My Trails into the Past

This is my second 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. I have been working on this brick wall for many years. A blog post from 23 January 2014, sums up what I knew about the family. Since that post, I’ve collected tax and land records for Samuel in Yalobusha County, Mississippi. By figuring out who his neighbors were, I might discover where he was previously before Mississippi. His children were born in Alabama, but I have no idea yet which county. Here is the land mapped out for Samuel and his neighbors. He purchased his piece of land from Isaac Pearson/Person on 31 March 1856. [1] In the 1854 tax list, his neighbors were listed using the description of their land. [2] So what I’m doing now is creating a neighborhood to find families to resea...

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 I continued working on deed records for the Lancaster family, getting the deeds in Erath County, first by recording the deeds from the grantee and grantor indexes so I have a full record, and beginning to collect the actual deeds. I ran out time and will continue the next time I’m at the Oakland FamilySearch Library later this month. These records are not available from home. I found more ship arrival records for Thomas N. Davey, the son of my husband’s 2x-great-grandfather, who lived in Joplin, Missouri. I was surprised by the number of times he visited England. I wish I knew which family members he visited. I also worked on the homework for the American Genealogy Study Group with DearMyrtle which we will have on Wednesday. These chapters co...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a challenge for us:     Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to : 1)  What was your best research achievement in 2018?  Tell us - show us a document, or tell us a story, or display a photograph.  Brag a bit!  You've earned it! 2)  We all have elusive ancestors.  What research problem do you want to work on in 2019?  Tell us where you want to research and what you hope to find. 3)  Put the answers in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook post. I had several good finds: My mother’s photograph in the newspaper with Louis Armstrong. I had no idea she was so active with the Pittsburg Junior Women’s Club. Finding articles and images of my great-uncle, “Toofer” Johnston in newspapers. He played a lot of football in high school and college. Getting the personnel file of my aunt, Lorene Hork, wh...

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 After Christmas, I decided to work on family research by taking care of some back-logged items, entering them into RootsMagic, and renaming the files as appropriate. I worked for three days entering nearly 200 deed records from Kaufman and Rockwall Counties in Texas that I had obtained from the Family History Library back in 2015. These deeds are for the Lancaster family, with Polly and Butler families thrown in. I discovered some interesting information on George W. Lancaster by transcribing the deeds. More on that in a separate blog post. Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog posts this week: Week 52: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks about my 2019 goals. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun : discussing last year’s goal and what I plan for next year...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has his yearly resolution challenge: Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions, or state Goals and Objectives, for genealogy and family history research in 2019?  If so, tell us about them. 2)  If not, then make ONE resolution, or state one goal, for your genealogy research that you are determined to keep during 2019.  We'll check on progress toward that resolution/goal during the year in SNGF (if I remember!). 3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a Comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status post.  Leave a link in Comments to any post you make. My 2018 Resolution I did make a resolution last year and it was to submit my portfolio to the Board for Certification of Genealogists and I did fulfill the goal. Not only that, I was certified as well. My 2019 Resolution My goal for this year is to w...

I am 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’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Now that my energy is no longer focused on finishing my BCG portfolio, I need a new project to work on. In these past three months I have been in a fog, wandering from one genealogy activity to another, trying to find something to occupy my time. I should organize my files. I have a lot of old paper notes and photocopies that could be scanned or tossed. I have files from a book I wrote about my husband’s family that should be culled and donated along with the files put together by Aunt Bernice and cousin Terry to the California State Archives. I also have slides from early vacations that should be scanned and had started that process, but scanning slides is very time-consuming. It takes much longer to scan than pho...

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 The long, almost three month wait is over. I heard on the 22nd of December from the Board for Certification of Genealogists that I have become a Certified Genealogist®. It was the best Christmas present this year. I’ve written all about the certification process here. I was ill with the flu part of the week and so did not work on genealogy much. I continued working on my own family research by the continuation of the Johnston line. Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog posts this week: Week 51: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks about Muriel Gleeson putting together a photo album for the Gleeson & Tierney families for the theme of Nice. Certification : A post announcing becoming certified. Cert Peer Group : Again we had five of us ...