My Trails into the Past

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is: 1)  Have you found a unique document or record (e.g., not a vital record, military record, probate record, etc.) that provided new and/or unique information for one or more of your ancestors?  How did it affect your research?  Please share your find. Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic. Here's mine: My grandmother, Anna Marie Sullivan Hork, was a schoolteacher. She first taught school in the Deer Lodge County schools after graduating from Montana Normal School. I don’t know the names of the schools she taught near Hamilton, so I should contact both the district and the historical society to see if records are available. She likely met her future husband in Hamilton, where he lived and she did not teach once they were married. They moved to Los Angeles after their marriage and...

Many people choose to do DNA tests in order to see their ethnicity estimates. Since I have completed my genealogy research back several generations, I have an idea of my ethnicity. My Ancestry Estimates My paternal grandmother is from a long line of people from Ireland, particularly County Cork and perhaps County Tipperary. The surnames I research are Sullivan, Sheehan, Gleeson, and Tierney. My paternal grandfather is from a long line of people from the German states of Westfalen & Posen. The surnames I research are Hork, Sievert, Sommer, Trösster, Voss, Döbener, and Randuntz. On my mother’s side, both her maternal and paternal sides have been in the U.S. since colonial times and settled in the South. Likely, they came from countries of present-day Great Britain. The surnames of her paternal ancestors are Johnston, Hutson, Jones, Selman, Haley, and Oldham. The surnames of her maternal ancestors are Lancaster, Loveless, Welch, Coor, Rodgers, Hughes, Polly, Neel, and Kethley. D...

I have completed one hundred sixty-three (163) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, and volunteering at the Oakland FamilySearch Center and the John Muir National Historic Park’s John Muir Earth Day Birthday event at the California Native Plants booth. Genealogy Blog Writing : Should be a Movie: John Coor’s Travels Through Indian Country to Mississippi Territory . For week 16 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote how it would be cool to see as a movie the route that John Coor and John Kethley took through Georgia and Alabama to get to Mississippi Territory in 1811. SNGF: Sharing a Document That Provided New Information—Johnstons & Jones in Comanche Co. 1880 Census  I wrote how the page where my ancestor was listed was full of other Johnston and Jones families. Meetings/Discussion Groups Met this week with Jacqueline and we discussed citations and research plans in Texas. Volunteer I was a lit...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment today from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to describe a common document or record that provided new and/or unique information to one or more of our ancestors. (Thanks to Linda Stufflebean for this topic.) Here's mine: My document shows well how keeping track of the neighbors on a census record can pay off. The document that gave me much information about my mother’s paternal side of the family is the 1880 U.S. federal census for Comanche County, Texas. I was looking for Rubin M. Johnston, my 2x-great-grandfather. Because of the large gap between the census years 1900 and 1880 due to the loss of the 1890 census, I was not sure if I would find him married or still with his parents. I found him with his wife, Olevia J., and three daughters I did not know. [1] There was a clue on the census that they had been married the previous year, so Olevia wa...

I have completed one hundred sixty-two (162) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, hiking, train club meeting, and attending a party at the Oakland FamilySearch Center.   Genealogy Blog Writing : What My Mother Did to Get Solitude . For week 15 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote about the ways my mother found solitude from us six kids. SNGF: What Genea-Musings Posts Do You Like  For Randy’s 17 th anniversary of writing on his blog, we wrote about the posts we like. My favorite is SNGF, but I enjoy some of his other themes, too. Meetings/Discussion Groups Met this week with Jacqueline, my mentee, Amigos, and heard the tail end of the Certification Discussion Group about adding context to stories. Volunteer On Tuesday, I did my volunteer stint at the History Center, working primarily on an accession. On Monday and Friday, we interviewed candidates for the Executive Director’s position. Dur...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings: 1) Let's do something different today.  Since it's my 17th blogiversary today, please tell me which posts you especially like on Genea-Musings.  Are there any posts that you don't care for? Here’s mine: First off, congratulations to Randy on the 17 th anniversary of writing his blog. That is a huge accomplishment. My favorite post is Saturday Night Genealogy Fun because I enjoy participating in writing up my own posts based on his weekly themes. This helps me write posts for my own blog. I also enjoy reading the Best of Genea-blogs posts. I don’t read as many blogs as Randy and he usually curates some very interesting blogs. I especially like posts about methodology I enjoy reading the Ask Randy posts, especially if it is about RootsMagic. I use RootsMagic and Randy often has insights on how to better ...

My mother was an only child. She wanted a large family to get something that she didn’t have growing up. As a result, I have five brothers and sisters. I think she got a lot more than she bargained for. Raising six children is hard work. Raising six children gives you hardly anytime for yourself. There is always someone who wants a piece of your time. So how did she find solitude? She made her own solitude. One way, she got up at the same time as my father who worked the early shift at the produce department at the local store, LoRay. He left at 4:30 or 5:00 am and that quiet time between his leaving and us kids getting up for school was solitude time for her. During that quiet time, she read, wrote, or sewed. Sewing is what I remember most, as she made Barbie clothes for Christmas or sewed outfits for us to wear. Another way during summer was she sent us outside to play with instructions not to return until she called us for lunch. Her solitude time then was watching soap operas...