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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of September 2–8, 2024

I have completed two hundred and thirty-four (234) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside home activities involved volunteering at the History Center and the Oakland FamilySearch Center, running trains at the gallery in Pleasanton, and visiting the San Francisco Public Library history archive by riding BART.

Genealogy

Genealogy Meetings:  
This week, Jacqueline and I met on Zoom and I helped her fix a table of contents in a Word document. On Wednesday, I went to San Francisco with the NorCal chapter of APG to tour the history archive at the San Francisco Public Library. The five of us then had lunch at food trucks in the Civic Center Plaza. Linda and I rode BART in for easy access.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
I got started on a couple of articles I’m writing for Der Blumenbaum and Nugget. I also worked on some research and document transcriptions for my Lancaster and Davey families.

Blog Post Published:

What We Don’t Talk About Enough. For 52 Ancestors’ theme of “We Don’t Talk About It,” I wrote about some members of my grandfather’s family who had mental illness. This post was highlighted on Randy Seaver's "Best of the Genea-blogs."

SNGF: Ancestors Who Lived a Life of Hardship. I wrote about Amanda Jones who traveled from Tennessee to Texas during the Civil War without a husband who had died during the war.

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
I began working on the finding aid for the Pleasant Hill Historical Society Collection. It’s such a diverse collection with over twenty boxes. It also won’t be stored together so it will be important to note their location.

At the Oakland FamilySearch Center, I helped a gentleman, who was visiting from Tennessee, to locate his mother’s family in census records. He is excited to keep working on the research once he gets home.

I created the press release for the upcoming BCG-sponsored webinar and sent it out.

Webinars/Courses Viewed:
I attended the Fall SLIG orientation and our class also met in a breakout room. I will be the hiveminder for the Saturday session.

Saturday, I attended the first part of the OUR ANCESTORS’ WORLD: German History and the Role of the Church in Everyday Life seminar and viewed the second half as a recording on Sunday. It was a great seminar with an overview of history and insight into what else can be learned from German church records besides baptisms, marriages, and burials. We can view the recordings for one year. I can’t wait for the next installment in November.

OtherLots of tennis watching this week.

I am reading:

  • American Fly Girl by Susan Tate Ankeny
  • Journeys of the Forgotten: The Orphans of Hamilton County, Iowa by Jill Morelli

Photos for this week. No hike this week due to the high temperatures. Here are shots from my trip to San Francisco. One of us looking at a Sanborn map and the other of me discovering the pay phone actually worked.


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.

Comments

  1. What fun to see those maps. I've never seen paper copies of the Sanborn collection, just digital images . . . and I haven't seen a pay phone in years!

    ReplyDelete

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