My Trails into the Past

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)   April Fools Day is Monday.  When were you a Genealogy Fool?  What wrong, funny, or silly genealogy effort did you make? Here’s mine: There have been a few mishaps in my adventures in genealogy research. In the beginning, I only looked at census records as I moved back generation by generation. Mostly I was successful. Occasionally I chose the wrong ancestor and would feel foolish. Once I discovered there were other kinds of records, I had to lop them off the tree. I also didn’t expect to find two men of the same name when I thought the name was unusual but I did, and I had to work hard sorting the two out. I felt foolish the few times I’d get an email saying I had the wrong person. Sullivan was a pretty common name in the mining areas of Montana. It’s easy to mix up families. Also at the beginning, I...

Many years ago, when I first started genealogy research, I wrote a letter to St. John the Baptist Church in Joliet asking if they had a marriage record for my great-grandfather, John (Johan) Hork to Julia Sievert in 1872. I knew that my grandfather, William Cyril Hork, was Catholic and hoped they were married in the church. What I had for the marriage date and place was from an Illinois marriage index. Images of records weren’t online yet. I also asked about any baptisms held there for any of their children. What I got back was a taped-together page of a two-page spread from the church book. They married in 1872 and were listed on line number 9. [1] Because this was a German Catholic Church, I got more than the groom and bride’s names and the date of the marriage. I also got their parent's names and the places they came from. But I did not get the column headings and had to guess what they were. Fortunately, the priest did not write in the Fractur script, so I was able to read i...

I have completed two hundred and eleven (211) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. This week besides the History Center, I met with my sisters for dinner at Jack’s.  Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   Jacqueline and I met twice this week. The second time was a citation emergency that I helped her through with the help of the new Evidence Explained, fourth edition. Sunday, I met with book club and we talked about Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell. I had read the book back in December so I could give it to my daughter for Christmas, so I was a little fuzzy about the details. Genealogy Writing/Research: I spent most of my free time entering downloaded records into RootsMagic, creating citations (having to locate the doc again at FamilySearch to capture the URL and other details), and writing up mini-proof arguments for child-parent relations. I mostly worked with Amos Gorrell and Joseph, his son, but I worked o...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver’s assignment for us tonight on Genea-Musings is to: 1)   Where did your ancestors live or reside in the year 1900?  List them by generation.  Show their birth and death years, and the place they were living. Here's mine: We did this on 24 Feb 2018 and I listed my ancestors.  https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2018/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-where-were.html . This time I will list my husband’s ancestors and where they were living in 1900. His paternal ancestors are in blue and his maternal ancestors are in red. Grandparents His grandparents were married in 1900. I was able to locate Matilda “Pearl” Davey in Kansas City, Missouri. Tillie Davey was found living at the Washington Hotel. She was twenty years old and worked as a stenographer. [1] The previous page stated the Washington Hotel was located on Washington Street, nos. 1201 t...

I thought this week I would write about some technology I have been involved with in my life. I have always been interested in mechanical things. Trains I loved trains, especially when we had to stop for them to pass by. We kids would then count the cars until we saw the caboose. Later, I joined a model railroad club and am still a member. In the early days when we were building the layout, I laid a lot of track, which we hand-spiked. Today, since the layout is all built, I run trains from the operating cab. The technology behind our layout is very old. We run DC and have blocks we plug and a big board schematic that we follow, especially when we cannot see our train because of the many tunnels. During college, I began going up to the California Railway Museum, which is now called the Western Railway Museum, with two friends from the train club. This museum mostly had trolley cars that volunteers could run for the public. I learned to run the Sacramento Northern Birney car. There w...

I have completed two hundred and ten (210) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. This week besides the History Center, I birdwatched, phenology, and worked the the Train Club shows on Saturday and Sunday. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   Jacqueline and I discussed the new search feature at FamilySearch and a little about our Texas trip. We hosted Roundtable on Wednesday and the ninety minutes went by fast with so much sharing. Amigos met with Jacqueline and Stewart. We talked about our blog posts being shared by others on Facebook. Genealogy Writing/Research: I did no new research but spent time processing the files I had collected from Newspapers.com and FamilySearch last week. I still have more to do. Blog Post Published: Who Attended College? For 52 Ancestors, I investigated who in my ancestry attended college. Those who did on my father’s side were women who attended teacher’s colleges, while those on my mother’s side were men who attended college and went into the mi...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings tonight is to: 1)   This Sunday is St. Patrick's Day.  Are you a descendant of Irish ancestors?  Who are your most recent ancestor(s) who were born in Ireland?  Do you have DNA Irish ethnicity?  Have you performed any Irish genealogy research? Here's mine : This is easy. I am one-quarter Irish. My father is one-half Irish. His mother is 100% Irish. Here is how it comes out: Irish Family Anna Marie Sullivan was born in 1892 in Anaconda, Montana. Her father, John H. Sullivan , was an immigrant from County Cork, Ireland. I have not found the ship listing, but he might have come with his parents, Jerry and Mary (Sheehan) Sullivan . All his siblings also immigrated and the last brother was born in Michigan, where Jerry was a miner. Her mother, Anna Marie Gleeson , was born in 1860 in Carleton County, O...

