My Trails into the Past

I became a Certified Genealogist® officially on December 22, 2018 and will hold the certification for five years. I was so excited when I got the news. I submitted on October 5 and waited (not so patiently) over two and half months. What helped, was I started working on another project: looking for the father of Samuel Johnston. To become certified, I had to submit a seven-part portfolio to the Board for the Certification of Genealogists that demonstrated my ability to follow the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS). [1] It really was the culmination of many years of research practice, several years of education, and then putting together the portfolio. This portfolio was then judged by three competent genealogists who use a rubrics to determine whether I have met the standards of the GPS. Education was a major factor in helping me prepare for certification. I had started conducting genealogy research as a self-taught researcher. I read The Source and attended presentations b...

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 Intermediate Skills 2 . I’m teaching the class for the California Genealogical Society at the FamilySearch Library in Oakland and I have 15 students! We had our first class about cemetery and funeral home records. They seem excited to be in class and participated well. We’ll cover military records this week. Seminar . I attended the fall seminar with the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society, where we listened to Thomas MacEntee give four great talks. I got some great websites for searching for living people and I enjoyed both the lecture on collateral and cluster searching, and the Genealogy Do Over. His tips about spreadsheets were fantastic. A group of CGS members got together to take a photo. Thomas MacEntee at the CCCGS Seminar ...

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 I finished four out of the five lessons for the Intermediate Skills 2 course I will be teaching in October & November at the Oakland FamilySearch Library on behalf of the California Genealogical Society. I plan to work on the fifth class after getting some input from the students so I can tailor it to their wants. I viewed only one webinar this week: “Methods For Identifying The German Origins of American Immigrants,” by Michael D. Lacopo, and participated in the DearMyrtle AmericanGen Study Group on Wednesday. We discussed researching online. I attended the Sacramento German Genealogical Society meeting and learned about using the State Library resources. This week my volunteer work was at the Oakland Family Search Center . I sat with...

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 Attended  Gena Philibert-Ortega’s  presentation at the Sacramento Public Library on Sunday about how to use  Internet Archive . I have used the site before but picked up a few tips from her today such as getting a library card so I can “check out” books that are not freely downloadable. Made more progress on my certification portfolio. I returned to the KDP to correct my numbering after reading Warren Bittner’s article in the latest NGS Quarterly , where he showed the numbering system for foreign-born ancestors. We discussed it some during our certification peer group meeting. Examples could be found in the old BCG Standards book. We all got into the classes we wanted for 2019 SLIG. Flew to San Diego to attend the Team Leader m...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Genealogy I drove up to Sacramento to attend the Sacramento German Genealogical Society ’s presentation about military records given by Dr. Kathryn Marshall. She covered a lot of information in the hour and a half! The handout is full of great links. Because I attended the above meeting, I did not volunteer at the History Center of the Contra Costa County Historical Society. However, on Wednesday, a group of us visited the Museum of San Ramon Valley in Danville in order to see their special exhibit on Chinese and the Transcontinental Railroad. It was a very nice exhibit. I also asked if we could view their archives and we went into both the library on the ground floor and the archives area on the second floor. I’m writing up an article for the Contra Costa Co...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Genealogy Intermediate Class . The fourth class in this six-week series was about military records. The time was just right, but I need to create some kind of exercise with this class so it’s not all lecture. I worked on the next lesson about court records over the weekend.  Webinar & Hangouts : I listened to one webinar “Formulating a DNA Testing Plan,” by Blaine Bettinger. On Wednesday morning, I participated in the DearMyrtlestudy group working our way through Val Greenwood’s  Researchers Guide to American Genealogy.  Marceline and I were the moderators and except for some dead air space, I think it went well. Cheri helped out by speaking freely about the homework, too! Oakland FHL : Volunteered again this week. I held my place ...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Genealogy Although I was under the weather last week, I did work on the families that are part of my case study. I got an answer back from the Catholic church in Anaconda along with images of the baptism. It was just the one entry with no headings, but it was easily enough to figure out what the columns represented. On my portfolio work, I’ve made the decision that I’ll have to renew and extend another year. I enquired on how to do that, and now must send in another $75, which will give me until March 2, 2019 to finish up. The reason I have to extend, is even though I have about six weeks still on the clock, I have planned trips to Utah and Florida planned which will use up most of that time. My plan is to go back to working on it in earnest once we are back f...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Family The memorial service for my aunt, June Stewart. It was held at Bonaventure Church in Clayton. First there was a rosary and then a Mass. I read the second reading. Father Aiden gave the homily. He thought of my aunt like a second mother. The Mass was very enjoyable because a large portion of the choir was there. I love singing. After the service, there was a luncheon of sandwiches and salads in the parish hall. It was so nice visiting with my cousins and their children. Afterwards, Bonnie arranged for family to have dinner at La Veranda Café in Clayton. It was a delicious Italian meal and wonderful to catch up with more of my cousins. My cousin, Bonnie, made the day very special. Here is a 2007 shot of my dad, Bill, with his sisters, Lorene, June, and ...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Genealogy I got mentioned in two blogs on the same day! Judy G. Russell thanked me for taking her bird watching and a drive up to the top of Mt. Diablo last September.  Gena Philibert-Ortega mentioned my suggestion in her blog post on the GenealogyBank blog post. She wrote about New Year’s resolutions and I had suggested “Create something to share with your family to ensure your research lasts to the next generation.” I was behind in my client’s work and got out his research report to him on Thursday. He is liking the stories that I find and authorized the continuation. One of his line of ancestors were from Massachusetts. This is a new area for me. For the next round, I’m returning to another line that were still in California and work on them awhile, w...

