My Trails into the Past

I have completed two hundred and three (203) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside the house activities included volunteering at the History Center, visiting Kaiser for doctor’s appointment and lab test (wore mask), and attending the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s annual luncheon and meeting.   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings: I hosted Monday Morning and we had about ten show up. I shared my blog post about finding the comic book. Later Jacqueline and I spoke about Feedly , possibly attending the in-person GRIP, and our blogs. Wednesday, I attended the CGS RootsMagic SIG and we spent the time answering questions that members had. Genealogy Writing/Research: Besides attending some webinars, I worked on processing the files I scanned at the OFSC last week and then recycling the paper I don’t need. Slowly I’ve whittled down the files to a few for each family in generations three and further back. I will be keeping most of the files and papers for my parents ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It’s Saturday Night again  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!          Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing s has asked us to do a problem check on our family tree, however, he discovered we did this in October. So we’re to put our link in, then do some research and report on that.  Here’s Mine: I did do the problem check previously and here is the link: https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2023/10/sngf-do-genealogy-software-problem.html   Well, I would love to report on some research but I cannot. This morning, after a Windows Update, my computer's sound devices stopped working. I tried everything I could think of but could not solve it. So I took my computer to our trusty repair guy and I’m working on an old Win7 computer.  Now, the crazy thing with this old laptop, my desktop image is sideways and I cannot get it to turn, no matter what setting I use. When the image is sideways, it is difficu...

I have completed two hundred and two (202) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside the house activities included renewing my driver’s license (wore a mask), getting certificates from the recorder’s office, going to a memorial service, and running trains at the Train Club.   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings Monday, I met with Jacqueline and she relayed what I missed at the Kinseekers Military SIG meeting. Wednesday, we got back early enough from our walk for me to attend the Certification Discussion Group (CDG) where we discussed time management. Genealogy Writing/Research This week, besides my blog posts, I started a story about my great-uncle being portrayed in a comic book during World War II. It took some research and I am working on a blog post about it. I entered the information from the newspaper articles I found last week into RootsMagic and still have a few more to do. Blog Posts Published: 4 Generations ofLancasters: Favorite Photo . I shared two photos ta...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:  1)  Who are your favorite genealogy researchers, speakers or writers?  Who do you learn from?  Please list ten or more genealogists who contribute to your genealogy education and experience through books, magazines, videos, podcasts, social media, websites, blogs, webinars, seminars, conferences, presentations, workshops, meetings, other ways or venues, etc.     Here’s mine: After thirty years of doing genealogy research, there are many genealogy speakers and writers who influenced me over that time. Elizabeth Shown Mills was my first influencer. I had a copy of that little book Evidence! and when she was to be the speaker for a seminar at the Sonoma County Genealogical Society, a group of us went to hear her. I took the book and she signed it. Since th...

I have completed two hundred and one (201) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. In the first full week of the new year, many of the usual activities started up again. Besides genealogy activities, I did phenology in the meadow, hiked with Wednesday Hikers, partied with German classmates, and birded with the Mt. Diablo Bird Alliance (a chapter of the National Audubon Society).   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings Jacqueline and I met on Zoom for about an hour and it was so nice to catch up after the holidays. During Amigos, I met with Jacqueline and Stewart. The book club met to discuss The Girls Who Fought Crime. On Saturday, I attended the CGS annual meeting – my first time back in the library since the pandemic. It was nice seeing people in person. I rode BART in and luckily my walks to and from the station occurred between rain showers. Genealogy Writing/Research I continued writing small proof arguments for my RootsMagic database proving an individual’s parentage. In ...

Yvette Hoitink in her blog Dutch Genealogy , wrote a post “Six Levels of Ancestral Profiles – Level Up Challenge!” at the beginning of 2021. In the post, she listed the six levels. I have summarized them here:  Level 0: Know nothing about the ancestor Level 1: Know their name only Level 2: Know their vital statistics Level 3: Know their occupation, residence, children, and spouses Level 4: Know they owned land, served in the military, their religion, and possible criminal activity Level 5: Exhaustive research has been conducted to meet the GPS. This includes knowing their parents, resolving any conflicts, and writing up a conclusion. Level 6: Written a biography with historical context I decided to see where I stood with this Level Up Challenge. I started by printing out the Ahnentafel report from my RootsMagic database out seven generations, as that is the limit of the chart from Yvette’s blog to help me track the levels. I recorded Ahnentafel numbers for each of my...

