My Trails into the Past

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another challenge for us: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many people are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio? 2)  Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out? 3)  Tell us in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or on Facebook or Google+ in a post.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your post on this blog post . 1)    I try to create source citations for all of my events, but I still have many events where the source citation is part of notes instead. This is left over from my PAF program which I used f...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another assignment this week for us. I have not had a chance to participate because I was away from my computer on vacation. Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1) Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many surnames you have in your family tree database. 2) Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task. 3) Tell us what the top 10 (or 20) surnames are in your database and, if possible, how many entries. How many different surnames are in your family tree? 4) Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on Facebook, or in Google Plus Stream post. I use RootsMagic and Randy was so kind to explain in his blog post how to do this in RootsMagic. It is a report called "Surname Statistics." I was very surprise...

Randy Seaver of Genea-musing has a new challenge for us: Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to: 1)  On Facebook, Carrie Ann Smith posted a meme earlier this week and I thought it might be fun for SNGF (Thank you, Carrie Ann!). 2)  Copy the questions below, delete my answers, and put your own answers in. 3)  Post the questions and answers on your own blog, in a comment to this blog, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Be sure to leave al ink to your blog post in my blog post. Here are the choices: 1. Who are you named after?   I don’t think I was named after anyone. There are no Lisas in the family tree except for me. My guess that my mother liked the song “Mona Lisa” and named me after that. 2. Last time you cried?   Sentimental television shows and movies make me cry. So do some books, whether they are sad or happy.  3. Soda or water?   I like soda, but it’s bad for you, so I drink water....

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a new mission this week. Our mission this week is to: 1)  The Family History Hound listed 20 Questions about your Ancestor, and I'm going to use some of them in the next few months.   2)  Please answer the question - "What heirloom do you have that has been handed down through the generations?"   3)  Write your own blog post, make a comment on this post, or post  your answer on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a link to your answer in comments on this post. This was an excellent challenge for me. I began thinking about the heirlooms I have. I had not previously taken photos of them. Looking at them now, I realize I need to buy some archival boxes and tissues to preserve them properly. Melissa Barker, The Genealogist in the Archives blog writer, has good advice about using archival boxes . I have two items that meet Randy’s requirement, and since I took the trouble to get them out and photograph them b...

I have recently returned from a twelve day vacation to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, Mitchell, South Dakota, and Stanton-Red Oak, Iowa. Conference In Minneapolis, I attended the three-day International Germanic Genealogy Conference hosted by the local society, Germanic Genealogy Society. This was the first conference and in 2019, our local society, Sacramento German Genealogy Society, will be the hosts! I met lots of genealogists from around the country and the world. Especially exciting was meeting in person, Ursula Krause from Berlin. Some of the classes I attended: “Finding Your Ancestors in German Directories” – Ursula C. Krause “World War I Era U.S. Alien Registrations” – Paula Stuart-Warren “Meyers Orts Gazetteer” – Fritz Juengling “Die Pfalz: Understanding and Researching in Palatine Records” – Richard Haberstroh “Baltimore: The Golden Door for Immigrants” – Debra A Hoffman “Pioneers and Colonists: Background of Germans in Eastern Europe” – James Beidler The conf...

Randy Seaver has another great challenge : 1)  This SNGF is based on the 100 Word Challenge (https://100wc.net/) that school children are participating in around the world.  They are given a word or phrase to write a story about in one hundred words. 2)  Write a short 100 word story using the phrase ",,,the most interesting ancestor I have..." in 100 words.   The most interesting ancestor I have is my aunt, Lorene Ethel Hork (1923—2013). As our “fun” aunt, she loved hearing stories about our lives. But she lived a great one herself. She worked as a civilian for the Army  in Japan after World War II. Eighteen months later, she and three other young women traveled around the world visiting Asia, the Middle East, Egypt,  and Europe. She returned in 1953 aboard the RMS Queen Mary . Living in San Francisco and San Diego, she worked for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the same place as her husband, Wally Waldron. Copyright © 201...

Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge this week is: Knowing that a "Bucket List" is a wish list of things to do before death: What is on your Genealogy Bucket List?  What research locations do you want to visit?  Are there genea-people that you want to meet and share with?  What do you want to accomplish with your genealogy research?  List a minimum of three items - more if you want! I do have some places I’d like to visit that concerns my genealogy research. I don’t necessarily need to research there but would love to walk on the ground where our ancestors lived. I’d visit the churches and learn about the history of the area at the museums. Perhaps I’d buy a souvenir or two as well. Ireland: County Cork where my Sullivan line came from and County Tipperary where my Gleeson and Tierney folks came from. Germany: Lippe county, in particular the towns of Oldenhundem, Kirchhundem, and Altenhundem in Westphalia where my ...