Let's see if I can remember what I did today with genealogy.
7:30 Read my email and Bloglines. Pondered what to post this morning. Decided on the second post of William Hutchinson - on Genea-Musings here. Opened my FTM and looked for other families to "update" - found the Alexander Sovereign/Eliza Putman family had lots of kids but no dates, so I searched the LDS databases and the Ancestry databases. found a database with birth dates and a few spouses for Mary Jane Sovereen's siblings, so I added those to the database. They were from a Bible record held by a fellow in Manitoba, I think. Also found a Marley cousin has posted some Kemp data in an Ancestry Public Member Tree - I should email him.
9:50 AM: Went to the library for our Monday table talk with John and Dearl - we had no visitors. Regaled each other with life stories from this week. Linda came at 11:30 and we went to lunch at Rubio's. Sat next to a young mom with two little ones 4 and 2 - they entertained us, great fun. Linda gave them a balloon and stickers for being so good. That was pretty much the social highlight of the day!
12:30 PM: Home now, hey I see that Dick Eastman is back, and Megan Smolenyak has a short video of a Genealogical Wave. I had to blog about that - see it here. Worked a bit more on the Sovereen family, then Linda needed to use the computer, so I took a nap.
3:00 PM: Back on. Time for this week's Della's Journal post - it is here. What can I do now? I have several ancestral Dutch families in the Albany and Schenectady area in the 1650-1750 time frame. I searched for books on Ancestry for each family name - found quite a few, lots of good history and family information. I printed off maybe 20 pages or so.
7:00 PM: The football game is boring. I updated my Wave post, and then I thought I could try to find more of my cousin's ancestry online. I worked on the Bowers Fischer line using census and MA Vital Records to 1910, and deduced two generations. Put those in the database. Then I worked more on the Lewis Soule ancestry (another cousin's line) that I worked a bit on last night. I found more census data and some VR data, but can't find Jessie's maiden name - I'll have to ask my cousin. It looks like she was born in Atlantic Canada. Started to put what I've collected into my database - got the Soule line in - about 1/2 of what I have and about 1/4 of the total to be found. It's 10 PM now, time to get off, do the dishes and read my John Lescroart book.
Genealogy time today: 10 hours, of which 1.5 hours was blogging.
Did I advance the ball much today? Really, I didn't. I need to get started on my scanning task and continue to transcribe the RI probate records. Oh well - tomorrow's another genealogy day - maybe I'll have a breakthrough!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/04/07
This was not a good day for much of anything. I did set the clocks back, mow the lawn, take a nap and watch my Chargers get creamed. There wasn't much genealogy done!
8:00 AM: The morning email brought the obituary for my uncle, Jim Remley, so I posted it on Genea-Musings here. Then I read Bloglines, and saw that the Carnival of Genealogy was posted, so I wrote a blog on Genea-Musings here. Then it was time to get ready to rumble with my Chargers ....
2:45 PM: After the game (we lost 35-17 and it wasn't that close), I took a nap, and then worked for about an hour on the Best of the Genea-blogs post for last week - posted here. Then I went to watch the end of the Patriots-Colts game and did the lawn.
7:00 PM: Checked email and Bloglines. I posted the FTM2008 webinar post on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog here, then sent an email to the mailing list about the CVGS programs for November. I wanted to check out my cousins Soule ancestry in Maine, so I found the census stuff I had found months ago and looked for connections in WorldConnect and OneWorldTree. Even though these were New England families, I found very little for the families in the 1800's. Before 1800, there are decent trees available, so I'm going to have to fill in the families for about 100 years using other resources, probably family and locality books. Then it was time for Desperate Housewives...they even got into a family medical history a bit.
10:00 PM: Last check of everything, wrote this post, check the stats and off to watch the news.
Only about 4.5 hours today, of which blogging took about 2 hours. It's supposed to be a day of rest.
