Monday Genea-pourri, Week of October 27–November 2, 2025

We completed our third week of vacation and arrived home on Sunday.

Genealogy

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
I did not volunteer or work this week. Yeah, I’m on vacation!

Genealogy Meetings: I attended no meetings this week.

Genealogy Writing/Research: The Allen County Public Library's monthly email introduced me to a new resource, The Catholic News Archive, and I found articles about the Hork and Schalen families. I also worked on recording Beaver County, Pennsylvania, tax records into an Excel spreadsheet. I had ordered copies before leaving on the trip, and I made good use of the downtime on the train on our way to Winslow, Arizona.

Blog Posts Published:

John Coor was a Rural County Sheriff
For the theme of “rural,” I wrote about discovering documents about John Coor becoming a sheriff in Copiah County, Mississippi, in the 1820s. I love full-text search at FamilySearch.

SNGF– Your Favorite Hallowe’en Memory
I shared a couple of photos of family costumes.

Webinars/Courses Viewed: None

Other:
We left Kansas City Sunday night for Winslow, Arizona, arriving Monday evening. We stayed at La Posada Hotel, a former Harvey House hotel, for two nights. With a rental car, we attempted to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Parks, but they were closed to the public due to the government shutdown. We found a trading post and had a nice conversation with the two workers there. We then drove to the Meteor Crater on the other side of Winslow. The next day, we walked around Winslow and got our photo while “standing at the corner,” and then went to Homolovi State Park to see some Hisat’sinom ruins. 

On Wednesday, we boarded the train for Los Angeles, where we stayed at the Biltmore Hotel. The first day, we ate at Grand Central Market and visited the Last Bookstore, where I found some good treasures. We rented a car the next day and drove to Griffith Park. We rode two miniature trains and walked up to the Griffith Park Observatory. It was pretty hazy, so our view wasn’t as nice as it could have been. Sunday morning, we headed home.

Our Amtrak trip started badly and ended badly. It turned out they were doing track work between Bakersfield and Fresno, so they had a bus bridge. They canceled our train, and we arrived home several hours later than we originally planned.

I am reading: 

A Château Under Siege by Martin Walker—FINISHED!

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

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.

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