Monday Genea-pourri, Week of November 18-24, 2024

I have completed two hundred and forty-four (244) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My only outside activities were trips to the History Center, Oakland FamilySearch Center, the Social Security Office, and three weekend days at Train Club for our public shows.  

Genealogy

Genealogy Meetings:   

The only meetings this week were an NGS conference meeting and an hour meeting with Jacqueline.  

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:

I volunteered at the History Center continuing my work on the Pleasant Hill Historical Society Collection. I taught my third session of the Probate class for AppGen. I got the recording done correctly this week. The Contra Costa County Genealogical Society’s board meeting was Thursday and I took minutes.

Genealogy Writing/Research:

I received images of WWI draft classification records and decided to try Elizabeth Shown Mills’s method for writing and analyzing a research session with these documents. I did manage to work on half of the eleven images.

Blog Post Published:

Ancestor 21: Mary Sheehan

For 52 Ancestors’ theme of “Random Number,” I spun a random number generator and got 21, which is my 2x-great-grandmother. 

SNGF: Who is the Earliest Ancestor in Your Paternal Tree?

I wrote about my 4x-great-grandfather, Denis Tierney, an Irish immigrant to Canada.

Webinars/Courses Viewed: 

I attended the last session of the SLIG course, Assemblage: Preparing, Writing, and Revising Case Studies. This week we discussed layout and design and reviewed all the techniques we had learned in the course. She gave us two weeks to rewrite our case study for her review.

I also viewed the following webinars:

• Dear Me: Writing Research Reports to Yourself by Yvette Hoitink (BCG/LFT Webinars)
• InformationOverload-Effective Project Planning, Research, Data Management & Analysis by Elizabeth Shown Mills (LFT Webinars)

Other:

I spent the whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, at the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society where we had the first weekend of our annual holiday show. Friday, I ran trains but Saturday and Sunday I worked in Set-up where my duties were to troubleshoot problem trains. I climbed ladders, crawled under the layout on my knees, and fixed lots of derailments. 

I am reading: 

The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron

Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography by Douglas Keister

Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story by James R Hagerty

Photos for this week. 

Here are some shots from phenology this week after a rain.

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.