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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of January 10–16, 2022

I have completed ninety-six (96) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I went out to the History Center, to donation sites for some items we no longer need, and to the train club to operate during the weekend show. Otherwise, I stayed home and met people online.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Favorite Find – Finding the Holy Grail of German Research, the German Home Town For this week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks post, I wrote about how I discovered the German home town of my Hork and Sievert ancestors in a church marriage record.

Happy 11th Blogiversary! I celebrated my eleven years of blogging at the Mam-ma’s Southern Family blog.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – 1940 U.S. Census Last Name Numbers Our assignment was to check take our grandparents’ surnames and plug them into a 1940 census search page to see how many people of that surname were in the census. I did it for my grandparents and my husbands. Not surprising, HORK had the lowest number.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended: This week I met with my AppGen partners to conduct the lottery for our upcoming spring courses. Jacqueline and I led the CGS Roundtable on Wednesday and had a very good session with everyone contributing something. We covered tips using Ancestry and how we organize our digital files. My Peer group meeting had just Josh and I and we ended up talking about birding and some online apps.

ClientWork/Presentations: I gave two presentations this week. I presented Focused Research to the Livermore-Amador Genealogy Society on Monday, and presented my farming talk to the Sonoma County Genealogical Society on Saturday. I began an intermediate class at the adult school on using Ancestry.

Volunteer Work: I did my volunteer work at the History Center, answering a query, where I got a marriage certificate from the county recorder’s office.

Own Work: I tried out the mining records from Ancestry data collections, as Randy Seaver had written about in one of his blogs. One needs a tree on ancestry and using a special link that includes the tree number and collection number, it brings up people who have records in that collection. I was able to find yearbook photos of our immediate families. I also transcribed some deeds of my parents, and did some file cleanup.

Webinars Viewed:

  • Center for Sacramento History by Kim Hayden
  • They Drew a Crooked Line by J. Mark Lowe

Other: I attended two meetings on Zoom: a Pacific Coast Region board meeting, and the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society Board and Business meetings. During the weekend, the Walnut Creek club had an open house and I operated trains both days. I also spent a day weeding the in front yard and then felt it dearly the next day. I still have more to do and hope to get some time in this coming week.

I am reading:

  • Santa’s Sweetheart by Janet Dailey—FINISHED!
  • The Joy and Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith
  • Gospel According to the Klan by Kelly J. Baker
  • Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History by Richard Edwards, Jacob K Friefeld, & Rebecca S. Wingo

Photos for this week:

Anticipation

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 © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

  1. Love the cactus photo. Spring is coming! It's going to be about 70 today here in Tucson.

    ReplyDelete

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