Monday Genea-pourri, Weeks of Nov 18-24, 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: Week 47—Soldier. I wrote about Amos Gorrell, who was a Civil War soldier and had a diary that I excerpted from.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Thanksgiving-Genealogy Edition. We wrote about genealogy things we were thankful for.

Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   

• “Shipping on the Great Lakes” by Cari Taplin. It was a very interesting webinar about ships used on the Great Lakes. Her photos and maps were wonderful.

• I attended the Thursday evening group but not the Friday study group meeting this week.

Client Work:

No Work this week.

Volunteer Work:

At the History Center this week, I opened up and continued working on special collections that need to be processed. We also had a board of director’s meeting on Thursday evening. I worked my shift at the FamilySearch Library in Oakland this week, too.

Own Work:

Monday, we finished up adding my collection of Nilsen family papers into Aunt Bernice’s collection, for future donation to the California State Archives. It dawned on me that I have a lot of digital files I never printed out, but perhaps it’s best to have only those personal papers among this collection. Digital images can be obtained by most anyone.

I met up with Jacqueline at the Walnut Creek Library for our “genealogy retreat” and spent most of the time trying to write up the blog post for Amos Gorrell. We tried a Chinese restaurant for lunch and had a fantastic eggplant dish.

I scanned papers from the Rev. Albert M. Hork file so I would have digital copies of letters and other items I had collected in my beginning genealogy research days.

I looked up some locked films at the FamilySearch Library for Eliza Gleeson family in Clinton and Plymouth Counties, Iowa. I also got the first papers for Albert M. Hork in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin records. I’m trying to record what I do and write as I go. I’m also opening up a new word doc file for each person and start writing their story as I research. This is a Thomas W. Jones trick that I would like to try.

Other:

My outdoor volunteer work involved doing Phenology at the Strentzel Meadow with Shirley, where we had a treat of seeing a Red-headed Sapsucker and a dozen Acorn Woodpeckers.  On Friday, I helped a group of people shore up the bank on the Alhambra Creek at D Street, using bio-engineering methods. We pounded stakes of willow and laid willow branches along the bank for future “rooting.” Hopefully this will keep the erosion down.

All of my weekend, from Friday through Sunday, was spent at the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society, where we had an open house show. I spent Friday and Saturday running trains from the cabs and Sunday, I worked with Ted in set-up as a track walker, troubleshooting problems on the layout. It was fun!

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