My Trails into the Past

Jack C. Sullivan was a soldier of the 4th Engineers during World War I. His military file was among many that burned in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel and Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis. More than 75% of the Army and Air Force records were destroyed. The NPRC sent me only the last pay voucher, a three-page listing of soldiers’ final pay. At least I have his signature. Because of that, I have had to build his service information using other documents. I have found departure and arrival passenger lists, muster rolls, rosters, and morning reports for the unit he served; all created during his service. Other records were created after his service, such as the Veterans Administration Master Index (VAMI) cards and the Montana Military Cards. [1] With this information, I have been able to construct a timeline of his activities. Still, he was mentioned only once in the morning reports, and his Montana card said he was gassed on August 5. Besides that, I do not know much about...

Outside activities included a trip to the History Center, phenology at the Meadow, Thanksgiving at our daughter’s, and working the weekend at the Train Club. Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: At the History Center this week, I worked on queries. One researcher whom I had been helping via email came into the Center to look at some other items we have. Genealogy Meetings:  I attended the CDG Renewal group and then read Carol’s submission. I sent her some suggestions. Jacqueline and I met, and I heard about her trip to Hawai‘i, and I told her about the news articles I was finding about the Train Club from its inception to the mid-2000s. Genealogy Writing/Research : I am reading two books to help with my research. I’m taking notes as I read them and checking the sources in the endnotes. They are two different subjects: one on WWI and the other on farming during the westward expansion. Blog Posts Published: Swedish Recipe Treats For the theme of “family recipe,” I shared...

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)  Larry Smith invented six-word memoirs (see  https://www.sixwordmemoirs.com/ ).   2)  How do you want to be remembered?  What is most important to you?  What six-word memoirs would you write?   3)  Write at least one on any subject, and the sky is no limit. Here's mine: A part of me didn’t want to do this. It sounded too much like writing poetry, and I don’t like poetry. But then I thought, what the heck, I’ll give it a try. Baseball, tennis, soccer: sports I love. Train watching, train riding, utter joy. Bird watching, binoculars in hand. Lookout! Wildflowers on hikes, pictures to make. Researching is fun, writing is hard. Teaching genealogy brings knowledge to all. I guess those aren’t too bad. I couldn’t figure out how to ...

image from Pixabay In October, Jan Joyce gave a webinar to the Writers SIG of the Association of Professional Genealogists, titled “Restarting Research: Writing Your Way Back after a Break.” I was finally able to view the recording this week. It was a great interactive webinar, and I’m sorry I missed it live. She had five tips: recall, review, prompt, write, and recap or restart, which she expanded on with the help of the audience. Recall was basic. Try to remember what the research goal or objective was. It’s a big picture approach to the original problem. We were to consider why we were working on it, and to try to remember any challenges we had, and if we remembered what our next steps were going to be. For my project, I want to find the parents of Benjamin W. Jones, born about 1822 in Virginia, who married Amanda A. Haley on 26 June 1845 in Rankin County, Mississippi. I know her parents, but not Benjamin’s. One of the challenges is that I have no idea where in Virginia he i...

Thelma Nilsen Gorrell (1926-2018), my mother-in-law, was one hundred percent Swedish, although she was third-generation here. She had fond memories of the Swedish food served at holidays, but she never learned how to make it, as her mother died when Thelma was young. One day, she found a little Swedish cookbook compiled by Julia Peterson Tufford from Minnesota. In it, she rediscovered some of the treats she remembered. Today, the poor book is falling apart, but she scanned the pages and shared them with us. Here are some of the favorites that were made often. Swedish Potato Sausage (Potatiskorv) . My husband, Norman, loves this dish. It is labor-intensive. When we first learned to make it, Thelma used an old-fashioned hand-cranked meat grinder. Later, she purchased a Kitchen Aid mixer that had a meat grinder attachment. That cut down the grinding time by half.  My husband found a sausage stuffer that made stuffing the sheep casings easier than with the grinder attachment. We al...

