Monday Genea-pourri, Week of October 25–31, 2021

I have completed eighty-five (85) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. This past week I left the house to volunteer at the CCCHS History Center on Wednesday and Friday, do phenology, and visit the Sacramento Convention Center with CGS.  

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

52 Ancestors—Week 43: Shock—What To Do When Discovering Shocking Info About an Ancestor I wrote about when I learned the shocking way my great-grandfather died and how to relay the information to family.  

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – How Many Days Old Are You?. We were to calculate how many days, hours, and seconds we have been alive.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended: I attended only the Certification Discussion Group meeting to listen to Jenny demonstration how she uses Lucid Chart program to create mind maps while she works out genealogy problems. It was very interesting watching her work through a problem.

Volunteer Work
At the History Center on Wednesday morning, I met with John to map out how we would handle the Pleasant Hill Historical Society materials. On Friday, John, Michael, Janet, and I, went through the collection and re-boxed them for future archiving. It will be interesting to work on these materials.

On Tuesday, a group of California Genealogical Society members who will volunteer with the NGS Conference in May 2022 drove up to Sacramento to get a tour of the convention center. It was good to see the space and then have lunch together afterwards in an outdoor setting at a local restaurant.

Own Work:
I presented to my two Adult School classes on Monday. For the Land Records class, I spent a couple of days commenting on their homework. The next class was on Thursday. So far, all three classes are going well.  

I emailed the National Archives in Kansas City for copies of patent records for Thomas N. Davey. By Friday, I had copies of three of his patents sent to me by email. It was so easy to make the order and pay for the images. The images were scanned in color and really easy to read. I hope to write a blog post about the images.

I viewed the following webinars:

• Genealogy Surprises, Discoveries & Outright Lies: Sorting Out the Facts, by Melissa Barker
• Are the Records Really Lost, by Kelvin L Myers
• Peer Review: How to Provide Effective Feedback to Help the Writer & the Reader by Mary Roddy

Other: 
The Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society had an open house and I ran trains. On the way home from Sacramento, Grant stopped by four communities in the Delta along Highway 160 where Chinese-Americans lived, particularly his ancestors.

I am reading:
Windigo Island by William Kent Krueger—Finished!
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles—Finished!
A Family Apart by Joan Lowery Nixon

Photos for this week: Shots of plants in my yard.
 

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.

Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.