My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment tonight from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:  1)  We all find "fun" or "different" information about ourselves, and our relatives and ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five "fun" or "different" facts in your life or your ancestor’s lives? [Thank you to Jacquie Schattner for suggesting this topic last year.] Here's mine: I shall list five facts about five of my ancestors: My mother, Lela Nell Johnston, was a Girl Scout in a troop in Walnut Creek. I have her Girl Scout manual. She was also mentioned a few times in the Walnut Creek newspaper. My father, William Joseph Hork, was a Boy Scout. He was mentioned in the Napa newspaper. I have a photo of him in his uniform. My maternal grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster, played softball when a young adult, and bowled and played tennis as a senior. S...

We all have challenges in conducting genealogy research. Some of us may call them brick walls, those places in the family tree where we are stuck and cannot take our genealogy back another generation.  These challenges may be caused by several reasons: record loss due to a natural disaster or war access to the records not being allowed our lack of knowledge about what records are available not understanding the records we have already found To work through these challenges, I follow the following steps: Review prior research . This includes reviewing each document I have previously found and ensuring I have squeezed out every bit of information from them. While I’m doing this, questions will come to mind. Record those questions. Resist the urge to go right to researching. Create a timeline . As I review the documents I have, I create a timeline that includes the date of the event, the location, who else was present, and the source of the information. A timeline will show gaps in th...