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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of August 1-8, 2022

I have completed one hundred twenty-six (126) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I volunteered at the history center and Oakland FamilySearch library. I attended a Lumineers concert in Sacramento and had dinner with my German class at Brotzeit.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Help – RootsWeb Message Boards Helped with Networking & is Still Useful for Hints. I wrote about how I found cousins, who were descendants of the four Sievert children who immigrated to Joliet, Illinois in the 1860s on RootsWeb Message Boards. Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing highlighted my post.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who is A Mysterious Person in Your Family Tree? I wrote about my 3x-great-grandparents who are holes in my tree on my father’s side of the family. One was born in a German settlement in Poland and the other two were likely in County Cork in Ireland.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended:
I attended the SLIG Writer’s group on Monday where my piece of research report writing was discussed. I got great feedback and will try to rewrite it using their suggestions. Jacqueline and I discussed both the Turlock trip and our trip to Sacramento the next day. On Friday, our peer group met and made the decision to create a monthly goal for accountability and to discuss an article next month from an NGS Quarterly. We will be meeting once a month now. I hosted the CGS presentation on Saturday with Annette Burke Lyttle on maps at the Library of Congress. It was very well received.

Client Work/Presentations:
I am over halfway complete with my AppGen course syllabus and presentations, which I create simultaneously.

Volunteer Work:
I opened the History Center on Tuesday as our ED is on vacation. I also came down on Saturday to speak with Maxine about some donations with extreme odor.

Own Work:
I gathered some German church records in another parish in Westfalen for the Hork family while I was at the OSFL.

Webinars Viewed: This week, I played catch up, viewing two presentations from NGS Conference and two from local genealogy societies that I missed. Annette’s was viewed live as I hosted it.

  • A DNA-Documentary Evidence Ensemble: Finding a Family for a Man Who Died in 1839 by JH Jay Fonkert (NGS)
  • Writing Techniques to Analyze, Advance, and Ultimately Solve Your Genealogical Roadblocks by Jan Joyce (NGS)
  • The Records That Tragedy Leave Behind by Gena Philibert-Ortega (CCCGS)
  • Reading Between the Lines by Tristan Tolman (SCGS)
  • Maps Galore: Finding & Using Online Maps from the LOC by Annette Burke Lyttle (CGS)

Other

Our German class met at a German brew restaurant in Oakland this week called Brotzeit! It was great being with each other and we sat outside. Not much German was spoken though.

Jacqueline and I attempted to ride Amtrak to Sacramento but a grass fire west of us delayed the train so we went back to get the car and drove up (took 2 hours!). We stayed overnight at a boutique Hilton hotel called The Exchange not far from the Golden 1 Center where we attended The Lumineers concert that night. We had a fantastic time. One of the best concerts I've been to. I loved their drummer. My voice was sore for two days from singing along. I really enjoyed every song they played and it paid off that I listened to the four albums over and over before going.

The rest of the week has been spent reading, walking, and listening to Giants baseball on the radio while I work on my AppGen coursework. I enjoyed discovering hummingbirds and orioles on the tip flowers of a century plant this week.

I am reading:

  • Murder on Wall Street by Victoria Thompson—FINISHED!
  • Murder on Madison Square by Victoria Thompson—FINISHED!
  • They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War by Deanne Blanton & Lauren M Cook
  • The Oxford Guide to Library Research by Thomas Mann

Photos for this week:




Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great at 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.

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