My Trails into the Past

In many older Catholic churches, stands of small votive candles can be seen on the side of the church or in alcoves. The ones I remember were red and when lit, glow dimly. I have not seen these candles in other kinds of churches. This seems to be a Catholic tradition. One article explained that Catholics light a candle for a loved one, either deceased or perhaps ill. They wish for some divine intervention to solve a problem, so light a candle, and make their intention known through prayer. [1]   I remember the candles in St. Peter Martyr’s Church in Pittsburg, California. Nana took me many times to Mass and after I had my First Communion, to confession on Saturdays. She would give me a coin, maybe it was a nickel or a dime, so I could light a candle and say a prayer. What I do not remember is whom I said the prayer for. Nana said prayers for many people. I guess because she was so much older, she knew many people who had died, like her mother, who died when she was twenty, and h...

I have completed one hundred fifty-nine (159) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, bird watching, having lunch with my sisters at Jack’s, and enjoying San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with my husband and daughter on my birthday. Genealogy Blog Writing : Membership--Swedish-American Church Records Provide Fine Details I gave examples of how the membership pages in these church records give vital records and place of origin information. It was highlighted on Linda Stufflebean’s Friday’s Family History Finds . SNGF: A Fearless Female Post (sisters Susanna & Wilhelmine Radunz) I chose to find a problem and create a timeline. Here is hoping to locate Susanna’s and Wilhelmine’s parents. Meetings/Discussion Groups This week I met with Jacqueline and we discussed her writing sample, Amigos where we caught up on our activities, and RootsMagic SIG and watched Stewart as he created citations. I atte...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!!     Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings : Check out Lisa Alzo's "Fearless Females 2023" blog post prompts and write about one of them. Here's mine: I have done many Fearless Females posts in the past but have not done day 20, so here is my post. March 20—Is there a female ancestor who is your brick wall? Why? List possible sources for finding more information. I have many women whom either I don’t know their surname or I know the surname but don’t know her parents. Let's look at Susanna Radunz. Susanna Radunz was married to Vincent Sievert on 10 February 1850 in Schneidemühl, Posen. I do not know the name of the church or any other details except the date. [1]    They came to the U.S. on 23 June 1852 aboard the Johanna Elise. [2] Later, I found W. Sievert with his wife and child on the Hamburg passenger list. This document confi...

Church records are always a nice resource to document events in a family’s life. Sacramental records such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals have always been a go-to resource for family genealogists. These supplement civil registration or even substitute for them when these events occur before the advent of civil registration. There are other records to be found in church records. Churches kept minutes of their meetings and an ancestor might be mentioned in them, especially if they were part of the governing group. Records of receiving communion or entry into the full church membership through confirmation are other records that often can be found. One of the best records found especially in Swedish-American churches are the membership records. My husband’s families were members of both the Swedish Lutheran and the Swedish Covenant churches. Both churches kept records of their memberships. From these records, you can learn when they joined the church and when they left, if they...

I have completed one hundred fifty-eight (158) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, bird watching, and working the train club weekend shows. Genealogy Blog Writing : Lucky – My Parents’ New Home They didn’t have to move far! SNGF: Are/Were You a Wild and Crazy Genealogist?   I wrote about the time my husband and I searched through eight cemeteries in Faulkner County, Arkansas. Bless his heart! Meetings/Discussion Groups This week I met with Jacqueline, attended the Kinseekers military SIG, and met with my certification mentee, and another Northern California APG member about rekindling the NorCal group. The AppGen founders had a brief meeting and will meet again on Monday. Volunteer John and I worked some on the library inventory, and I worked on foldering a new collection that came in. Next up is to write a finding aid and enter it into Past Perfect. I took the minutes of the histori...

Hey genea-folks, it's Saturday Night again, time for more Genealogy Fun! Our mission this week from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1) What is the most wild, crazy, off-the-wall, or really stupid thing you have done in pursuit of your ancestral families and their family history? Here’s mine: I don’t know if I have ever done a wild, crazy, off-the-wall or really stupid thing in pursuit of my genealogy. I try to be very careful in my research. I recorded what I found in notebooks and didn’t just make photocopies. I knew enough to record some kind of citation even if it wasn’t to Evidence Explained standards (of course that book wasn’t even written yet. I used Evidence! Elizabeth Shown Mills first book.) But a wild thing my husband and I did in pursuit of my having my own copies of tombstone photos was to seek out eight different cemeteries around the Greenbrier area in Faulkner County, Arkansas, and comb through them looking for my Loveless ancestors and collate...

Our home in Walnut Creek, California, was located adjacent to the I-680 freeway. If you are familiar with California and our ever-growing traffic, freeways are constantly being widened. In 1988, there was to be a start of a major renovation and widening project through Walnut Creek and my parents’ home was to become a casualty. CalTrans, the transportation department for the State of California, contacts the people who own land where they want to widen and offer funds to be resettled. I believe they had real estate agents help my mother view comparable homes by price in Walnut Creek that they could move into. My mother hated them all. You see, we lived on a narrow, one-lane country road right in the middle of town. There were about a dozen houses. One side of the road was in the city limits of Walnut Creek, the other side in the county. Mature trees surrounded our homes. No sidewalks. The neighbor to our south had horses. At the end of the street was access to Las Trampas Creek. ...

