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Monday Genea-pourri, Week of July 14–20, 2025

My outside activities this week included doing phenology, visiting the history center twice, attending a funeral and a genealogy meeting, and working at the train club show.

 Genealogy

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
At the historical society, I worked on cleaning up the finding aid entries on the computer. We have multiple versions of several of the collections. On Thursday, I took minutes at the board meeting.

I hosted the monthly writing group. We discussed Nancy’s article for a New Mexico journal and Lynne’s summary of her trip to Poland. I also worked on the new presentation that I’ll be doing this coming week for the Sacramento German Genealogy Society.

Genealogy Meetings: 
Jacqueline and I met and she described a bit about their trip. I attended several meetings this week, most of which were on Monday: recertification accountability group, Kinseekers Military SIG, APG Writers SIG, and the C&C NGSQ study group. The NGSQ study group discussed Tom Jones’ article, and he attended to answer questions. I drove up to Santa Rosa to attend the Sonoma County Genealogical Society’s monthly meeting. We had a nice turnout to hear about the DNA Doe Project.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
This week, I started writing about my 3x-great-grandfather’s federal land acquisition in Arizona Territory. I might break it up into a multi-part blog series on Mam-ma’s Southern Family. I have some searching at FamilySearch’s full-text search to do the next time I’m at the FamilySearch Center, as many of the documents in Texas are locked and only available at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library, and I need them for up-to-date source citations.

Blog Posts Published:

Sullivan Cousins
For the theme of “cousins,” I found a photograph of my dad’s cousins who attended their cousin’s retirement party.

SNGF – Do Some FamilySearch Full-Text Searching.
I searched for “N.H.O. Polly” and found some items I had not discovered before. They are adding more digital films to the search. 

Webinars/Courses Viewed

  • Civil War Records: What is a Reasonably Exhaustive Search? by Craig Scott (BCG/LFT)
  • Procrastination: Friend or Foe by Craig Scott (APG Writers SIG)

Other:
Our German language class restarted, and after sharing about our summer vacation, we began reading Asterix. We decided to put Miss Merkel to bed for a while.

On Wednesday, I attended my oldest cousin’s funeral in Sausalito. The service at Star of the Sea Church was well done. The reception at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley was nice. Sadly, the only time we seem to see our cousins is at funerals. It was nice talking to Dick, Donald, and Bonnie. Our family had four members who attended.

I bought some native plants a couple of weeks ago and transplanted them into larger pots. This week, because the weather was cool with morning cloudiness, I decided to go ahead and plant them. They are mostly doing okay, with two I’m carefully watching. Most of the new plants are buckwheat.                          

I am reading: 

  • Beneath the Tangled Vines by Dan Hanel—FINISHED!
  • Asterix der Gallier by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

Photos for this week. 



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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