Monday Genea-pourri, Week of June 6-12, 2022

I have completed one hundred eighteen (118) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I was home most of the week, just volunteering at the history center, going to an eye appointment, doing phenology, and going to a train club meeting.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Mistake: Two Priests Made Mistakes on a Baptismal Record I wrote about the two baptismal records of my grandmother, created 50 years apart and how they both had mistakes. This was for 52 Ancestors, week 23. This post was highlighted on Linda Stufflebean's "Friday's Family History Finds."

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Search/Research did You Do Last Week? Randy Seaver is home from his heart surgery and we had a fun post to do this week. I wrote about the Gleeson and Loveless research I did, mostly in newspaper records.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended:

• Jacqueline and I met on Monday and I always forget what we talked about by Sunday.
• I attended my first SLIG Writing Group and I enjoyed getting to know the other members. I volunteered my research report and have already sent it out.
• My mentee and I met on Wednesday and got me updated on her portfolio.
• It was nice listening to Maria speak about her portfolio journey at the CDG meeting.
• Amigos met and we were all present. Linda, Stewart and I spoke mostly about NGS and other presentation woes.
• On Friday, our peer group met for the first time in a couple of months and it was good to catch up on our activities.
• Sunday, I attended book club. We enjoyed talking about the Nancy Drew books, as well as other books we read as children.

Client Work/Presentations:
I did some record pulls at the recorder’s office and the court clerk’s office in Contra Costa County and the recorder’s office in Solano County.

I presented my farm talk to the Pikes Peak Genealogical Society on Wednesday evening. That audience was full of ranchers and farmers.

This coming week I’m presenting my Brick Wall talk to a group in British Columbia and worked on it, as I haven’t given that since before Covid. It usually fills up the 60 minutes at an in-person meeting, but I’m finding they go by quicker on Zoom. So, I’m looking for places where I can add content and thinking of questions I can ask of the audience.

Volunteer Work:
I spent part of Tuesday at the History Center and helped a customer with some map purchases.

Own Work:
This week I worked on several projects of my own family, particularly the family of Michael Gleeson, who left Ontario, Canada for Iowa in 1865. I found newspapers of Le Mars in Plymouth County on an Iowa newspaper aggregate site and found many articles about the family. I hope to write a narrative about his family using these and other resources. There are many films to view at the Oakland FamilySearch Library that are locked at home.

I also found more newspapers about Ebenezer Loveless on the GenealogyBank website that gives me information on when he moved to Texas. There were also articles about his two visits back to see family in Faulkner County, Arkansas. I would like to write a narrative about this family, too. I think if I focus on one family at a time, it will be more manageable.

Webinars Viewed: I attended three presentations this week:

• Using Maps in Genealogical Research, Part 2 by Melinda Kashuba. She asked about homework and I shared the blog post showing how I had done her homework two months ago.
• Reinvented Ancestors by Beth Stahr
• Maybe I’m to Blame by Gena Philibert-Ortega. The last two were presented at Kinseekers and spoke of difficult topics and were presented well. I highly recommend them if you get a chance to see them presented sometime.

Other: We put out the drip system in the tomato garden this week. It’s been really hot, so I gave a few of my native plants extra water. I enjoyed Giants baseball this weekend as they swept the L.A. Dodgers.

I am reading:

• Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak—FINISHED
  
• The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser--FINISHED
• Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang
• On the Farm Front: The Women’s Land Army in World War II by Stephanie A. Carpenter
• A Practical Guide to Swedish Church Records by Geoffrey Fröberg Morris

Photos for this week: Photos taken during neighborhood walks. Some were previously posted on Facebook. 

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.