Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Accentuate the Positive Geneameme 2019

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  Jill Ball reconstituted her "Accentuate the Positive Geneameme 2019" on 30 December 2019 and invited readers to participated. 

2)  This week, let's contribute our answers to her questions about our genealogy accomplishments in 2019.  Copy the questions below, and add your own responses.

3)  Share your responses on your own blog, in comments on this blog, or on Facebook.  Please leave a comment on this post so readers can find your post, and please let Jill know about your efforts by emailing her at jillballau@gmail.com.

Here's mine:

1.  An elusive ancestor I found was:

I could not find my husband’s Davey family ship arrival records, but one day focused on the youngest child in their family, and lo and behold, I found her with her siblings and mother under a strange, but almost like surname of her mother.  See the post here.

2.  A great newspaper article I found was:

I found two newspaper articles mentioning that my great-grandmother, Julia (Sievert) Hork visited her mother, Mrs. V. Sievert (Susana Radunz) of Hickory Street.[1] I was pretty excited. Julia had moved west after marrying Johan A. Hork, and I figured she never saw her mother again. Oh how happy I was to find that she had.

3.  A geneajourney I took was:

I did a half of day of research at the NARA in St. Louis, obtaining records for my aunt, Virginia, who had worked for the federal government on Mare Island during World War II; for my grandfather, William Cyril Hork, who worked for the WPA in Ontario, California; for Arnold Nilsen, who worked for the CCC in Yosemite; and looked at Morning Reports of Co E of the 8th Engineers during World War I for my great-uncle, John Cyril Sullivan.  Also, while in Clinton, Iowa during our Mississippi River boat cruise, I did some research at the historical society, researching which Catholic church the Gleeson family would have attended. 

4.  I locate an important record:

See numbers 1 and 3 above.

5.  A newly found family member shared:

Information about the DAVEY and HOCKING family in Cornwall from Robyn Dally. Her ancestor, who emigrated to Australia was the sibling of my husband’s ancestor. 

6.  A geneasurprise I received was:

62 pages of court records of a suit my husband’s grandfather, Joseph Norman Gorrell, was involved in.

7.   My 2019 social media post that I was particularly proud of was:

Most of the posts I do on Facebook are either photos of birds and plants that I take, links to some of my blog posts, or share posts that I think are interesting (which I don’t do often). My most-liked posts are photos of birds.

8.   I made a new genimate who:

I made two new friends when attending the Professional Management Conference (PMC) of the Association of Professional Genealogist (APG) last September in Salt Lake City. I volunteered to be a mentor to a new person and ended up having loads of fun with two new people: Robin & Francesca.

9.  A new piece of technology or skill I mastered was:

I am a regular attendee at Webinars, especially Legacy Family Tree Webinars, but also APG, APG Writers SIG, the VGA, Florida Genealogical Society, and others. I’m sure I learned something from each of them, but can’t remember anything that stands out. One I enjoyed immensely was J. Mark Lowe’s webinar, “Basics of Land Platting - Part I” because it had practice exercises.

10. I joined:

The Texas State Genealogical Society.

11. A genealogy education session or event from which I learnt something new was:

I learned lots of new things this past year in two institute classes. I learned to make better use of cluster research in the Advanced Southern Research class at SLIG, and I learned quite a few tips in working on tough research problems in the class at GRIP.

12. A blog post that taught me something new was:

“How to find the father of an illegitimate child,” by Yvette Hoitink, CG is especially helpful!

13. A DNA discovery I made was:

I did not actively worked with DNA this past year.

14. I taught a genimate how to:

I taught several multi-class courses this year to intermediate genealogists for the California Genealogical Society and at the Acalanes Adult School. I also volunteered at the FamilySearch Library in Oakland and helped several people with their research.

15. A brick wall I demolished was:

Again, see no. 1.

16. A great site I visited was:

Purdue Online Writing Lab has great tools to help improve your writing.

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was:

I purchased How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records by Sunny Jane Morton and Harold A. Henderson, CG. I haven’t had a chance to study it thoroughly, but will soon to help with my church records class.

18. It was exciting to finally meet:

Helen Smith from Australia. She was at SLIG last January. It took several attempts during the breaks to find her!

19. I am excited for 2020 because:

Because I have made goals that I am determined to meet.  See this post for details.

20. Another positive I would like to share is ...

I am thankful that I have time most days to work on my genealogy. Even though I am not disciplined to keep good track of that research, I know that I have saved the images, entered the information in RootsMagic, and have a good source citation. I want to work on recording what I have researched so I can see a timeline of what I have found.

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[1] “Personals,” The Joliet Evening Herald-News, 18 July 1906, p. 3 and 20 Sept 1906, p. 5; both on Newspapers.com.

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.