Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Mar 15-22, 2020

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.

I have completed one week of “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house twice to do some client work but will do no more. We are allowed outside to exercise so my husband and I have walked, mostly to the local mailbox. I try to take photos of birds or plants to post on Facebook to help bring up everyone else’s spirits.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 12: Popular: Ursula Hork “One of Hamilton’s Most Popular Young Ladies”. I wrote briefly about several of the newspaper articles about my great-aunt, Ursula.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – What’s On My Genealogy Bookshelf We were asked show our favorite genealogy reference books. I made a small list and showed the images from my Library Thing account.

• Tom Johnston Becomes Guardian to his Own Children A write up about finding guardianship papers and the sale of a piece of property the children had inherited.

Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   

I attended no in-person activity. We met on Thursday evening and discussed the Coronavirus mostly but did discuss some of what genealogy we were doing.  On Friday, four of us met and discussed our progress and what we would now work on as we have more time.

Webinars I attended:

• Techniques for Integrating Documentary & Genetic Info in a Research Report by Karen Stanbury
• Following the Irish Trail to Canada & Beyond by Tammy Piolo
• 1867 Voter Registration and Beyond by Diane L Richard

Client Work/Presentations:

I did go do document retrieval at the Contra Costa County Recorder’s office and went to the Court clerk’s office for another document that I had to FedEx overseas. Probably no more retrieval until our lock down is lifted.   

Volunteer Work:

No volunteer work either. Both the historical society and the FamilySearch library are closed. I am working on an article for the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s newsletter.

Own Work:

I have continued working on the Johnston family, first trying to find the court records about the Johnston guardianship. I found the documents in the minute book by browsing. The case number was not written in the minute book, so I browsed the case files until I filed it. I still don’t know how the children received a 1/10 share of property. Who has the other shares? I need to do more research. Wish I could travel to Comanche County and have access to all the deed records.

I also worked at verifying the death of Peter H. Hutson, the grandfather of the Johnston children. The cemetery tombstone showed death in 1930 but I haven’t found the death certificate. I decided to search in Comanche newspapers for Hutson articles and found the obituary in October 1930.

Other:

I managed to walk three times this week, taking photos of plants and birds to post to Facebook. I hope that cheers up others. I also went to the Meadow to do the plant phenology. Lastly, I did some weed-pulling in my yard. The poppies are blooming so nicely this year. 

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