My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  -  Time for more  Genealogy Fun!   Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to: 1)  Do you know how many days you have lived?  How many hours?  How many minutes?  How many seconds?   2)  For this challenge - do some calculating.  Figure out how many days you've lived, how many hours, how many minutes, how many seconds (you can round off to account for the time you were born on your birth date - do you know it?).   Tell us your birth date, birth time (if you know it), and then calculate your time alive up until your birth time today. NOTE:  If math befuddles you, use the Age Calculator at  http://www-users.med.cornell.edu/~spon/picu/calc/agecalc.htm   3)  What does all of this mean to you?  Think about that marvelous "machine" inside your chest beating in rhythm.  Share your thoughts!   Here’s mine: I am...

In the early days of my genealogy research journey, I learned from a small newspaper account that my great-grandfather had died in Sheridan, Wyoming. This was in the 1990s when research was done mostly by writing letters and sending self-addressed stamped envelopes. I found the address of the public library and sent off a request for his obituary. A week later, my SASE came back. I loved that time of researching in pre-Internet days of finding SASEs in the mailbox. This one was thicker than I expected. My mail did not include an obituary, but rather a long newspaper article about the death of my grandfather. It was an unusual death. He died from drinking carbolic acid. At first, I have to admit, I was kind of excited. This wasn’t a boring, everyday death. We have no famous people or people who have done remarkable things. When you find something unusual like this you want to share it. Sharing with my genealogy friends was fine. They all thought it was interesting. He had been t...

I have completed eighty-four (84) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. This past week I left the house to volunteer at the CCCHS History Center, do phenology, retrieve the car, and meet a friend for tea.   Genealogy Blog Writing : 52 Ancestors—Week 42: Sports—What My Daughters Played I wrote about the sporting activities they did as children.   Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Baby Photo . I showed two photos of me as a week-old and a one-year-old. O nline Study Groups & Meetings Attended: Met with Mary to discuss AppGen acceptance letters and later with both colleagues. For study groups, I attended the NGSQ study group, and met with Amigos and Peer groups. Sunday, I attended book club on bring your own book day. I shared several novels I read while on our train vacation. Volunteer Work At the History Center on Tuesday, Ben and I continued working on the final moving of books and took down the center bookcase so we could put a table in, which will m...

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-Musing : 1)  Do you have baby or small child photographs of yourself or your parents?  Please share one of them. 2)  Share it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post. Here's mine: Since I was the first child born to my parents, there are many more photos of me than the others. I, too, have earliest photos with a parent or grandparent. However, I did find two shots of me at one week old. Here is one of them, taken after a bath. Here is another, taken when I was about one year old. This is likely the first professional portrait done. I’m glad I have digitized these already, though I converted them to tifs so they would not be so large in the blog post. Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My T...

My daughters both participated in sports: in recreation groups, private classes, club teams, and high school teams. Some sporting activities were not even organized. An early photo of the girls roller-skating with a friend (in the center). And another playing miniature golf. Both girls also took gymnastics lessons for many years at the Tumbling Company. For organized sports, Elizabeth participated in soccer, track, and cross-country. Margaret’s organized sport was only in AYSO soccer. Her interests were in theater. They had a lot more opportunities to participate in organized sports that I did as a child. This is my fourth year working on this year-long 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. Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

I have completed eighty-three (83) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. This past week I left the house to volunteer at the CCCHS History Center, do phenology, and take the Capital Corridor train to the California State Railroad Museum with the Coast Division of the PCR.   Genealogy Blog Writing : 5 2 Ancestors—Week 41: Changes—What My Grandmother Saw in a Hundred Years I wrote about the inventions and changes in technology my grandmother experienced in her 99+ years.   Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Your Best “Genealogy Find” This Week . I did some searching for patents my husband’s relatives received for their inventions. O nline Study Groups & Meetings Attended:   On Monday, I attended Susan’s Monday Morning group at her house and hung out with Jacqueline on Zoom. I also attended Amigos on Tuesday, the AppGen meeting on Wednesday, and the Peer group on Friday, where we discussed some of the BCG Reisinger lectures. Jacqueline and I led the fi...

