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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 24–30, 2023

I have completed one hundred sixty-four (164) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included teaching at Acalanes Adult School, working at the History Center, and attending the Pacific Coast Region convention in Sacramento.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:
What My DNA Ethnicity Estimates Show & Do Not Show. For week 17 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote and showed my DNA estimates from Ancestry. Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings highlighted this post on his Best of the Genea-Blogs.

SNGF: Share A Unique Document -- Anne Hork Was a Superior Teacher I wrote about the documents I have about my grandmother’s teaching at Williams School.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
In this week’s meeting with Jacqueline, we discussed Family Tree Maker and I got a great screenshot to use in my beginning class. We had a quick Amigos meeting. Later on Wednesday, I attended the RootsMagic SIG and we discussed reports. Finally, on Sunday, I met with a group to discuss the new reference book on WWI research written by Margaret M. McMahon, Ph.D.

Volunteer
On Tuesday, I spent a half day at the History Center and the computer guy fixed the One Drive issue on my computer. I worked on a query about a school in Richmond. On Wednesday, we interviewed the third candidate for Executive Director.

Client Work
Tuesday afternoon I drove up to Fairfield in Solano County to get a few vital records and a divorce for a client.

Own Work
After attending the RootsMagic SIG, I learned that I could remove the commas I had inserted to show missing portions of a place name, for example, if I didn't know the town but knew the county and state, I would insert a comma showing there is one more layer missing. Since I can show the place list in reverse order now, that is largest to smallest, I don't need the commas anymore. It only took me about an hour to remove them plus I had some places listed twice, so I could merge those.

Webinars Viewed.

  • Okay, I “Got the Neighbors” Now What Do I Do with Them?! By Elizabeth Shown Mills (LFTWebinars)

I am reading:

  • Women in White Coats by Olivia Campbell
  • An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear
  • Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf

Other
I hiked with the hiking group on Wednesday at Shell Ridge, an open space area in Walnut Creek. We saw some good wildflowers, especially those that are planted at the beginning of the trail.

On Thursday, I drove up to Sacramento to attend three days of the PCR convention. On the first day after three classes, I took a tour of the California State Parks archive. That was a very interesting tour of the thousands of items they have in a huge warehouse. Many of the items are furniture for house properties, donated items to the California State Railroad Museum, and lots of paper, photos, and maps. I am looking forward to checking out their online finding aids. The archivist also gave me a contact for where we might be able to donate some pharmaceutical items that we have at the History Center from Louis Stein’s pharmacy.

That evening, I was part of an operating crew at a member’s Sacramento Northern layout. It was fun operating, but the temperature in the garage was very hot. Friday was just a day of clinics, and on Saturday I was one of the judges for the model contest. It was my first time judging models but after the first few, I got into the groove. Luckily, we had an expert guiding us. I drove home on Saturday.

Photos for this week. Photos of my hike at Shell Ridge, plus one of Stanley and me operating on the Sacramento Northern layout.




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.

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