Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 18–24, 2026

Outside activities included a hike at Briones, volunteering at the History Center and the Oakland FamilySearch Center, yearly physical with my doctor, and lunch with Nancy and Terry.  

Genealogy

Genealogy Volunteer/Work:
Monday, John and I met at the History Center to roughly inventory and clear a space for the Betty Maffei collection. That involved moving boxes around to make room and rehousing some of the collection into banker boxes for better stacking. I opened the History Center on Tuesday again. I started work on the extra boxes of Pleasant Historical Society Collection we found the day before. Our board meeting was canceled due to lack of members available.

At the Oakland FamilySearch Center, I showed Laura how to find baptismal and marriage records when she had the old microfilm number. I attended Linda’s presentation on writing.

Genealogy Meetings: 
On Monday, I attended the NARA SIG meeting. We ended up talking a lot about military records and why there are morning report pages crossed out.

Genealogy Writing/Research: I attended one session of writing with the Level Up group. For 12 for ‘26, I did some full-text search on Jesse Loveless but haven’t written it up yet. I will probably add it to the timeline I started for him. I also took it back to his father, James Loveless. Before the month is over (which means this week) I’ll have both written up. 52 Ancestors’ post was about Ebenezer’s mother-in-law.

I also worked on two articles for Der Blumenbaum, one I turned in about researching archives in North Rhine-Westphalia. I need to polish the other on the brief history of the area. I have one more short one to do about writing. I’m going to write about blogging as a way to tell ancestor stories. The California Nugget came out and both my articles are in it, one on ideas to celebrate our ancestors for America250 and the other a book review for Sunny Morton’s book, Searching for Sisters.

Blog Posts Published:

Strength as a Widow: Rebecca Rodgers
For the theme of “an unexpected strength,” I wrote about my 3x-great-grandmother who raised her family after her husband died (or left her).

SNGF: Describe an Ancestor’s Occupation
I wrote about Joseph McFall’s occupation as a caulker.

Courses Attended: I attended the fourth session of the course Merging and Separating Identity with Jan Joyce. This week, we learned from Kim Richardson on how to work on our problem off-line.

Webinars Viewed:

• Common Sense Principles Genetic Evidence by Patti Lee Hobbs (BCG/LFTWebinars)
• Snapshot Interview with John Grenham with Cathie Sherwood (Family History Academy)
• Snapshot Interview with Diana Elder & Nicole Dyer with Cathie Sherwood (Family History Academy)
• Once Upon a Time… Creating Compelling Stories Out of Mundane Facts by Linda Harms Okazaki (CGS/OFSC)

Other:
We did a short hike at Briones because of the heat and even then, it was shortened more, but enjoyed having our snack in the shade.

Nancy, Terry, and I got together for lunch this week in Walnut Creek. Why is it that old people always talk about their aches and ailments? We did hear about Nancy’s children and grandchildren. We always mean to speak German but never do.

I am reading: 

• Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family, and Ourselves by Darci Hind Posz

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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