When I graduated from college in 1977, I was the first in my immediate family to do so. In fact, none of my siblings finished college, though two sisters attended community college. At the time I thought I was the first in all my family to attend college, but some of my cousins attended college, too. Little did I know that earlier members of my family had attended college and achieved the goal of graduating. This knowledge is a result of genealogy research. Anna M. Sullivan, my paternal grandmother, attended Montana State Normal School in Dillon, Montana. She finished in June 1914. I have the yearbook from her senior year. Later, when she wanted to teach in California, she attended San Francisco State College and finished her Bachelor of Education in August 1952. Some of my dad’s cousins attended college. Alice Irene Hork, daughter of Anthony & Mary Hork, attended Montana State University in Missoula in the 1930s. Her siblings may have also, but I don’t have that information....

I have completed two hundred and nine (209) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. This week besides the History Center, I attended the Train Club meeting on Friday, and the Coast Division Meet on Sunday, though the latter was held outdoors. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   We got a late start with the weekly meeting with Jacqueline. We discussed GRIP and IGHR, and passed on the Southern Records class at IGHR due to its pre-recorded sessions. We talked a little about the Texas trip. We need to get some scheduling down and make appointments, especially if the facility is not open on the day we may be in town. Our AppGen meeting focused on choosing the possible courses for Fall 2024. We selected four to develop a fuller outline. Genealogy Writing/Research: For research, I searched and downloaded two dozen articles from newspapers from Hazlehurst in Copiah County, Mississippi, focusing on the Coor family. I was hoping to find an article about the mill that John Coor and J...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has our assignment for tonight.. 1)   How are you telling your own life story?  Who have you shared it with?  What do you hope to do in the future?   Here's mine: Well, on 4 November 2023, Randy asked us a similar question and my post about that is here. I have also blogged about my childhood many times, most of the posts are Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts. Early Childhood Memories Elementary School Memories On 26 December 2023, I wrote a post with the start of the story of my life . One of my goals this year is to work on it more. I am sure I have some other blog posts I can use to fill in parts of my story. I am very thankful for Randy to give us prompts to write about ourselves, as well as our ancestors. Copyright © 2024 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Susanna Sievert emigrated with her husband Vincent, and son, August, aboard the ship Johanna Elise on 15 May 1852. [1] They arrived in New York City on 23 June 1852. [2] They settled in Joliet, Will County, Illinois, first appearing on the 1860 census as a farmer, next door to his brother, John. [3] They attended St. John the Baptist German Catholic Church and their son, Peter, was baptized on 5 July 1857. [4] The records begin in 1855, so the baptism of their daughter, Julia Ann in 1854 is not at this church. Not only Vincent and John emigrated, but their sisters did also: Eva, who married Christoph Wienke, and Henrietta, who married Joseph Freitag. Susanna’s sister, Wilhelmine Hartung, also emigrated to the area. These families attended the German Catholic church. So, it is likely when they first came to America that they continued speaking German. Census Records Give Clues The 1860 census doesn’t give any indication of the language spoken. There is a column about reading ...

I wrote about my cool find at the new FamilySearch feature of every word search in US land and probate records. This game-changer has allowed me to locate more records than I had found using just the land indexes and probate indexes. Sometimes the clerk might forget to record the transaction in the index, or if the index was copied into a new modern system, an entry might get missed. Ever wondered how an ancestor got a deed for the land they were selling? It might be missing from the index but is in the deed book. My post yesterday on my other blog , showed how to locate these cool documents. Today, I want to show how to locate the information you need to create source citations. This document is found within the new “images” section, so the procedure I used in the past does not work. The digital film number is not listed above the images as it was before when accessing documents from the catalog entry. Below is the results page for the Coor-Hoggatt agreement. Let’s work our way a...