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-Musing : 1)  What was your best "genealogy find" this week (or this month, or this year)?  Was it a new ancestor, a new record, a new conclusion drawn, a new photograph, or something else? 2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post. Here's mine: After speaking with a colleague this week, I learned that the applications for patents (inventions) are located at the National Archives (NARA), Kansas City, and the patent assignments paper work are located at NARA, College Park, Maryland. Locating the Patents To prepare for making a request, I attempted to do a patent search online. I found several references to patents for two of my husband’s relatives in documents found on HathiTrust (https...

I have completed eighty-two (82) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. This past week we were on board trains from New York to Chicago, then from Chicago to Los Angeles, and finally from Los Angeles to Martinez & home. We wore our masks aboard the train except when we were in our sleeping car room.   Genealogy Blog Writing : Even though I was on vacation, I wrote both the 52 Ancestor and the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun blogs this week. 52 Ancestors—Week 40: Preservation—Canning Tomatoes . I wrote about my mother’s and our efforts to can excess tomatoes from our gardens.   Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Ancestor Photographs . We listed the ancestors that we have photos of. I made two lists, one for my ancestors, and one for my husband’s. We have a total of 47 persons with at least one photo. O nline Study Groups & Meetings Attended:   I attended the AppGen meeting on Friday after getting home and got caught up on institute business. We had our...

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-Musing : 1)  How many ancestors do you have photographs of?  What is your oldest ancestor photo (the year it was taken)? 2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post. Here’s my side first. A total of 23 ancestors. Parents: William Joseph Hork & Lela Nell Johnston. I have lots of photos of my parents as children, young adults, and as a family. Paternal grandparents : William Cyril Hork & Anna Marie Sullivan (Nana). I have some photos of young Cyril Hork and lots of Anna as a young girl and older adult. Maternal grandparents: Tom J Johnston & Pansy Louise Lancaster (Mam-ma): one shot of Tom as a child, lots of photos as adults. Paternal Great-grandparents: Johan Anton H...

My husband has been growing tomatoes most of our married life. In the beginning, he planted a lot of Ace tomatoes, but over time, he has been using heirloom seeds or plants and we have a wide variety of tomatoes growing in our garden. Years ago, my mother tried canning tomatoes. She bought a canning pot with the jar rack and lid. I’m not sure if she bought it new or found it at Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. Anyway, she gave it a try and canned tomatoes one year. When she learned that Norman liked growing tomatoes and had lots of extras, the canning pot came to us and we used it for many years, canning Ace and other varieties. It was a big project. We washed the jars in the dishwasher so they were hot. We dipped clean tomatoes in boiling water so they were easier to peel. I would stuff the jars with the tomatoes, leaving them whole unless too large to fit in the opening. I then added salt and citric acid. Once the jar was cleaned of residue, we’d put on the lids and rings, set th...

I have completed eighty-one (81) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. This past week we were in New York City where masks were required indoor everywhere and vaccination cards & photo ID needed to eat at restaurants inside. Many restaurants had outdoor seating on sidewalks or in the street taking up parking places. With indoor eating available now, many are doing double what they did before the pandemic.   Genealogy Blog Writing : Even though I am on vacation, I wrote both the 52 Ancestor and the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun blogs this week. 52 Ancestors—Week 39: Steps—Lovetta Loveless at Club Med I wrote about my grandmother’s cousin who visited Club Med in Mexico.   Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Your Favorite Songs in Your HS Graduation Year . I wrote about the top songs in late 1971 & early 1972. I liked listening to Neil Diamond, John Denver, Barry Manilow, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Carpenters O nline Study Groups & Meetings Attended: ...

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-Musing : 1)  Do you remember your favorite songs in your high school graduation year?  Please tell us all about it.  [Note:  Wikipedia has the Billboard Hot 100 list for each year; Billboard has weekly Hot 100 lists for every year since 1946.] I checked the Wikipedia page for the top songs of 1971 and 1972, since the senior school year covered the end of 1971 and the beginning of 1972. I do not remember some of the songs, but here are the lists: 1971: Songs I remember are "Joy to the World," "Go Away Little Girl," "Take Me Home, Country Roads," and "Knock Three Times," 1972: Songs I remember from this chart are: "Alone Again, Naturally," "American Pie," "The Candy Man," and "Lean on Me."  Here is the list for the top ten songs the week I graduated. Furthe...