My Trails into the Past

The best way to preserve your genealogy is to write about your family. There are many ways to accomplish this: Writing vignettes on a blog. Having a private Facebook group. Creating photo scrapbooks, especially if stories are added. Putting together full-length books on a family. I have done all three and the more that is done, the more I am ensured my research results will live on. I write weekly on either of my two blogs, this one and Mam-ma’s Southern Family. Some posts are due to memes that others have thought up, such as this 52 Ancestors theme. Other posts I write when I have made an interesting discovery I have created family photo scrapbooks and calendars that I have given to the family for Christmas. These are fun to make and are well-received. Finally, I have created book-length works on portions of my family. My first work was in 2004 and I created a book about my Gleeson family, as I had these wonderful photos I wanted to share. I wrote paragraphs about each p...

My husband has been growing tomatoes most of our married life. In the beginning, he planted a lot of Ace tomatoes, but over time, he has been using heirloom seeds or plants and we have a wide variety of tomatoes growing in our garden. Years ago, my mother tried canning tomatoes. She bought a canning pot with the jar rack and lid. I’m not sure if she bought it new or found it at Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. Anyway, she gave it a try and canned tomatoes one year. When she learned that Norman liked growing tomatoes and had lots of extras, the canning pot came to us and we used it for many years, canning Ace and other varieties. It was a big project. We washed the jars in the dishwasher so they were hot. We dipped clean tomatoes in boiling water so they were easier to peel. I would stuff the jars with the tomatoes, leaving them whole unless too large to fit in the opening. I then added salt and citric acid. Once the jar was cleaned of residue, we’d put on the lids and rings, set th...