My Trails into the Past

Our mother played games with us often. Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land were popular board games and Old Maid and Go Fish were early card games. As we grew older, she’d introduce more games. We had Sorry, Chinese Checkers, and regular checkers. There was always a new board game under the Christmas Tree every year. One year we received Risk but had no idea how to play so made up our own version.   Card games became for sophisticated. We learned how to play Rummy, Gin Rummy, Solitaire and Double Solitaire. Monopoly and Clue were other fun games but had pieces that were prone to get lost. Dice games included Yahtzee and Liar’s Dice. My favorite game was Scrabble and Boggle—actually any game involving words. I played with my mother and sometimes my sister. Once I was married, I played with my mother-in-law, Thelma, and her daughter, Sylvia. Sylvia always beat us, whether it was Scrabble or Boggle. She was quick and knew a lot of words, I think from doing lots of crossword puzzles....

It's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignment for this week: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to: 1)  Think about the games that your whole family would play when you were a child. 2)  Tell us about one (or more) of them - what was it called, what were the rules (as you remember them), who played the game, where did you play the game, who usually won? 3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. Here is mine: We loved playing games when I was growing up. We had many board games in our hall closet such as Cootie, Mr. Potato Head, Candyland, and Chutes and Ladders when we were young. As we got older, we played Clue, Monopoly, and Life. We even had Risk, but no one knew how to play, so we made up rules to play with the game pieces on the big map. Other games we played were ca...

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great 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. Genealogy Blog Writing : 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 44--Halloween . I put photos of my children’s Halloween Costumes. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Favorite Hallowe’en Memory . I wrote about several memories and posted photos of a 1983 party of my parents’. Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   I was a little under the weather, so I spent most of the week at home resting. I attended part of the Virtual Genealogical Association’s 2019 Conference. On Friday, I viewed: “Identifying Your DNA Matches’ Secret Identity” by Blaine Bettinger “Preserving the Past: Archiving & Digitizing Your Family Keepsakes,” by Denise May Levenick “Incorporating Oral History into Your Research” by Ari Wilkins On Sunday, I viewed: “Eastern Euro...

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great 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. Genealogy Family Research . This week, I’ve been working on my Coor family, especially James Madison Coor, my 3X-great-grandfather. I have been checking the digital images I have in my folders against what events I have recorded in my genealogy program, RootsMagic. Sometimes, something gets missed. Also looking at the RootsMagic events, I could see possible missing events, so I then would go on Ancestry or FamilySearch to see if I could find them, such as a census, marriage, or cemetery record. I started with trying to figure out when James M. Coor left Mississippi and went to Texas. He owned land, so I focused on finding the land that was sold so he could move. I also discovered many other land transactions for him and others in his family. Lots more to do!...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by  Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either  Mam-ma’s Southern Family  or at  My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. One pleasant memory I have of childhood was playing games. My mother loved to play games and loved playing them with us. A favorite location where we played was the kitchen table. Board Games When we were young, we played board games such as Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, and Sorry. As we got older, we played other board games such as Scrabble, Monopoly, and Clue. I never got the feeling that my mother or father let us win. I was always pretty competitive. I liked to win but when I didn't, I just tried harder the next time. Card Games Card games started out with young children’s games of Go Fish, Old Maid, and Crazy Eights. We had a special deck of cards to play Old Maid, but w...

Randy Seaver of Genea-musings has a new challenge today. * Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.  Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!   * Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post or a Google+ Stream post. My immediate family thinks all I do is genealogy. It is true that every day I try to fit in genealogy as part of my day.  In the morning I check emails and Facebook to see what’s happening in the genealogy world. If someone describes a new database, I usually think of someone in my database that this might apply to and do a quick search. I also multitask while watching television with my husband, either writing a blog post, searching in Ancestry or FamilySearch, or entering data into my genealogy program. But I do find time to do other things. Exercise I try to play Pickleball three days a week (Mon/Wed/...