Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Oct 31–Nov 6, 2022

I have completed one hundred thirty-nine (139) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I volunteered at the History Center three times and the Oakland FamilySearch Library once. I visited the Concord Historical Society’s open house and had a dentist appointment.

 Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Shadows: Great-Grandfather George Warren Lancaster. I wrote about a photo of Warren taken at a Walnut Creek residence of my grandparents. I attempted to locate the residence.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: “Friendly Fill-ins” for Thanksgiving We had four questions about Thanksgiving days of the past to answer.

My post, Organized: How I Hope to Leave My Genealogy to My Heirs was highlighted on three blogs this past week: Gail Dever’s Genealogy à la carte, Linda Stufflebean’s Friday’s Family History Finds, and Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings. I appreciate the added exposure these bloggers have.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
I attended no meetings or discussion groups this week.

Volunteer/Client Work
I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch library, where we were short-staffed but also short of visitors, so it worked out. I volunteered at the History Center three times this week. Tuesday, we had multiple researchers to help. Friday, three of us came in on a day we’re normally closed in order to do updating to the photo collection in PastPerfect before we upload it to the website. On Saturday, we met with Maxine to discuss what to do with the databases still on Lookback. It was a very productive day.

I was the co-host for the CGS webinar on voter records with Pam Vestal and began the meeting for Jacqueline. I also presented the Introduction to Genealogy: Vital Records on Saturday.

We had an AppGen founders meeting on Monday and I taught my third Foundations 2 class on Thursday on Research Planning and Research Reporting. Something went wrong with the video recording of the Research Reporting lesson and I ended up with only an audio recording in the cloud. So, I re-recorded the presentation as a video. It is just missing all of the questions asked by the students, but the audio recording has that.

Own Work
I began writing a genealogy of the Rueben Mack Johnston family. I want to research all the descendants of Rueben’s children. That way, I can look at my Ancestry DNA matches and try to use DNA to prove the biological connection back to Rueben. Angela McGhie showed us in an APG Writers SIG webinar how she did this. I want to first use DNA where I already know the answer. With that experience, I can work on a problem where I don’t know the answer. I am finding it a challenge to get down to the current living generations.

Webinars Viewed:

• Voting Records: Genealogy's Best Kept Secret by Pam Vestal (CGS)
• Right Place Right Time Right Person Intersections of DNA & Documentary Evidence by Paul Woodbury (Legacy Family Tree Webinars)
• Stuck? Have you tried . . ? Have you Overlooked . . .? by Paula Stuart Warren (Kenton County Public Library)
• The Farmer in the Dell … and in Many U.S. Records by Paula Stuart Warren (Kenton County Public Library)
• Blogging for Clients: Bringing in Customers a Post at a Time by Cheri Hudson Passey (APG PMC)

I am reading: I was too busy this week to do much reading and only picked up the library book on Saturday.

• Homesteading the Plains by Richard Edwards, et al
• The Resistance Man by Martin Walker

Other: 
I was feeling much better this week with my back ache and headache subsiding. I managed three longer walks where I took my binoculars to watch for birds and listen to the Genealogy Guys podcast on my phone. The highlight bird this week was seeing my first-of-season American Goldfinch and Hermit Thrush. We also had our first fall rain and a day of early morning frost.

I also visited the Concord Historical Society’s pre-open house in their new location and met the person in charge of their archives. She showed it to me but I will need to either go on a Tuesday afternoon or make an appointment. This will be next on my list to write about. Plus, I want to see what they might have on Williams Elementary School where my grandmother taught.

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.