Monday Genea-pourri, Week of February 6–12, 2023

I have completed one hundred fifty-three (153) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. It rained twice this week but during the night, so it didn’t affect any of my activities. I did phenology Thursday and hiked with my hiking group on Wednesday. My biggest activity was the annual luncheon and lecture by the historical society. I hope the large crowd doesn’t produce any new covid cases.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Outcast: Mam-ma and Tom-Tom Gone Fishing. I shared a photo of my grandparents holding a nice string of fish.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Write a Short Life Sketch of an Ancestor Living in 1900 I wrote about my husband’s great-grandfather and their move from Iowa to California.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
Jacqueline and I met, discussing mostly RootsTech and DNA. All were available for Amigos and we heard about Stewart’s progress with his client work and his upcoming presentations. Jacqueline and I hosted the CGS Roundtable and the theme was supposed to be about valentines but we ended up discussing family secrets and how to deal with them.

Volunteer
I volunteered at the History Center on Tuesday and with John’s help, we continued with the library inventory. A researcher came in the afternoon and Jim and I helped with her requests. On Saturday, the historical society had our annual meeting and I helped with set-up and then manned the book table, where we had both free books and books for sale.

Client Work
Monday, I held my second Adult School in-person class on researching using online records. This session went better and we focused on Ancestry and FamilySearch sites session.

I gave a webinar to the East Cuyahoga County Genealogical Society, which is a chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. The topic was Focused Research: Using Research Plans. My next webinar is for the Kalamazoo Genealogical Society on Researching Your Farming Ancestors.

Thursday, I held the Writing Group session and we discussed Lynne’s outline. She has really added lots of social contexts and has learned that perhaps her project is too big and will cut it down for the first round.

My work for my Applied Genealogy Institute course had no progress and I need to schedule in that for next week.

Own Work
I saw a post on Facebook by Jill that gave the link to Iowa newspapers and I went down a rabbit hole that evening. It was good—I found newspaper articles for the Rev. Nils Malkom Nilsen in Harcourt, Iowa, and discovered about when they migrated to California. I was previously off by two years.

I also discovered that George T. Davey, son of Julia Wollenweber and Frederick Davey, served during WWI. So, I located his VAMI card, tombstone application, and muster and roster lists. He was in a Bakers & Cooks School in Kentucky the entire time. I am not finished analyzing the records. It is very tedious to write the citations for each of the rosters. I’m not sure I have found them all yet, either.

Finally, I am taking the Masterclass on Word taught by Tom Jones at the Family History Academy. He spent the entire 90 minutes demonstrating techniques for using styles, making child lists, and dealing with footnotes. I am so glad there is a recording and I re-watched portions of it as I did my homework. Jacqueline and I met on Zoom to discuss our homework.

Webinars Viewed.

• Ancestral Road Trips, Part 1 by Madeline Yanov (CCCGS)
• Unfamiliar Territory: Creating Locality Guides by Cari Taplin (Avon Lake Pub. Library)

 I am reading:

• Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge by Erica Gies
• For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich

Other
Wednesday, I joined the hiking group at Mt. Diablo State Park where we hiked the Pt Curry trail to see blooming manzanitas. Wow, were there a lot! See below.

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