Outside activities included a trip to the History Center, a visit to Pacheco Marsh, meeting with friends at a restaurant in Orinda, getting teeth cleaned, and working at the Train Club. Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: At the History Center this week, I worked on the donations, entering them into the accession book and then into PastPerfect. I took minutes at our monthly board meeting. I also helped a researcher locate some items. Genealogy Meetings:  I attended the Kinseekers NARA SIG, the APG Writers SIG, and the certification peer group. Genealogy Writing/Research : I did no research or writing this week except for the blog posts below. Blog Posts Published: Elizabeth Loveless: Sorting Out 7 in my Tree For the theme of “the name’s the same,” I discussed the seven women in my tree who are named Elizabeth Loveless. This was highlighted on the 52 Ancestors email. SNGF – Who’s Number 100 in Your Ahnentafel? I reported on three ancestors with the Ahnentafel number ...

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings ’ assignment tonight is to: 1)  Who is Number 100 in your Ahnentafel list? Tell us about him.  {If you don't have a #100, use another number]. 2)  How do you descend from #100? Here's mine: My tree is unusual, as I have my daughter in the number one spot.  So, #100 is Christoph Siewert , my paternal 3rd-great-grandfather (her maternal 4th-great-grandfather). I don’t know much about him. He was born about 1766 in Posen, Prussia. He married Anna Mariana Ewald on 14 January 1811. He died on 3 February 1841. I know this information because a cousin hired a researcher in Poland. However, he doesn’t remember the researcher’s name, nor have any information about where this information came from. So, I can’t write specific citations to the church, only to the research notes given to me by my cousin. The lineage:  #100 – Christoph S...

During the government shutdown, Brian Rhinehart of CivilWarRecords.com, presented a webinar, “Researching Your 19th Century Ancestors,” about researching military records at Fold3 . His pitch was to help support his employees since they could not work at the National Archives while it was closed. Learning to do better searching at Fold3 is always welcome, and I liked the idea of supporting those who were caught in the shutdown. I didn’t attend live, as I had other obligations, and watched the recording later, which turned out better because we had exercises to try out his methodologies. Seeing the recording allowed me to work on the problems without any stress. The way Fold3 is set up is different from most websites, where you enter a name in a search field and you’ll get all the documents about that person or persons with similar names. You can do that at Fold3, but you won’t get everything. Fold3 is better searched using their browse feature. He used the analogy of file drawe...

Outside activities included four trips to the History Center, a visit to Hoover Ranch, and Train Club. Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: I volunteered at the History Center four times this week. Tuesday was my regular day. On Wednesday, I covered part of the day for our Executive Director, who was ill. Friday, I met up with John to discuss the next steps in our processing of the collections. Saturday, I met up with Maxine. Tasks I did during the week were entering more books into the library database, completing research requests, and on Saturday, I helped a researcher locate info to document a business that moved. On Tuesday, I took minutes for the Sonoma County Genealogical Society board meeting and met up with the president on Saturday to give him the president’s binder. Genealogy Meetings:  I attended two meetings: the Military SIG with Kinseekers, and with Jacqueline before she left on her vacation. Genealogy Writing/Research : I searched in Newspapers.com for mo...

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 )  Review the last three or four "Best of the Genea-Blogs" posts (see    https://www.geneamusings.com/search/label/BestofGeneaBlogs ).  2)  Pick one of the articles listed that either helped you with your research or your writing, and/or that touched your emotions, and/or that you are really impressed by. 3)  Tell us which article you picked (and link to it), and why you chose that article, and how it helped, touched, or impressed you. Here’s mine: James Tanner’s post from Genealogy’s Star titled “Why are you stressing over an end-of-line?” touched me. It’s true that at some point in our research, records will not be available for many reasons, and we will not be able to go any further back. Saying it lets us let it go. He told us to “start researching other p...

This past Saturday, I attended the Board for the Certification Ed Fund presentation given by Judy G. Russell and Carolyn Ladd. The theme of the day was studying documents, creating citations, and learning the law to understand the documents’ meaning. It was a great day of learning. I thought I would show how I gather the information when locating a document on FamilySearch ’s full-text search. Crafting a citation is not straightforward. I have to go to several screens to gather the information needed. Searching Let’s start with finding a document on Full-text search. I always put the search in quotes in the keyword box. Once I get the returns, I then filter using the place first, down to the county level. If I still have too many hits, I’ll filter by the year, working through the decades. Collecting Citation Information The following image shows the second document from the returns list. From this view, I see the page number, 332. The deed actually begins on page 331, so I will wan...