My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  Reader Sarah emailed:  "We pulled real eighth-grade diploma exams from 1902–1914. In the two Ohio county reports we found, only 100 of 282 kids passed. They had to spell Constantinople and Marseilles and answer "Why is tobacco in all its forms more injurious for a boy than for a man?" "Could make a fun Saturday Night Genealogy Fun prompt: Take the 15-question quiz and guess whether your ancestors passed. "Here's the page: https://homeschoolstates.com/research/1914-eighth-grade-exam/ " 2) Take the test and tell us your score. 3) Which of your ancestors living in 1914 would pass the test? Thank you to reader Sarah for suggesting this. Here's mine: I failed, getting only 12 of 15 correct. I missed one geography question and would have known it in 1914. I also missed two mat...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Nigh t again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  Find an ancestor who has a life event (e.g, born, baptized, married, died or buried) on Hallowe'en (31 October). 2)  Tell us about him or her -- who were his or her parents, spouses, children, occupation, residences, etc.  NOTE:  No luck?  How about a relative?  Or a famous person?  Here's mine: I also have RootsMagic 12 and ran the “On This Day” report, selecting Oct 31, family events, and color coding. I only got a half page of returns, but I don’t’ have as many people in my database as Randy does. Family Events 1733 - Birth: Nils Jonsson-756 , Sweden 1809 - Birth: Creath Neal-3235, Jessamine Co, Kentucky 1811 - Land Purchase: John Kethley-3248 , Feliciana Parish, Louisiana 1816 - Birth: Eva Charlotta Johansdotter-4264, 1835 - Death: Jacob Bischof-...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)  An Ancestor Who Lived Through a Major Historical Event — Pick one ancestor who was alive during a war, pandemic, natural disaster, or economic upheaval.  2)  What do the records tell you about how it affected them? Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this SNGF challenge. Here's mine: I have been working on the Sullivan family this month, so I’ll shall choose John Cyril “Jack” Sullivan (1887-1978). The day before the first draft registration, Jack C. Sullivan, enlisted in the regular army at Fort George Wright in Washington on 4 June 1917. Because of that, he does not have a draft registration card. He was assigned to the Vancouver Barracks on 8 June 1917, joining Company E of the 4th Engineers as a Private. They trained at the Vancouver Barracks and then at Camp Greene in North Caro...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)  MyHeritage introduced the Scribe AI tool to analyze, transcribe, translate, and provide historical context to a record or photographic image in the past year.  Have you used it? 2)  Pick one record image or photograph image from your collection and ask Scribe AI to do its task list for you. How did it do? NOTE: If you cannot access Scribe AI, please access another AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Transkribus) that can transcribe, translate or analyze a record or photograph image. Here's mine: Well, I don’t have a MyHeritage subscription but thought it might do one or two of these as a trial, but no go. I got the screen giving me upgrade subscription choices. Next, I tried Claude.ai. My prompt was: “I will up load an image from a German church record. Transcribe, translate,...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)  What geographic and community places matter to you?  2)  Pick one place (building, village, town, city, county, state/province) and describe your connection to it and why it matters. Here's mine: I could not think of an ancestral place that matters to me. My families were always on the move and didn’t stay in one spot more than a generation or two. However, I have a spot that matters to me. It’s the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This structure with Corinthian columns, arches, sculptures, and the Greco-Roman rotunda, was created for the 1915 World’s Fair. California architect Bernard Maybeck designed it. It was supposed to be torn down after the fair like the other buildings but is the only structure from the fair that survives. Because it was meant to be temporary, it became in disrepair. In 1964 ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, is to: 1)  Do you recall what you were doing in 2001?  Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc? Here's mine: I am not fortunate to have created yearly Christmas letters, so I had to jog my memory by looking at the various Creative Memories photo albums to see what events I memorialized. I was working at BART as an Employee Development Specialist, working out of Hayward Yard. During that year, my coworker, Johanna, and I talked our supervisor to let us teach new train operators out of the building located at the end of the storage tracks at C75. We proposed to have a 3-car train parked there for our use, because I had created an all-new training based on performance standards. We moved tables and chairs there. There were already desks. But we needed lots of other supplies and it ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  What is "Your Oldest Confirmed Record?"  What is one of the oldest documents you've personally found for any ancestor?  2)  Share your oldest confirmed record:  what it is, where it came from, and what it revealed.  This topic was suggested by Linda Stufflebean. Here's mine: Like Randy, my earliest documents are church records. I have a few German records from the mid-1700s for my Hork family in the area of Westphalia. The surnames I found were Döbener, Horoch, Sommer, Trösster, Voß, and others. One of the earliest is from the church, Saints Peter and Paul Church in Kirchhundem. Since it is so old, there is very little information in the church record.  All it says is: Matrimonium Joannes Rottgens Horareck ex Meggen et Dorothea Voß ex Altenhundem [apud?] Jodoco Henric...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings : 1)  What started but unfinished projects do you have?  Define one or more of them, and how far along you are in the project. Here's mine: Like Randy, I have many, many unfinished projects. I have a folder on my computer called “Work in Progress” filled with file folders of various family surnames and topics, as shown here: Within those files are more files. Here is an example of the top few folders: Most of these are images downloaded from FamilySearch, MyHeritage, or Ancestry, that I did not have time then to deal with them. Digging deeper into the Military Folder, I have a WWI Study folder, where I’m keeping track of various members of my family who either served, or at least registered for the draft. My goal was to learn as much as I can about researching WWI resources and telling WWI soldiers’...