Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 4-11, 2022

I have completed one hundred eight (108) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I did go out of the house each day this week and only wore masks when entering a store.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Check it Out: Look Who Worked at the Cannery! 
I took advantage of the newly released 1950 census and wrote about locating my husband’s grandfather in Rio Linda, Sacramento County, California. I expected to see him, his wife, and the youngest daughter. I didn’t know his oldest son would be living there, too.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your 1950 Census Finds
We were to answer six questions with four things: names we go by, places we lived, ancestral places visited, interesting places visited, favorite ancestors, and favorite genealogy record sources.  

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended: I attended only the peer group meeting this week and the three of us decided to take a hiatus for two months and return meeting in June. Many weeks, only two of us would show up and sometimes only one. We’re still to share via email if we have something exciting to report.

Client Work/Presentations:
I gave the fourth session of the AppGen Foundations I course, covering military and probate records. I learned they would like longer breaks between the two presentations and will include that in the future. It was interesting that it was the east coast people who wanted the longer break—I assumed they would be the ones would want the class to end earlier.

I also worked on preparing for my two Adult School classes which start on Monday, first creating the course on Canvas and setting up the Zoom link.

Volunteer Work:
I spent half a day at the historical society archive and met with the website developers. I also checked in with volunteers on their activities and fulfilled a couple of queries. On Wednesday, I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch Library and got a researcher started. One of the new missionaries came over and ended up knowing more about adding documents to the FamilySearch Tree so he took over.

Own Work:
I attended the ninth class of the SLIG Academy class on writing for peer review. Karen Jones and Angela McGhie presented this week and Angela assigned groups for our own peer-reviewing of each other’s work. I read the three other arguments and made comments.

I processed the digital images that a cousin of my husband’s sent me of the Gorrell and Davey families. Some of the images I had never seen before and these are a wonderful welcome. I hope to do some writing so I can include them.

Webinars Viewed:

• Doing Time—Prison Records as Genealogy Resources by Judy G. Russell

Other: I managed to leave the house all seven days.

• We visited our daughter on Monday, first visiting the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa and then going to the Russian River Brewery in Windsor for the release of Pliny the Younger. I was the designated driver as I don’t care for beer.
• Tuesday, I joined the Mt. Diablo Audubon Society’s bird and wildflower walk. Got lots of great photos of the wildflowers and saw a few birds.
• On Friday, I met my three sisters at Jack’s Restaurant for a birthday celebration. It was nice being with them—it had been over six months since we were all together. Afterwards, I went to Train Club for our monthly meeting.
• Lastly on Sunday, I attended a concert by the Lowell Ensemble at the Campbell Theater as a benefit for Ukraine. They had six musicians playing classical and folk music, some from Ukraine.
• At home, I worked on the HO model of a garage I’m working on for a diorama display. It’s not going as well as I had hoped. I also listened to the San Francisco Giants games over the weekend on the radio. We don’t have access to the TV broadcast at the moment.

I am reading:

• Tractor Wars by Neil Dahlstrom—Finished!
• The Tale Teller by Anne Hillerman
• History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
• Research Like a Pro by Diana Elder

Photos for this week: Some shots taken on the Audubon trip.

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.