Monday Genea-pourri, Week of June 29-July 5, 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 sixteen weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to work at the CCCHS History Center and do phenology at the meadow. Otherwise, I met people on Zoom.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 27: Solor—George Gorrell Heads West to Mechanics School.  I wrote about my father-in-law, George J. Gorrell leaving Missouri for California.
• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: 4^th of July Memories. I wrote about some Fourth of July Memories.

Study Groups Attended:   

Many online meetings again this week:

• Our Monday Morning Group met with about a dozen people. I missed some of it due to a video doctor’s appointment.  
• I met with Jacqueline for our weekly hour talk. We discussed our Government 101 class and other things.
• All four of us Amigos met on Wednesday and it was nice hearing about Linda’s webinars on Japanese research.  
• Only two of us were on for the Thursday evening discussion group. Kathryn and I spent nearly two hours looking up resources in Beaver Co, Pennsylvania for my Gorrells. I have lots of new resources to check. I’m trying to find how they got their land they are paying taxes on.
• My Friday Cert Discussion group met with six of us. We heard from Annette on how her GRIP class went, discussed how to incorporate DNA into a KDP, and other portfolio issues.

Webinars Attended:

• Finding a Father for Molly by Jill Morelli

Client Work/Presentations:

I have spent time working on my client project. The first six hours or so were getting the low-hanging fruit. Now it’s time to do deeper work to find some elusive ancestors.

Volunteer Work:

I also put in a full day at the History Center for CCCHS. I spent most of the day doing book inventory of the materials from the library with Peggy.

Own Work:

I worked on the Government 101 class on the last lesson, still looking at different topics found at the NARA website and regional websites.

I am also do the pre-exercises for the MAAGI course coming up this week. There are some documents to view, materials to read, and podcasts to listen to. I’m having a hard time listening to them—they are an hour long and there is a half dozen of them. I’m not a good listener—I would rather read about it.

I also attempted to do more research in the Beaver Co, PA Gorrell family. It is frustrating not being able to find the deeds where the Gorrells obtained their land. I will start with the sale of Amos’ land, which gives some provenance of the land and see if that will help me work my way back. Unfortunately, two of his deeds are listed in Sheriff books and they are not available at FamilySearch catalog. I will have to either contact the deed office or hire someone to get the deeds for me. Likely, the office is closed to walk-ins.

Other:

We celebrated 4^th of July quietly at home. I listened to 1776: The Musical on iTunes and made three-bean salad. The neighborhood was full of fireworks, some close enough to see and the booms and bangs went well into the night. I hope they used up all the fireworks so the rest of the week will be quiet.

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