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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 28-May 4, 2025

My outside activities included four trips to the History Center. I joined other friends on Wednesday and Saturday for hiking. On Sunday, I volunteered in the afternoon at the Muir native garden for the tour, and later that evening, went on an evening bird walk with the Mt Diablo Bird Alliance at the Marina here in town.

Genealogy

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
During three trips to the History Center, I worked on accessions. Earlier in the week, we took inventory of the long-term stored items in Benicia. I also created the draft for the upcoming BCG-sponsored webinar and sent it out for approval.

Genealogy Meetings:   
I attended the meeting this week with the CDG Accountability Group; only Jen was there, so we had a good talk.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
It was quiet at the OFSC, so I got some newspaper items from MyHeritage for my Loveless family in Faulkner County, Arkansas. I also did some extra research for my blog post about Margaret T. Gleeson. 

Blog Posts Published:

Margaret Teresa Gleeson Attended Normal School inMadison, South Dakota
For the theme of “Institutions,” I researched the normal school Margaret attended to become a teacher. It was highlighted in the 52 Ancestors email this week.  

SNGF—How Many Autosomal DNA Matches Descend from Your Eight 2nd-Great-Grandparents?
This was a bit of work, but using Ancestry’s Thru-Lines was a help. We actually have 16 2x-great-grandparents, so I wrote them out as couples to make the eight, which is the same thing.

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

Other:
Our hike this week was to Donner Canyon in Mt. Diablo State Park, accessing it from a neighborhood in Clayton. Though the grass was drying up, we saw plenty of flowers in the canyon.

The opening of the Pacheco Marsh on Saturday was wonderful, and we saw some nice patches of native plants throughout the marsh, including bush lupine, California rose, coffeeberry, and goldfields.

The evening bird walk on Sunday had nice weather. We saw killdeer chicks, a marsh wren, a song sparrow, among other common species. It was nice having a young person lead the trip.  

I am reading: 

  • Dear Miss Perkins: The Story of Francis Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees From Nazi Germany by Rebecca Brenner Graham
  • Asterix and the Griffin by Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad
  • Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark by David Safier (for German class—up to Chap 34)

Photos for this week.  Some shots from the Donner Canyon walk:






Some shots from the Pacheco Marsh:



From the bird walk along the marina:

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 © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

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