My Trails into the Past

Two of my blogging friends select twelve different lines of their family to focus on, one month at a time. [1]   I think it is a wonderful idea and perhaps it will keep me from jumping to bright shiny objects (BSO) instead getting some real work done. I will still write my regular features: 52 Ancestors, Genea-pourri, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF), and Webinar Wednesday when I have a point to make after viewing a webinar. However, I need to work on some work samples for my BCG (Board for the Certification of Genealogists) renewal, which will come up in a couple of years. I plan to write some KDPs (Kinship Determination Project) and then choose the one that best highlights my research and writing skills. Another reason this is a good idea is FamilySearch ’s new full-text search feature includes so many more record types besides land and court, that it will be good to revisit some families that I have researched long ago to make sure I have fully done reasonably exhaustive ...

Since before my research trip to Texas last May, I have been working on my mother’s family line involving N.H.O. Polly. He is her third great-grandfather. His daughter, Martha Jane, married George W. Lancaster. Part of the goal of the research trip was to locate more documents about him at local historical societies and archives.  Timeline Family trees online name NHO’s parents, but I am not yet convinced. So, what I am doing is writing up what I know into a report. I am also creating a timeline of the events in his life and the source citations to those documents. This timeline is mostly of deed transactions, tax lists, census enumerations, and court records. I have added some historical events to put the times into context, such as the start and end of the Civil War, the formation of new counties, and the births and marriages of his children. Adding the source citations has been tedious. Some of the documents were found years ago on microfilm at the Family History Library in Sa...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, and execute it with precision. He asked us to: 1)  What genealogy resources are you currently using? Books, periodicals, manuscripts, ephemera, websites, software, or ??? Thanks to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic. Here's mine: I thought I would tackle this question as I would a new genealogy project. I start first with Microsoft Word where I open a new document and create research goals or a single question I want to answer. Next, I check both my RootsMagic database and my computer file system to see what information I already know about the research subject. I make a list or timeline of that person’s activities that are relevant to the research question. I then make a list of possible record types that might help me answer the research goal. If ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-musings , is to: 1)  What was your best family history or genealogy discovery (or discoveries) this past week (or month if you choose)? 2)  Post your responses on your own blog, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Be sure to comment and leave a link to your post on this post. Here’s mine: Well, the day is not over yet, and I have been spending time working on some genealogy. This week, I visited the FamilySearch Library in Oakland where I volunteer. Since there were no researchers needing help, I showed Jacqueline, who is just starting to volunteer there, the premium websites available on the FamilySearch library computers when opening the browser. I discovered that two newspaper websites were available for searching: Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchive.com . I was very happy to see tha...

It's Saturday Night - Time for more Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to: 1)  Which ancestor(s) are at the top of your research list, and why? 2)  Share your answer in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment. [Hat tip to Linda Stufflebean who suggested the question 6 months ago.  Thank you, Linda!] Here’s Mine: My side of the family: The parents of Susanna Raduntz , wife of Vincent Siewert. They lived in Schneidemühl, Prussia. The church records are not online and I don’t think they go back very far. We found the parents of Vincent, but not Susanna. The parents of both Jeremiah Sullivan and his wife, Mary Sheehan , who lived in County Cork before coming to the U.S. sometime in the 1860s. Their names are so common. On my mother’s side, I have Samuel Johnston and his wife, Elizabeth McCormack . The family was first found in Yalobusha County, Mississippi. The children were born somewh...

One of the main goals I had accomplished by the end of 2018 was submitting my portfolio to the Board for the Certification of Genealogists and becoming certified. It was a major accomplishment and I thought would lead to more opportunities in the new year. However, during 2019, I had no new major clients and research projects, but did have many clients who needed quick record retrievals. I also did not have many speaking engagements. By looking back on what I did accomplish, I was still very active with genealogy throughout the year. I would say, except for the days when I was traveling with family, I spent at least an hour on genealogy, either researching my own family, writing about the research, or learning from blog posts and webinars given by other genealogists. Client Work: 5 document retrieval clients, one very steady 1 record transcription client 1 deed research client 1 phone consultation client Education: Attended SLIG, taking “Advanced Southern R...

It's Saturday Night - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a new mission for us: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Have you taken a genealogy research trip and/or vacation to see relatives, research in repositories, walk the ancestral property, etc.? 2)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook. I have taken several trips that included doing research in local repositories: A trip to Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa was done in August 2017.  In 2016, I visited Beaver Co, Pennsylvania, Ross Co, Ohio, and Columbus, Ohio to research the Gorrell family.  I had a very successful trip to Faulkner Co, Arkansas and Little Rock, Arkansas to research the Loveless family. Before I had a blog, I traveled to Montana, researching in Anaconda, Butte, and Hamilton with my young daughters...

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...