8:00 AM: The morning email brought the obituary for my uncle, Jim Remley, so I posted it on Genea-Musings here. Then I read Bloglines, and saw that the Carnival of Genealogy was posted, so I wrote a blog on Genea-Musings here. Then it was time to get ready to rumble with my Chargers ....
2:45 PM: After the game (we lost 35-17 and it wasn't that close), I took a nap, and then worked for about an hour on the Best of the Genea-blogs post for last week - posted here. Then I went to watch the end of the Patriots-Colts game and did the lawn.
7:00 PM: Checked email and Bloglines. I posted the FTM2008 webinar post on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog here, then sent an email to the mailing list about the CVGS programs for November. I wanted to check out my cousins Soule ancestry in Maine, so I found the census stuff I had found months ago and looked for connections in WorldConnect and OneWorldTree. Even though these were New England families, I found very little for the families in the 1800's. Before 1800, there are decent trees available, so I'm going to have to fill in the families for about 100 years using other resources, probably family and locality books. Then it was time for Desperate Housewives...they even got into a family medical history a bit.
10:00 PM: Last check of everything, wrote this post, check the stats and off to watch the news.
Only about 4.5 hours today, of which blogging took about 2 hours. It's supposed to be a day of rest.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/03/07
All the best laid plans of mice and genealogists often go awry ... nope, that's not exactly right, is it? Last night lying in bed waiting for slumber to put my mind to rest, I figured that I would go to the FHC today and do some work in WVR and Footnote. But ...
7:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines, then posted on Genea-Musings a short post prepared last night. Off to breakfast with the men's Bible study group.
9:30 AM Home, and onto the computer again. What to do? Well, I checked out the strange email from ancestry.com and wrote a post about it, then wrote a post with the Table of Contents for the latest issue received of The American Genealogist (which I forgot to write about in yesterday's journal - I read some of it yesterday). That's enough Genea-Musings for the day, unless something important or funny comes along.
10:30 AM: I decided not to go to the FHC, but to work at home trying to find distant male cousins in some of my ancestral lines in hopes of finding someone who can do a DNA test. I started with the Richmonds and Whites of Connecticut and never really left them. Unfortunately, there is not a complete set of Connecticut Births, Marriages and Deaths available online. There are some databases, but there are not many records after 1870 and before 1949. The Windham County CT cemetery lists on USGenWeb aren't complete, either. That makes it really difficult. I couldn't find most of the people already in my database in the 1900 to 1930 census records, either. I spent about 5 hours doing this with very little to show for it. Linda wanted to use the computer, so I went in to watch football at 4:30 and took a nap before dinner. Then the SDSU Aztecs game was on and I watched the first half - they were losing 21-7, and it wasn't that close.
7:30 PM: I made some genealogy reports for two correspondents and emailed them off with appropriate comments. Then I saw the email from my cousin that came last night that said Uncle Jim had died, so I wrote a Genea-Musings post about it. I poked around a bit more in Ancestry, and found a good biography of Thomas Orville Seaver, which I put into FTM. I was bored, so went to check the football game - my Aztecs came back to win 27-24 in the last minute. So now it's this post, check the stats, do the dishes, turn back the clocks and go to bed, hoping that my Chargers will beat the Vikings tomorrow. See, I do have a non-genealogy life - you were wondering, huh?
Let's see - only about 9.5 hours today, of which about 1.5 was blogging. Is that too much? This therapy journaling stuff is fun.
7:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines, then posted on Genea-Musings a short post prepared last night. Off to breakfast with the men's Bible study group.
9:30 AM Home, and onto the computer again. What to do? Well, I checked out the strange email from ancestry.com and wrote a post about it, then wrote a post with the Table of Contents for the latest issue received of The American Genealogist (which I forgot to write about in yesterday's journal - I read some of it yesterday). That's enough Genea-Musings for the day, unless something important or funny comes along.
