My Trails into the Past

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing this week is: 1) Write down which of your ancestors that you have met in person (yes, even if you were too young to remember them). 2) Tell us their names, where they lived, and their relationship to you in a blog post, or in comments to this post, or in comments on Facebook. Here is my list: I have not met many of my ancestors. I was born in 1954. 1.    Lela Nell (Johnston) Hork (1934-1992) , my mother. She lived in Walnut Creek, California until her death. 2.    William Joseph Hork (1930-2007 ), my father. He lived in Walnut Creek until his death. 3.    Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston (1913-2012) , my maternal grandmother. She lived in Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton, and lastly in Concord. 4.    Tom J Johnston (1913-1973) , my maternal grandfather. He lived in Pleasant Hill unti...

This is my third 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. Multiple members of the same family left Sweden for America. Jonas Nilsson and Marta Larsdotter of Åsenhöga, Jönköping län, Sweden had seven children, six who lived to adulthood. [1] The farms in Sweden were getting too small to subdivide and only one child could then inherit the property. So, one inherited, one married a Swedish man, and four emigrated to the United States in the 1880s. Household Examination for Jonas Nilsson's family The family in the United States spelled their name as Nilsén, (pronounced neel-sane). Later the accent was dropped and the pronunciation morphed to “neel-son.” The first child to emigrate was Johan Laner . He left Sweden and arrived on 2 May 1887. [2] He liv...

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. I have completed sixteen weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to work at the CCCHS History Center and do phenology at the meadow. Otherwise, I met people on Zoom. Genealogy Blog Writing : Blogs posted this past week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 27: Solor—George Gorrell Heads West to Mechanics School.   I wrote about my father-in-law, George J. Gorrell leaving Missouri for California. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: 4 th of July Memories. I wrote about some Fourth of July Memories. Study Groups Attended:     Many online meetings again this week: Our Monday Morning Group met with about a dozen people. I missed some of it due to a video doctor’s appointment.   I met with Jacqueli...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again -  time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a new holiday assignment for us: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): It's Saturday Night and the Fourth of July - let's have some Genealogy Fun! If you're reading this on Sunday morning, or even later, it's not too late for you to participate. 1) Think of the best Fourth of July you remember from your childhood. 2) Think of the best Fourth of July you remember from your adulthood. 3) What will you do on the holiday? 4) Write about one, or all, of them on your blog or in Comments to this post, or on Facebook. Please leave a comment and/or link on this post. My best memories of Fourth of July were those few times we got into the car and drove somewhere to park and see the fireworks. I think one year we went to Danville where the display was at...

This is my third 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. George J. Gorrell, born in 1915, grew up in Webb City, Missouri. He worked a lot of small jobs in the area and then in 1940, he went to Glendale, California to enroll in an aircraft mechanics course for a year. Here is a photo of the Kidder’s OH shop, where George wrote on the back that he “witnessed a major fire due to carelessness.” He finished the training in July of 1941 and accepted a Junior Mechanic job at the Sacramento Air Depot (later McClellan Air Field) in Sacramento, California. It had a yearly salary of $1680. He wrote that he stayed first at “the YMCA in downtown Sacramento, then stayed at a boarding house at 819 16 th Street (which has long gone) near the old Governor’s Mansion....

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. I have completed fifteen weeks of semi- “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house this past week to work at the CCCHS History Center, walks to the mailbox, and a yoga class in a park. Otherwise, I met people on Zoom. Genealogy Blog Writing : Blogs posted this past week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 26: Middle—Life of Olevia Jane (Jones) Johnston.   I wrote about the middle child of Benjamin W & Amanda (Haley) Jones. Happy 9 th Blogiversary! I wrote a post about my ninth anniversary of writing the My Trails into the Past blog. Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Time Machine. We wrote where we would go in our genealogy family events on a time machine. I wrote about my troubles with finding the origins of Samuel Johnston. Study Gr...

It's  Saturday Night  -  time for more  Genealogy Fun!  Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to: 1) Determine which event in your ancestral history that you would love to be a witness to via a Time Machine.  Assume that you could observe the event, but not participate in it. 2) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post . Like Randy, I have many brick walls and I have written before about one of my biggest I’d like to solve. You can see here , along with more links to previous posts about my trials and tribulations. I would love to discover the birth parents of my 3X-great-grandfather, Samuel Johnston, who was born about 1816 in South Carolina. I am hoping that in the process, I would learn which county this happened in, so I can hope to continue the line further back. I have been stuck in Yalobusha County, Mississippi where the family appeared ...