Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 6–12, 2024

I have completed two hundred and eighteen (218) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I spent the week on vacation in Texas. To be safe, I wore a mask in the airport and on the plane coming home as both legs were full. Other than that, there were few crowds in North Texas.

Genealogy

Genealogy Meetings:  
I hosted the APG NorCal chapter meeting on Tuesday evening from my hotel room. It went well, I think, and I had no connection issues. I skipped all my other meetings while on vacation.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
Research this week was mostly for Jacqueline in Fannin and Pontotoc Counties. I spent any free time processing and naming my files. I did visit the museum in Nocoma, Montague County, but didn’t find anything more for NHO Polly. On Friday, when we returned to Texas from Oklahoma, we visited Rockwall County, where their museum collections assistant brought out some items for me to view. I had seen one of the books at the Dallas Public Library but the other was new to me. I made notice of some of the history of the county. Even when I don’t find something, I know that I have checked, plus I have new contacts to send questions to. Just this week, I saw in the newsletter for the Erath County Genealogical Society my query asking about Stephenville yearbooks for the late 1920s. We also stopped at the Rockwall Memorial Park to take photos of grave markers of some of my ancestors.

Blog Post Published:

Preserve: A Hint that James Madison Coor was an Ancient Free and Accepted Mason. A notice in the newspaper about his funeral gave me a hint about his fraternal order membership.

SNGF: A Genealogy Fun Day. I wrote about my research trip discoveries.

My Maternal Line – Happy Mother’s Day. I listed my maternal line back as far as I have researched, including photos from me back five generations.

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
I worked on the BCG-Legacy Family Tree Webinar press release and will send it out on Monday.

Webinars/Courses Viewed: I viewed no webinars this week.

Other:
The sky was scary in Oklahoma while a storm was brewing. We were at a cemetery when we heard a siren ring and hurried to the office to ask if that was a tornado warning siren. They were just testing it. While I waited for Jacqueline to get some specific positioning for some of her burials, thunder sounded right above me in the car. Luckily the storm passed by us without any incident.

We also had trouble with a flat tire on the day we were to leave early for Oklahoma. Four hours later, we were finally on our way with a smaller car. I loved the Nissan Altima but not so much the Versa. It lacks many features. I did enjoy driving on the back roads of Texas and Oklahoma where there was light traffic but not the highways around Dallas and Fort Worth. City traffic is always worse. The best thing about our car were the Texas plates so no one knew we were from out of state, except maybe I never drove over 80 mph like everyone else.

I am reading:

• 101 Things You Didn’t Know About World War I: The People, Battles, and Aftermath of the Great War by Erik Sass (not much reading while on vacation)

Photos for this week: Last week were the flowers. This week the sky.

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 © 2024 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.