Randy Seaver for Genea-Musing has another great mission for us this week: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1) Did you make any New Years Resolutions, or state Goals and Objectives, for genealogy research in 2018? If so, tell us about them. 2) If not, then make ONE resolution, or state one goal, for your genealogy research that you are determined to keep during 2018. We'll check on progress toward that resolution/goal during the year in SNGF (if I remember!). 3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status post or Google+ Stream post. I have never been one to have "Resolutions." They are so easily broken before the end of January. But I truly like the idea of goals. I have many goals: exercise more, eat better, write more in my blog, find more birds this year, etc... But my main goal this year is to turn in my BCG portfolio. I think I can make this hap...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Genealogy The big news this week was finishing up on the last story of the KDP. I still have a few holes to fill on the second and third stories. The probate records from Merced County, California and the land record from Montgomery County, Iowa, should come in this week and that will be extremely helpful. I’ll need to do some editing and proof-reading both the text and footnotes. It feels good to be nearly 90% done with this part. The online session with the Mastering Genealogical Documentation hangout went very well. We were talking about Chapter 13, citing original online content. I focused on recording negative searches done online. If you’re interested in the recording, check out DearMyrtle’s YouTube channel. I worked at the desk at the California Ge...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing started this meme and I loved the idea. 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. Nature/History I took my camera to the Meadow this week and got some interesting shots. The sun was shining nicely on the wooden cows at the fence. The Baccharis (coyote bush) was in full seed dispersal mode which made everything white. The moon was setting behind Mt. Wanda and I managed to get a nice shot. Also a shot of a California Scrub Jay. Wintertime, the recording of the phenology study goes pretty quickly, as many of the plants are in dormant mode. I also went on the first tour of John Muir’s grave site. A van took us out to the site and we learned a little about each family buried there: The Strentzels, the Muirs, and their children. We learned also about the Sierra Club coming to the site after Muir’s death. The large eucalyptus tree h...

I have been reading Janine Adams' blog "Organize Your Family History" and she conducted a 30 x 30 challenge in August. What she did was take thirty minutes every single day for a month to conduct genealogy research. She is doing the challenge again and are asking others to join her. In today's blog post titled, "The Value of Daily Research," she gave 6 reasons to do some genealogy every day. Check out her post here . I have not joined her challenge, but I try to do some genealogy task everyday. Sometimes I'm finding documents on Ancestry  or FamilySearch . Other times I'm entering data from my "To Be Filed" folder on my computer. Mostly, though, I have been focused on my portfolio for BCG certification . I am currently working on my Kinship Determination Project (KDP) and in the process of writing the biographies/stories of the three generations, I end up researching to find missing documents, new interesting tidbits of their lives...