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!   Our assignment from Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings is to: 1)  Serendipity! What happened when you went looking for an ancestor or a genealogical record and were pleasantly surprised to find someone else or something else you didn't expect while you were doing that search? 2)  Please share an instance when you had a serendipitous experience. Thank you to Marian B. Wood for suggesting this topic. Here's mine: This is a tough assignment as I cannot think of a serendipitous moment in the 30 plus years of research. It all seems that way whenever I research. However, this month I am researching the Shotts family, a paternal line of my daughters, and in searching for information at Ancestry about David Shotts (1760-1825) who married Mary Wagoner (1766-1862), I discovered a newspaper article attached to someone’s tree. It was about the 100th anniver...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1)  How do you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help you understand the lives, history, and geography associated with your family and your ancestors, that aid your genealogy and family history research?   2)  Please share the ways (at least one way!) that you use AI tools in your genealogy and family history research.  Here's mine: To be honest, I don’t use AI much. I enjoy the artificial intelligent tools that makes full-text search available at FamilySearch and look forward to this technique at other genealogy websites. I also enjoy whatever tools are being used to enhance OCR capability in newspaper research. I have not used it much besides the above. I tried having it analyze my research results but realized I should be doing the anal...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1)  Every historical person has major events, milestones and "turning points" in their life, from birth through death and even beyond.  These events, milestones and turning points can be the basis for family stories of the historical person. 2)  Please share one of those events in your own life, or the life of one of your ancestors.  Here's mine: One turning point in my life was figuring out what I was going to do with my life after graduating from college with a degree in Biological Sciences. I really didn’t want to go out in the working world. I liked college, taking classes, and learning new stuff. My job at the college library was fun. In fact, I was enrolled to work on a second major of Geography. Besides, there were no jobs to be had. We were in a ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, is to: 1) Do you have any records of your ancestors' schooling, such as report cards, yearbooks, or photos? 2)  If so, please share one of them and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the article.   Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea. Here's mine: We have my husband’s mother, Thelma Nilsen, report card for her 7th grade school year. [1] Report cards tell us how teachers thought the student did in each subject, not how much the student learned. This card is interesting because the citizenship grade is a large as the scholarship grade. I was surprised to see a report card without letter grades, especially in such a high grade level. She had no + in the scholarship section but did have + in responsibility, cooperation, and courtesy to teachers. This card was issued by the Elim Unio...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1) Have you found an unusual, chilling, amazing, or fascinating newspaper article about your ancestors?  2)  If so, please share the article and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the article.  Provide a source citation too! Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea. Here's mine: Several years ago, I visited the Pittsburg (Calif) Historical Society to write an article for the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society’s newsletter. I had a regular column highlighting local research resources. I was super surprised to find my mother’s names listed in a newspaper index. We lived in Pittsburg from about 1956 to 1963. It seems my mother was involved with the Junior Woman’s Club in Pittsburg and she was mentioned on various committees as each year these were chosen. Of course, she wasn’t...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1) Did extreme weather or a natural disaster ever affect you or your ancestor(s)? In what way(s)? How did you find this out? Describe one or more of the extreme weather experiences in your own life or in your ancestors’ lives. Thank you to Marian B. Wood for this SNGF idea. Here’s mine: This was a tough assignment. I searched in my RootsMagic database for someone who was in a hurricane, tornado, blizzard, or disaster, and came up with nothing. Then I remembered an aunt was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. I have several families who were living in San Francsico during the 1906 earthquake and fire. I don’t know much about their activities, only what was told to me. My grandfather, William Cyril Hork’s sister, Ida Hork Colmann and her husband Martin J. Colmann, were living in San Francisco. He was li...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1) Did your family go on vacation? Describe one or more of your vacations with your birth family or with your spouse and children. Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea. Here's mine: There is only one vacation I remember our family taking when I was young. Because we had a large family of six children, we did not go on many outings. Plus, my dad worked six days a week, especially on the weekends, where he got paid more. So, this one summer in 1968 when my youngest sister was about six months old, we spent a few days in Santa Cruz. They rented a cabin. We spent time at the beach, went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and rode the train at Roaring Camp and Big Trees. I don’t remember much but I have photos. Typical summer day along the coast with the morning fog Here we are at the Roaring Camp One of our san...