Monday Genea-pourri, Week of August 11–17, 2025

My outside activities this week included visiting the history center, the library, and attending the Art in the Park.

Genealogy

This week, I attended the Texas Institute of Genealogy Research course on Advanced Military Research. Michael Strauss coordinated the course along with Sandra Rumble as an additional instructor. The course was four full days and a half day on Friday. Each day had five sessions, the last being a hands-on exercise, and we had homework exercises. Jacqueline and I met afterwards on Zoom to work on the homework. I enjoyed the course very much as both instructors are very knowledgeable.

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
My only trip to the History Center this week was on Saturday, mostly to catch up with Maxine on the archive projects. I answered a couple of queries waiting for me.

Genealogy Meetings: 
I attended the Kinseekers Military SIG. We covered using BIRLS, WWII alien registration, NARA catalog, morning reports, and IDPF files. At Cert Discussion Group, we talked about the projects we’re working on. Book Club discussed the book When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.

Genealogy Writing/Research:
Because of the week-long institute course and its homework, I did little research or writing except for my blog posts this week. Saturday, I spent time studying the NARA catalog in preparation for the NARA SIG on Monday. I discovered the Office of the Secretary of the Interior has some records of the Office of the Solicitor. My great-aunt, Beryl Johnston Russell, worked there from the 50s to her retirement. She had worked for other federal agencies and traveled to Greece for a year with the Corps of Engineers. I spent most of Saturday creating a timeline from the documents in her Official Personnel File (OPF) that I ordered from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. I also added other documents, such as vital records, newspaper articles, passenger lists, census, and directories.

Blog Posts Published:

Minor Court Troubles for Louis Wollenweber
For the theme of “court troubles,” I wrote about Louis Wollenweber, my husband’s 2x-great-grandfather. I found both newspaper articles and court records about his court appearances. This was highlighted in the 52 Ancestors post.

SNGF – Your Genealogy Database Statistics
We updated the statistics that our genealogy database supplies us. The last time we did this was 2019, and I have added people, families, sources, and citations since then. 

Webinars/Courses Viewed: 

• Attended the German Genealogy Headquarters Summer Party on Saturday.

Other:
There was no hike this week with the Wednesday Walkers, as I was in class. I took a couple of walks to break up the day from sitting in front of the computer in the military class.

I am reading: 

• When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong – FINISHED!
• Stripes: the first five years of the GI’s newspaper edited by John Sharnik and Oliver Gregg Howard
• Asterix der Gallier by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
• How Welfare Worked in the Early United States by Gabriel J. Loiacono

Photos for this week. Pink flowers from my walk this week. The first three are from my yard.

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.

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