Monday Genea-pourri, Week of Sep 25–Oct 1, 2023

I have completed one hundred eighty-six (186) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. We spent most of last week in NYC and I wore masks indoors and on the subway. Thursday, we traveled up to Portland, Maine, on the train and I wore a mask. After that, I have not. Fingers crossed.

Genealogy

Genealogy Meetings
None this week.

Genealogy Writing
This week, in my spare time (mostly while my husband slept), I worked on extracting the information from Amos Gorrell’s compiled military service record for the Civil War and his pension file.

Blog Posts:

William C. Gleeson’s Death Certificate and the Cause of Death. The theme for week 39 was surprise and I wrote about finally ordering William’s death certificate. I was very surprised by the cause of death, as there was no hint of it in the obituary. This post was highlighted on Randy Seaver's Best of Genea-Blogs.

SNGF: Your Top End-of-Line Ancestors. I created a fan chart out nine generations starting with my daughter and listed some of the furthest out ancestors, most in Sweden, Germany, and the southern US.

Genealogy Volunteer/Work
I presented three talks to the Maine Genealogical Society in Brewer, Maine, at Jeff’s Catering. The first was the keynote on How to Leave Your Genealogy. After lunch, there were breakout sessions and I presented Research Plans and Writing Your Genealogy to a smaller group. The best part of the day was finally meeting Angela Harris, my certification mentee. Also, there, were two CGs, Eva Holmes and Helen Shaw.

Webinars Viewed
None this week.

Other
The first part of the week was rainy in New York City, so we found things to do inside. We checked out bookstores, went to the Museum of Natural History viewing only the floor with the dinosaurs, and played games at a café where we played games. After our daughter, Elizabeth returned home, it was nice and we walked around the Lower East Side, checking out more bookstores and small parks.

Thursday, we left NYC on the Acela to Boston and the Downeaster to Portland. Stayed overnight and then got a rental car and started for Bangor. On the way, we got a flat tire from driving over a missing part of the road. After waiting for a service call for an hour, we learned it would now be three hours, so we figured out how to change the tire. This Toyota Camry had low-profile tires. We finally made it to the restaurant where the genealogy society was treating us to dinner. After checking in, my husband returned the car to the Bangor airport for a different one. This Nissan is a sporty SUV.

Saturday was spent at the seminar and Sunday we took a scenic route to Augusta, stopping at Fort Knox Historic Site on the Penobscot River. We also went up into the tower at the Narrows Bridge.

I am reading:

• A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon—finished!
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Photos for this week.

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great at documenting our own. I will write about what I have 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.