I have completed one hundred fifty-seven (157) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, attending the train club meeting, and attending a concert by Lowell Ensemble. Genealogy Blog Writing : Translation - A Will Recorded in Jefferson County, Kentucky Agnes Marie Vohringer’s will was transcribed in German but also translated! SNGF: 100 Word Genealogy Challenge - An Ancestor I'd Like to Mee t I would like to know why my 3-x great-grandfather, George W. Lancaster was divorced from his wife, Martha Jane. Women’s History Month posts : Aunt Virginia Worked at Mare Island Navy Yard during WWII The personnel file from NARA St. Louis gives details about her work at the Naval base on Mare Island. Cousin Carrie: An Unmarried Woman Traveled Often . Newspaper articles tell of Carrrie’s travels. Thelma Begins Her Household -- Wedding Gifts . Her bridal book had pages of the gifts she received and wh...

A wonderful artifact of early marriage life is the wedding book. Besides information about the bridal party and guests, there are pages where gifts are listed and the gift-giver. This is true in Thelma Marie Nilsen Gorrell’s bridal book. She recorded three pages of gifts, who gave it to them, and the date she wrote the thank you note. She married George J. Gorrell on 6 October 1951 at Westminster Presbyterian Chapel in Sacramento, California. Their reception followed immediately in the patio room. The guests included family, friends, and co-workers (hers and his). It is interesting to see the signatures written in each guests’ own hand. She was pretty prompt in writing the thank you notes, finishing up about a month later, though some were written in January. Perhaps those gifts came later. They received a lot of linens and decorative items, but their parents gave substantial gifts. Her parents (#20) gave them an automatic toaster and his parents (#14) gave them silver salt and pep...

To my surprise, the will of Maria Agnes Vohringer was transcribed into the Jefferson County, Kentucky probate minute book in German, just as she had written it (or her attorney). [1] It is even written in old German handwriting. The witnesses were C.C. Godshaw, L.Koellner, and T.L. Bloch, who all must have spoken German. Oh, wow, I was going to need to write it out in modern letters first and then translate it. Luckily, on the opposite page was the English translation!  At the bottom of the translation was written “Jos. J. Schene states that he is acquainted with the German and English language and that the foregoing translation made by him from the German to the English language of the last will and testament of Maria Agnes Vohringer, deceased, is a true and correct translation of said will as he verily believes." Thank goodness for Mr. Schene. I’m sure the deputy clerk M.G. Stewart was thankful, too! #52Ancestors: Translation This is my sixth year working on this year-long ...

My paternal grandfather’s sister, Carrie, never married. By the time the family arrived in Hamilton, Montana, she was nearly an adult. She performed in plays, participated in social groups such as the Catholic ladies, and worked as a sales lady in clothing and millinery stores. In her spare time, she visited family often in Missoula, where her sister, Mary, lived, and in Tacoma, where her sister, Urselle, lived. She also made trips to Southern California to visit her sister, Ida, and Lexington, Kentucky, to visit her niece. Other times, she traveled with girlfriends and traveled along the countryside in an automobile. In 1936, she took an ocean trip to Alaska with friends, where they visited Juneau and Sitka. On another trip in 1949, she took a seven-week trip to Tacoma, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel and visited friends in Great Falls, Kalispell, and Flathead Lake on her return. These are just a few of the travels recorded by newspapers in small towns, that give g...

My dad’s next oldest sister, Virginia, graduated from Napa Union High School in 1942 and went on to work at the Navy Yard at Mare Island in Vallejo. [1] I have no idea how she got to work, but perhaps there were buses from Napa to the base. This is something I wished I had asked, but I only learned about my aunts working there after they had passed. I ordered her civilian personnel file from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, a branch of the National Archives, and the papers in the file tell a bit of her story. She applied on 8 June, just days after graduation. Her sister, Lorene, and her cousin, Margaret, were already working there. She started out as a junior messenger in the Planning Division of the Industrial Department, making $600 per year. Less than a month later, she resigned from the position in order to accept a new position. On 30 June, she accepted the position of junior typist in the same department, paying $1260 per annum. On 16 December 1942, she w...

I have completed one hundred fifty-six (156) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I spent the week in Salt Lake City at RootsTech and the FamilySearch Library. Genealogy Blog Writing : Gone Too Soon: Nell Hutson Johnston Dead at 31 Year s . For week 9 of the 52 Ancestors, I wrote about my great-grandmother who died in 1919 at a very young age. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Best RootsTech 2023 Experience . I wrote about my experience attending RootsTech in person. I wrote several extra posts this week as I am attempting to write about a woman family member each day for Women’s History Month. I will attempt to a post each day. My Mother Loved Crafts Nana Was the Fun Grandmother My Grandma was a Seamstress Lorene was a World Traveler and I have Letters to Document it Aunt June’s High School Activities Documented by Newspapers Meetings/Discussion Groups Because of my trip to Salt Lake City, I did not attend many meetings. Monday was busy. I started the Monday...