Monday Genea-pourri, Week of July 27-Aug 3, 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 weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to pick up my glasses, get some donated WWII books, and go to the History Center. By Friday this week, I became sick with sore throat & chest, headache, and slight fever. We’ll see what this ends up as.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 31: Large—A Large Stout Woman, Matilda Davey.  I wrote about a story that a cousin wrote to my husband’s aunt about her grandmother.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun—Did You Or Your Children Know Their Great-Grandparents.  I wrote about my daughters knowing their Mam-ma.

Study Groups Attended:   

I did not attend as many online meetings again this week because I was online in class at the Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research (IGHR) this week. I did manage a couple:

• Monday Morning Group. I set up the meeting & turned over the hosting duties to Susan, before going back to class.    
• Three of us Amigos met on Wednesday for a very quick get-together.
• Four of us were on for the Thursday evening discussion group and we talked about DNA and institute classes.
• My Friday Cert Discussion group met with three of us. I talked about IGHR writing class, and other discussions were about publishing case studies and new DNA rules for portfolio submission. I have been encouraged to submit my case study to the NGS Quarterly.
• IGHR. Besides my regular class, I attended the BCG town hall meeting and listened to people ask questions about certification. There was a closing session, but I didn’t win any door prizes.

Institute Class at IGHR:

I attended Course 4: Writing and Publishing for Genealogists, coordinated by Tom Jones. Other lecturers included Karen Jones, Elissa Powell, Angela McGhie, and Paul K Graham. An excellent class that covered writing, footnoting, editing, peer review, genealogical formats, publishing (both traditional and self). We submitted a writing sample, one we edited first after learning some tips, and then Tom edited it further. I shall study this document carefully. I discovered I like putting families into numbering systems by hand.

Some take-aways from the course are:

• The acronym O.H.I.O. “only hand it once.” Get the source citation written and put on the document before moving onto the next one.
• Submit articles for peer review to receive feedback on your writing and work.
• Evidence dictates how you lay the case
• Use these tips when deconstructing journal articles as I read them for study groups—make a tree, create a timeline, look at maps for locations of counties mentioned, create a mind map for FAN club, and figure out the structure of the argument.

My goals now are:

• Find places to submit articles about my family: local newsletters, regional and state journals, and the NGSQ.
• Work on writing better topic sentences.
• Work on creating all types of citations, not just the reference note.

Webinars Attended:

• “Occupational Records: Finding Work-Related Paper Trails” by Jessica Trotter
• “Genealogy.net: Germany’s Genealogy Mega Site,” by Teresa Steinkamp McMillin.
• “Rules for Entering Family History Data: A Russ Worthington Workshop,” Russ Worthington.

Client Work/Presentations:

I have not worked on the project this week, as I was in class, but I sent in my invoice for July.

Volunteer Work:

I completed three queries. I also received a couple of questions from a board member which I attempted to answer.

Own Work:

We got access to ProQuest and I spent some time gathering newspaper articles of the Davey family from the Louisville Courier-Journal. I found a nice article about the marriage of Susan (Davey) Muir to her second husband, H.H. Wellman and other newsy articles about illnesses and burglaries. We have access for a month, so I will search some more. Before I do, I’m writing up a research report on what I gathered and then enter the data into my RootsMagic database before filing the images. I used the template style that Jill Morelli uses in her Write As You Go study class, I’m starting this week.

I also reviewed the pre-work for the Write as you Go! class I’ll be taking starting Monday evening.

Other:

I started reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. I am saddened (and angry) by what our government did to keep African Americans separated from whites through various laws and programs. We truly have undeserved privilege because of this and it is time to right these wrongs.

I received some books in the mail that I purchased, both recommended by Tom Jones. I realized both my thesaurus and dictionary were over 25 years old.

• Roget’s International Thesaurus, rev. 6.
• Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11^th edition.

I attended Gena’s Book Club, where we brought our own books to share. I shared The Color of Law.

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