Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Dec 26, 2022–January 1, 2023

I have completed one hundred forty-seven (147) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I took fewer walks this week due to the rain, went to phenology, and ran trains for the public at Train Club. It was a quiet week.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Looking Ahead to 2023. I wrote about my genealogy goals for the coming year, including submitting my BCG renewal portfolio.

Happy New Year! I posted a postcard from my collection.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
On Monday, I hosted the CCCGS online Zoom meeting. I couldn’t get my microphone to work, so just listened and commented in the chat. Jacqueline and I met later in the afternoon and talked about our blogs.

Volunteer
We’re on hiatus during the holidays, so I did not volunteer anywhere. I did prepare and send out a press release for the BCG about the upcoming webinars on Family Tree Webinars.

Client Work. 
I did another marriage and death certificate pulls for my regular client on Tuesday.

Own Work. Because of the lack of other regular activities, I worked more on my own genealogy.

Pauff/Lancaster family research. I am frustrated that many records were not filmed by FamilySearch. I want to hop on a plane and go to Las Vegas to do some deed and probate research in person. I could also go down to Imperial Valley, too.

Pfotenhauer family research. I want to write an article and create a presentation about his experience in the Civil War and his wife’s experience obtaining a pension after he died.

World War I research. I also worked on the activities from the course taught at AppGen. It has been good practice working on the various databases and viewing supporting documentation from government publications about the war and military. This brings great context to what the records say.

Webinars Viewed: I watched many webinars from the NGS OnDemand series that expired at the end of the year. My favorite was Jane’s talk on Alice Conlin. I want to create a case study presentation like it.

• Punching the Clock--Your Ancestor's Occupation by Patricia Walls Stamm
• Finding Alice Conlin: A Life Reconstructed from a Single Clue by Jane Neff Rollins
• Researching Federal Land Records for Western States by Angela Packer McGhie
• Controlling Chaos: Managing a Genealogical Project by Rebecca Whitman Koford, CG
• More Questions Than Answers? Consider Conducting a Broad Contextual Study by Jill Morelli
• Angel Island's Immigrants from More Than Eighty Countries and the Records They Left Behind by Grant Din

I am reading:

• Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge by Erica Gies
• Home Sweet Christmas by Susan Mallery--FINISHED!
• California At War: The State and the People During World War I by Diane M. T. North

Other:
My husband and I met up with friends, Hugh and Peter, for lunch at a new place. The food was delicious and the conversation interesting.

We had a successful Friday night show at the Train Club, as we always do after Christmas. It was a noisy crowd throughout the two hours we were open. My trains ran terribly. The first kept uncoupling in the middle and the second train probably had engines with dirty wheels.

I hiked with two friends on New Year’s Day along the Carquinez Straits, a new 2-mile trail that has become part of the Bay Trail. It was a beautiful sunny day just after a full day of rain, so the air was crisp and clean. We could see the snow on the tops of the Sierra Mountains. I brought binoculars but only saw lots of turkey vultures, a pair of Lesser Goldfinches, and a few red-tailed hawks, and on the water, I saw Buffleheads, Western Grebe, and a cormorant. I have my 2023 checklist started.

Photos for this week:

 Happy New Year!

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 © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.