Monday Genea-pourri, Week of June 15-21, 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 fourteen weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to work at the CCCHS History Center, get blood work done at Kaiser, and have a heart monitor fitted. I did a couple of walks, but otherwise, I met people on Zoom.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week:

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 25: Unexpected—My Grandparent’s Marriage License Location. I wrote about finding my grandparent’s marriage record in a neighboring county and wondered why.

Thomas N. Davey Passport Gives Confirmation About Arrival Ship. I updated a previous blog post with the evidence I found from Thomas’ passport application.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Dad’s Work History. We wrote about the jobs our dad had.

Study Groups Attended:

Many online meetings again this week:

Our Monday Morning Group met for ninety minutes, with twelve members. There was lots of sharing about websites, research, and good finds. We also answered questions.
I met with Jacqueline for our weekly hour talk. We discussed the new class we’re taking called Government Records 101 from Paula Stewart Warren. It’s an online pre-recorded class and each lesson is opened up on Fridays.
I attended the NGSQ Study Group on Tuesday morning.
Three of us Amigos met on Wednesday.
Four of us were on for the Thursday evening discussion group.
My Friday Cert Discussion group met with five of us. There wasn’t much to discuss this week as some were not ready to discuss the Q article.
Attended the Military Discussion Group on Saturday. It is interesting to hear the stories of the other participants and offer suggestions when one can.

Webinars Attended:

On the Clock: Demystifying BCG Portfolio, Jill Morelli
7 Proven Strategies-Identifying Slave Ownership & Reconstructing Families, Janis Minor Forte
Bridging the Gap: Finding Ancestors in the United States Between 1790 and 1840, D. Joshua Taylor

Client Work/Presentations:

I did no client work or presentations this week.

Volunteer Work:

I took minutes for the Contra Costa County Historical Society on Thursday, and volunteered at the History Center on Tuesday, taking care of a couple of queries.

Own Work:

This week in my searches on Ancestry and Fold3 for Government Records 101 class, I found some Draft Registrations for Norman’s Lundquist line. Some were WWI Draft and some for WWII Draft. These were for Carl O. Anderson, Carl Arnold Quist, and Henry Leonard Lundquist. I love the nice color images of the WWII Draft cards.

I am also working on the pre-work for the MAAGI (Midwest African American Genealogy Institute) class I’m taking in July. My track is IB: Methods and Strategies for Slave-Era Research. We have several podcasts to watch and documents from the Southern Claims Commission to view. There might be some articles to read, too. We had a Zoom training meeting, explaining how the class would go in Zoom and how to use Google Classroom. I also found out the class schedule, with the first class beginning at 8:30 a.m. EDT (which translates to 0530 my time). Ugh, if I had known, I might have skipped the course. I will have to set the alarm at 5 am.

On Sunday, I worked on early Beaver County tax records, preparing to write up a bio on James Gorrell and his sons, Amos, James, Samuel, Thomas, John, Joseph, and Jesse. James Gorrell doesn’t appear in deed or probate records. All I can do is speculate how the land he owned was distributed after his death based on the tax records.

Other:

I was feeling poorly this week and called the advice nurse, who had the substitute doctor call me, as my physician was on vacation. She ordered blood work, an EKG, and a 24-hour heart monitoring. By the time I got the monitor on Thursday, I was feeling better and didn’t really have the previous weird symptoms. Blood and EKG were normal. The monitor probably will be, too.

I did some early morning walks, the first to walk up to see the progress of the John Muir Elementary School rebuild. The old school is completely gone, and is scheduled to reopen this fall (if they have school in-person).

Both daughters arranged for a video chat with their dad and we spent over an hour talking with Elizabeth and Margaret. It was nice seeing their faces and we should do this more often.

The weather was warm and breezy but birds came to the feeder as I watched from the front porch.