Monday Genea-pourri, Week of June 8-14, 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 thirteen weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to work at the CCCHS History Center and to have an eye doctor appointment. I also went to the meadow to do my weekly phenology study and took walks to the mailbox with my husband. Otherwise, I’m meeting people on Zoom.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week: My post last week was chosen as one of the three highlighted in the 52 Ancestors weekly email. That will make three times this year!

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 24: Handed Down—Creating a Story of Heirlooms.  I wrote about starting a Shutterfly book with images of our heirlooms.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Pauleen’s Crazy Month of May Pandemic Meme Part II. We answered the rest of the twenty questions this week on how we’re faring in the pandemic.

Study Groups Attended:   

Many online meetings again this week:

• Our Monday Morning Group met for ninety minutes, with fifteen members. There was lots of sharing about land records and we discussed Ancestry DNA and how to tag matches. It was great that Yvonne got on and could hear us.  
• I met with Jacqueline for our weekly hour talk about the crazy wind from the weekend, the books we’re reading, and the webinars we have watched.    
• All of us 4 Amigos met on Wednesday for more catching up. We spoke about CGS distance learning progress, Stewart’s first ProGen meeting, and locality guides.
• Four of us were on for the Thursday evening discussion group. We spoke about a lot of topics, including getting vital and military records.
• My Friday Cert Discussion group met with six of us. We discussed SLIG going virtual, how we’ll discuss our NGSQ article next week, and our topic the following week.

Webinars Attended:

• “The New York Gateway: Immigration, Emigration, and Migration, by Jane E Wilcox.
• “Finding What You Need and Making the Most of What you Find,” by Pam Vestal.

Client Work/Presentations:

I presented the Introduction to German Research to the Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society (LAGS) on Zoom on Monday evening. They only had about nineteen people attend. Most of the attendees though were German researchers.

I am looking at my various genealogy presentations to find places I can add examples showing people of color. I had started doing this in my most recent presentations, but I need to go back and update the older ones and add new images and database examples where appropriate.

Volunteer Work:

I attended the Sacramento German Genealogy Society board of director’s meeting on Tuesday morning. Next month I’ll be taking the minutes as I have been elected to the board and volunteered to be secretary. Rick has since sent me information about the job. Thankfully, he is letting me take on various aspects a little at a time. He is remaining on the board, so there will be two of us who can take minutes if I’m gone during one of the meetings.

I also spent three hours at the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s History Center doing my volunteer gig. We opened up for volunteers this week and there were four of us plus Priscilla. She showed me the huge collection we received from the county library that included many books on various topics of California history, subject and city files, microfilm, and maps. We have it spread out in several rooms. If we decide to keep the books, I’ll create a finding aid to put at the Online Archive of California so people will know they can use our library to research them. I also had some back-logged queries to work on.

I met with two directors from the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society to work out logistics for getting our society up to speed with online content and using Zoom for webinar program.

I attended the California Genealogical Society’s board of director’s meeting on Saturday via Zoom.

I attended my first Book Club at Gena’s House and we discussed Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini.

Own Work:

I signed up for Paula Stuart-Warren’s “Researching U.S. Government Records 101” and viewed the introduction and first lesson. Jacqueline and I will be discussing the class each week during our chats. I decided to take notes as I read the handout and checked out the exercises. It’s been helpful. I found a passport image for Thomas N. Davey in 1915 on Ancestry. This was an earlier passport, as I had found a 1921 passport previously. This application gave the ship and date he arrived in the U.S., the Ocean Queen, which I had found previously. I was not certain it was the correct family because they were listed under the name Nichols instead of Davey. This is another document to help solve the conflicting evidence.

Other:

I worked at backing up the computer to Backblaze this week. It took several days due to poor internet connection and the computer going to sleep when I walked away from it.

I went to Phenology at the meadow and it was hot! We wear nylon pants and jackets to help keep the ticks off. Saw three different species of butterflies but not photos.

We got a surprise visit from our daughter, Elizabeth, who stayed the night on Wednesday. She got a flat tire on Hwy 5 and it was too late to do more than put on the spare and stop by our house. I quickly cleaned off the bed of genealogy stuff. It was nice visiting, though we kept our distance.

We also worked in the garden, pulling weeds, cutting back on the poppy plants, and putting in the tomatoes, peppers, and squash.

Our Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society board had an online meeting to discuss some issues that needed to be taken care of. I set up the Zoom link for the meeting. It was good to see everyone and that all were well.

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