Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Aug 17-23, 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 twenty-three weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to meet with a friend for a quick lunch on Monday, a quick trip to the History Center to find a divorce record for a query, and to do phenology at the meadow. This week was hot and we ran the air conditioner most days. Plus the smoky air kept us from opening windows.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 34: Chosen Family—The Gleeson Family of Ontario, South Dakota, and Oregon  I wrote about writing a family history on my Gleeson family using photos from a photo album.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Disaster Genealogy Go Bag. I wrote about which items I would grab if we had only fifteen minutes to evacuate.

Study Groups Attended:   

• Monday Morning Group. Fourteen people attended and we talked about Korean research, where to leave our genealogy stuff, the CCCGS website photo gallery.  
• The NGSQ Study Group on Tuesday, where we discussed “Beginning at a Black Oak …”  
• Three of us Amigos met on Wednesday and spoke mostly about non-genealogy stuff.
• I forgot to attend the Thursday evening discussion group.
• My Friday Cert Discussion group did not meet.
• Attended the last Write As You Go class on Monday.

Webinars Attended: This week I attended quite a few live and recorded webinars. I did not get in any of the NGS On Demand ones. I'll work it in this coming week.

• “Unlocking Notation Codes on Alien Passenger Lists” by Elizabeth Gomoll. I need to check out some passenger lists to see if any of these codes apply to my ancestors. Basically, they work only for those after 1892.
• “Bounty Land: It’s Complicated” by Annette Burke Lyttle. She had some good maps and explanations of how the colonial states assigned land during Rev. War.
• “Writing with Style” by Jennifer Dix. I was host and asked the questions from the chat.
• “Advance of Research Habits over Recent Decades” by Tom Jones. It was a trip down memory lane but learned some interesting stuff about research methods before my time.
• “Elusive Immigrant: The Search for Dora Luhr” by Warren Bittner. I’d heard this before. Very detailed.
• “Death by Undue Means: Coroner’s Records” by Judy G. Russell.
• “German Farm Life & Traditions” by Kathy Wurth for Family Tree Tours. Would be fun to go on one of their trips to our home towns.

Client Work/Presentations:

The client report was returned for some minor corrections.

Volunteer Work:

Only a research query for the History Center, and the Board of Director’s meeting on Thursday.

Own Work:

I cleaned up the download folder and put away all of the “to be filed” items. What a relief. I’ll probably never get to processing them—they are mostly items for collateral people. If I ever write about those families, I’ll process them.

I am thinking of writing KDPs for several of my lines, in order to get something written. I printed out descendants lists for several of my ancestors and my husband’s ancestors, and decided on the Gorrell line from Amos (1804-1890) but will also write a little about his father and grandfather.

Other:

I took the meeting minutes for the 2021 National NMRA Convention committee meeting on Wednesday. I attended part of my German class and will be back full-time next week. I also had a ukulele lesson. I’m enjoying playing songs from the 365 books but don’t like the poor reception we get on Zoom.

I got in three walks, early before it got too hot, and then the bursitis in my left leg starting acting up, so I rested the rest of the week. No yoga outdoors due to the heavy smoke in the air.

I finished Irish Chain by Earlene Fowler and started the next in the series, Kansas Trouble. I’m still reading also Atlas of American Migration, The Color of Law, and White Heat: The New Warfare, 1914-1918. It’s whatever fits my fancy when I sit to read.

For some birding, I watched David Sibley in conversation with John Muir Laws on the Books Pasage website on Sunday. The drawings from his book What it's Like to be a Bird.

Some shots from my walk and the meadow. The sunrise red is from the Brentwood fire smoke, and the seed pods are narrow-leaf milkweed from the meadow.

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