My Trails into the Past

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 Education I taught the third class of  the 5-class session on Intermediate Skills for the California Genealogical Society, being held at the Oakland FamilySearch Library on Wednesday evenings. I covered immigration and naturalization records, and discussed migration. Blog Writing : 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 24, the theme was “dear diary” and my post was a continuation of my aunt’s trip around the world based on her letters she had written home. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun I posted a favorite photo of my father, mother, my brother, and me, taken on Easter 1957. Eight Surnames . A meme went around in Facebook asking genealogists if they could name their eight great-grandparents. I deci...

This week I visited the Pittsburg (California) Historical Society. We lived in Pittsburg from about 1956 to 1963 in a two-story house on East 9th Street. The Society runs a museum in a huge building with some really fantastic displays and I took a glance at that before asking what kind of archive records they had. In their library, they had binders with indexes to other collections. Under the surname index, I found several references to our family surname HORK. Boy did I find some treasures. These were newspaper clippings that had been indexed by volunteers. They were located into two different binders, but both about women’s clubs. My mother was a member of the Junior Woman’s Club, which later was known as Pittsburg Woman’s Community League. There were several articles about my mother on various committees. Here is an undated printout of the officers and chairmen of the club. My mother had two jobs: Ways and Means and Press. There was an article about the club’s plannin...

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-musings has a new challenge today. * Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.  Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!   * Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post or a Google+ Stream post. My immediate family thinks all I do is genealogy. It is true that every day I try to fit in genealogy as part of my day.  In the morning I check emails and Facebook to see what’s happening in the genealogy world. If someone describes a new database, I usually think of someone in my database that this might apply to and do a quick search. I also multitask while watching television with my husband, either writing a blog post, searching in Ancestry or FamilySearch, or entering data into my genealogy program. But I do find time to do other things. Exercise I try to play Pickleball three days a week (Mon/Wed/...