One of the reasons people begin genealogy research is to discover their family’s origins. This often entails discovering which foreign countries their ancestors arrived from. For some families, their arrival was recent enough that the information is known. Or others, the arrival was far in the past, perhaps even in American Colonial times. This can be more difficult if there are not many records to help determine this. My father’s family My father’s family is easy. His father’s line was from German states in Europe and they arrived in the 19 th Century. I have found church records in the U.S. that named their birthplaces and have found church records in their German hometowns. His mother’s line was from Ireland. These, too, were easy, as they also arrived in the 19 th Century, one group stopping off in Canada first. I don’t have ship arrival for these lines and can only trace them back to their country of origin. My mother’s family My mother’s side is far from easy. They have b...

I have completed two hundred (200) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. During the first week of the new year, I returned to many of my activities. Besides genealogy activities, I did phenology in the meadow, hiked with Wednesday Hikers, and attended a funeral for a former train club member.   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings This week our certification peer group met and the five of us stated our 2024 goals. We decided to meet next month and discuss the first chapter in the Advanced Genetic Genealogy: Techniques and Case Studies , edited by Debbie Parker Wayne. Genealogy Writing/Research This week I worked on downsizing files from a drawer in the file cabinet, primarily my father’s family: Tierney, Gleeson, and Sullivan. I still have the Hork family to do next. I am hoping to get all the saved paper files into just a few document boxes. While working on these families, I did some newspaper research to locate digital copies of paper articles I had, so I didn’t have to scan th...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings asked us, “Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.” 1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted an interesting question last week in  Best Genealogy Find of 2023. 2)  What was your very best genealogy finds in 2023?  Elusive ancestors?  Hard-to-find records?  Family photographs?  Family stories?  Family artifacts?  New cousins?  What else? Here’s mine: I’m at the point in my genealogy research that I don’t find much new information. I have not found any new ancestors, still stuck on several brick walls. What I find now from looking at newspapers is news about my various family members. Here are some highlights that I remember: My grandfather, Cyril W. Hork , served in the Navy during World War I. I learned he was stationed at San Diego...

This new year, I decided to get back to downsizing my genealogy files. I currently have one file drawer and three plastic file boxes full of files from thirty years of research. Now, most of the paper records are from over ten years ago as I now save mostly digital files. I would like to get the files down to one box. I think that would be manageable to pass down to the family (or perhaps as a donation). File folders before downsizing Save or Toss? So, what to keep and what to toss? Last year when I started this, the families I worked through were from the South and most of the folders held copies of census records and photocopies of indexes from books. It was easy to toss those as I have since downloaded digital files of census, marriage, and death records. I have also added deeds, tax, and probate records. If I copied pages from a history book, then I scanned those and tossed the photocopies. If the book was old and out of copyright, I would look for it on the Internet Archive and...

I have completed one hundred ninety-nine (199) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. This was the last week of the year 2023. It was a quiet week except for a lunch date with German class colleagues, a soup day with the Wednesday Walkers, and two trips to Danville to operate at the San Ramon Valley RR. I got a teenage girl to run the train on Friday.   Genealogy Genealogy Meetings I had no meetings this week. Genealogy Writing/Research I worked on Rod’s genealogy and continued researching the McCallas in Tennessee. There are land records to view and the images are locked at FamilySearch, so I must wait until my next stint at the OFSC. I wrote some extra blog posts this week. I started some of the cleanup of paper files on New Year's Eve and discovered I hadn't entered some information into RootsMagic so spent the afternoon on that. I could have just scanned the paper where I'd written the notes but decided that if I have the FamilySearch film open, I can paste the...