My Trails into the Past

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have written about Thomas N. Davey before “ Rich Man – Thomas N. Davey of Carthage, Missouri . ” One thing really jumped out when the theme of “power” came up and it was this entry in a city directory. Directory Entries In a 1909 Carthage city directory entry, Thomas is listed as vice president of the Empire Electric Power & Supply Company. It was located at 112 West 4 th . [1] The next available directory at Ancestry is 1912 and Thomas was back being a mine operator. He is listed as vice president of this company in only one record.  Next, I checked the entry for Empire Electric Power & Supply Company to get more information. I learned that T.T. Luscombe was the presid...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings : 1) Did you attend the free and virtual RootsTech Connect 2021 this week?  What was your favorite moment, experience, session, and/or feature? 2)  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post. Here is mine: Yes, I registered for RootsTech and spent a few hours perusing the Exhibit Hall and viewing some pre-recorded sessions. My favorite session was from Tom Jones “ Using Indirect and Negative Evidence to Prove Unrecorded Events ”. He explained with examples the difference between indirect and negative evidence. His examples were simple enough that intermediate genealogists will get it. I plan to put the YouTube link into my handout lessons on evidence. I enjoyed using Relatives at RootsTech and seeing how I am related to oth...

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 forty-nine (49) weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. Three more weeks and it will be one year of this pandemic in California. I did leave the house this past week to pick up books at the library, drop off recycle, and do phenology alone at the meadow. The timing was off for taking walks with my husband—I was in German classes. Genealogy Blog Writing : Week 7: Unusual Source—Autograph Book Tells of Life Before Marriage (Joseph Norman Gorrell ) . I republished a story I had written for Treasure Chest Thursday many years ago about my husband’s grandfather. This autograph book has signatures from people in California and Oregon, indicating that he had work in those states in the 1890s. This post was featured in Linda Stufflebean’s Friday’...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing : 1) Do you use Timelines to help you in your research?  Create a Timeline (a chronological list with dates and events) for one of your ancestors that includes their parents, siblings, spouse(s) and children.  Tell us how you did it, and show us your work. 2)  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post. I use RootsMagic as my genealogy software program and there are two ways to show a timeline. The first is to create a report from Reports > Lists > Timelines. One can make an individual timeline or one from people in a list. I’m not sure how to create a list of people, so here is the individual timeline for Honora (Gleeson) Douras. There is not much in her timeline—only birth, marriage, and death inf...

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. The standard records told the life story of Joseph Norman Gorrell.  Census records said he lived in Blackwater, Cooper County, Missouri as a child and Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri as an adult where he raised his four children. A marriage record indicated he lived in Kansas City, Missouri because he married his wife, Matilda Pearl “Tillie” Davey there in 1900. City directories confirmed some other locations in Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, where he worked in the telephone industry as a lineman. However, an autograph book that I scanned this week, told of another tale of his life before his marriage. I have a couple of these books in my collection, where friends and family signed pages ...

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 forty-eight (48) weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. It is approaching a year that we have been on Covid stay at home. I did leave the house this past week to teach my online class from the classroom at the Acalanes Adult School on Monday and to the library to return books that were due. I spent time outdoors taking two walks with my husband and doing phenology with Shirley. Genealogy Blog Writing : Week 6: Valentine—School Valentine Exchanges . I reminisced on the valentine parties we had at school. My mother made many of the valentine boxes for our classrooms. Saturday Day Night Genealogy Fun—How Did You Meet the Love of Your Life . I wrote how I met my future husband at the trolley museum at Rio Vista Junction. Online Study G...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings : 1) Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Write about how you met the love of your life. No fair picking "genealogy" as the love! 2) Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post. Please leave a link in a comment to this post. I met my future husband, Norman, at a trolley museum. I was a member of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society and two of my friends, Bill Swindell and Jim Anthony, and I went up to visit the museum. All three of us like streetcars and wanted to see some up close.  I don't remember the details. We may have gone up during their spring festival when they ran most of the cars that were able to run. Anyway, we enjoyed the trip and decided to go up again and later volunteered to work there. We did projects in the shop, working on the old cars, learned to run the car...

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. My best memories of Valentine’s Day were during elementary school when we would buy small cards, sign our name, and drop them off in the decorated box in the classroom. Everyone gave cards and everyone received them. Two classmates were in charge of delivering the cards to everyone. When my mother was room mother, she always decorated an apple or orange cardboard box she likely got from my father, who worked in the produce department at the local grocery store, LoRay. The boxes were covered in red, white, and pink paper along with lacy doilies, cupid cut-outs, and hearts pasted to them. My mother’s boxes were beautiful! I sure wish I had a photo of one of the boxes she made. I tried sea...

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 forty-seven (47) weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to teach my online class from the classroom at the Acalanes Adult School on Monday, took two walks with my husband, and did phenology with Shirley on Thursday. I got some outdoor weeding in. The Oxalis is overtaking the yard from this wonderous rain we have had. Genealogy Blog Writing : Week 5: In the Kitchen—The Place Everyone Hung Out . I shared some photos taken in the kitchen of my childhood home during some family. Saturday Day Night Genealogy Fun—Where Were Your Ancestral Families in 1920? . We listed our families who were alive in 1920 and I found 25 of my daughter’s ancestors alive, and managed to get back to their 3x-great-grandparents. ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver tonight: Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!): 1) Where did your ancestral families reside in 1920?  Do you know their addresses or locations?   Have you visited the home? Who was enumerated in the 1920 in each family?  Are any of your ancestral families missing from the 1920 U.S. Census even if they should be in the census? 2)  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post. Here’s mine: Interesting idea to think about which of our ancestors were alive in 1920, about one hundred years ago.  I write about both my ancestors and my husband’s, so really, I’m writing about my daughter’s ancestors. Grandfather, ...