work space for volunteers. The other plan is having off-site storage that is easy to access when necessary.

I also worked Desk Duty at the California Genealogical Society’s library on Friday. It was not as busy as the previous work, but I had interesting people come in. One son and his mother were looking for vital records. I gave them ideas of further search: baptism records and asking for a research for different spellings at the vital records office. A second man and his grandson came in with a box of papers of a woman he worked for, who had passed away.  The box had Oakland yearbooks, photos of her family, and other items. Hopefully the society can include them in the archives.

Own Work:

I have made an appointment with the St. Louis National Personnel Records Center to view Morning Reports and to obtain WPA, CCC, and civilian records for William C Hork, Arnold N. Nilsen, and June Hork. I will do this in early August before our riverboat cruise.

Other:

Saturday was travel day to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to attend the week at GRIP (Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh). I traveled with Jacqueline on United from San Francisco. The flight was fine except for some turbulence in two places. The landing was the best  I have ever experienced. We barely felt the touch down. We stayed the night at a hotel and took a shuttle to the La Roche College on Sunday from the airport. Next week’s post will be mostly about the course.

Pre-check Line and flight info

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