My Trails into the Past

I have two photos in my collection that are similar but taken many years apart. The black and white photo is of my husband and little brother sitting on a tractor, perhaps at their grandfather's home in Webb City, but maybe at the farm of their uncle's in Hilmar. I cannot be sure. The second photo is my oldest daughter on this little tractor we used to own when we would rototill the whole backyard. Aren't they adorable? What young child cannot resist wanting to drive a tractor? This is my sixth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow ( https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/ ) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either  Mam-ma’s Southern Family  or  My Trails into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Copyright © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

One of my favorite places to hang out while growing up was The Creek. It wasn’t until much later that I learned the creek was called Las Trampas Creek. Its source starts in Lafayette where Happy Valley Creek, Lafayette Creek, and Old Jonas Creek come together. The creek then travels east towards the city of Walnut Creek until it joins the San Ramon Creek to form Walnut Creek. Some parts of the creek have been channeled in downtown Walnut Creek, some parts have been “tamed” with small dams and concrete banks (riprap), and some parts still appear natural, though watershed maps indicate our area was earth constructed. To us, the creek upstream from the dam was pretty wild with tall trees and deep pools. At the end of our street, Paulson Lane, there was a small diversion dam. In the winter, water flowed over the dam and spilled into a widen plain. In the summer, only a small portion flowed through openings below the top of the dam. The dam top was wide enough that we could walk across. W...

It's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!   Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignment for tonight. Our mission, should we decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to: 1)   What are your "Favorite" genealogy websites?  What ones do you have in your web browser "Bookmarks" or "Favorites" bar or listing? 2)  Please list them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link to your work in a comment on this post. Here’s mine: I probably use the following websites for genealogy research at least every day : Ancestry.com FamilySearch: mostly the catalog and the wiki Google.com (keyword search, images, translate, maps, books) More often, I use: The Portal to Texas History, mostly the newspaper images Newspapers.com GenealogyBank.com Chronicling America FindAGrave Depending on what I’m trying to research, I’ll use the following:...

This is my third year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. This is a tough one, as I have many favorite photos. I have shared some of them in the past on this blog but probably didn’t identify them as a favorite photo. This photo of my two grandmothers doting on the newborn baby (me) is a favorite of mine. This photo shows both grandmothers, Pansy (Lancaster) Johnston on the left, and Anne (Sullivan) Hork on the right. They both look like they are proud grandmothers. I think the photo was taken at my parent’s house (35 Wharf Dr, West Pittsburg), probably late March 1954, though it is possible that it was taken at Pansy’s home (307 Nancy Lane, Pleasant Hill). The amount of items on the wall point more to my parent’s home and the metal plate looks familiar ...