10:30 AM: I decided not to go to the FHC, but to work at home trying to find distant male cousins in some of my ancestral lines in hopes of finding someone who can do a DNA test. I started with the Richmonds and Whites of Connecticut and never really left them. Unfortunately, there is not a complete set of Connecticut Births, Marriages and Deaths available online. There are some databases, but there are not many records after 1870 and before 1949. The Windham County CT cemetery lists on USGenWeb aren't complete, either. That makes it really difficult. I couldn't find most of the people already in my database in the 1900 to 1930 census records, either. I spent about 5 hours doing this with very little to show for it. Linda wanted to use the computer, so I went in to watch football at 4:30 and took a nap before dinner. Then the SDSU Aztecs game was on and I watched the first half - they were losing 21-7, and it wasn't that close.
7:30 PM: I made some genealogy reports for two correspondents and emailed them off with appropriate comments. Then I saw the email from my cousin that came last night that said Uncle Jim had died, so I wrote a Genea-Musings post about it. I poked around a bit more in Ancestry, and found a good biography of Thomas Orville Seaver, which I put into FTM. I was bored, so went to check the football game - my Aztecs came back to win 27-24 in the last minute. So now it's this post, check the stats, do the dishes, turn back the clocks and go to bed, hoping that my Chargers will beat the Vikings tomorrow. See, I do have a non-genealogy life - you were wondering, huh?
Let's see - only about 9.5 hours today, of which about 1.5 was blogging. Is that too much? This therapy journaling stuff is fun.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/02/07
Today started out cool and ended up cool, but it was pleasant when I was out - maybe in the low 70's. We have a Santa Ana coming on Saturday, but will have iwnd only for one day.
I seemed to waste a lot of time today, but it was fun.
7:30 AM: Read my email - got a lot of spam comments. Read Bloglines. Then I remembered it was my grandfather's 116th birthday, so I wrote a post describing his life and impact on me, with several pictures - it's on Genea-Musings here. Then I went and changed Genea-Musings so Comments require registration and a letter verification to stop the d@mn sp@m.
10:00 AM: Went to the library to search for the obituary - looked at SD and CV papers with no luck in late 1997 - they didn't have good coverage then. Drat. I read a bit more of the Everton's GH, then went to Costco to have lunch and look for neat Xmas gifts for me, er, for Angel. Went to pick up George for our bayfront walk, but he wasn't there. Drat again. Went home.
1:00 PM: I need to start working on my Christmas newsletter research - I send a 16 page family history newsletter to the extended family (about 20 people) - I've been doing it for 20 years now. They are always interested in who we are distantly related to. I uploaded my Master genealogy database to Ancestry as a Private Member Tree, then went through the great-great-grandparents one at a time seeking famous ancestors. I found a bunch and will have a page in the newsletter. Cool. Time-waster, eh? I opened my genealogy database and tried to find families that don't have notes, or don't have spouses for the siblings, or dates for the family members. I have notebooks full of good published information (books and journal articles) for some of these families, so I filled out four families that were incomplete, and in the process found several more generations of two families. Cool - I rarely add new ancestors to the databases it seems - I did today. Dinner time - we go out to Daphne's for gyros and to Coldstone afterwards for icecream - yum.
7:00 PM: What to write about tonight on Genea-Musings? Read email and Bloglines. The Ancestry blog had a post about FTM 2008 Books - they want a wish list - I was happy to oblige - posted here on Genea-Musings in addition to filling in their form. Reading the Ancestry blog a bit more, I see that I missed the FTM 2008 webinar. But I can watch and hear it - so I spent an hour watching it, downloaded the charts, and then wrote a post on Genea-Musings about it. Did anybody else blog about it - I don't think so but can't remember back a week! Wrote this journal post, then checked the statistics, and off to bed I go. Yawn. See you tomorrow for tomorrow is another genea... Saturday filled with genealogy promise - who knows what will happen!
Hmmm, about 11 hours today, but only about 1.5 hours blogging, so that's good! Egads.
I seemed to waste a lot of time today, but it was fun.
7:30 AM: Read my email - got a lot of spam comments. Read Bloglines. Then I remembered it was my grandfather's 116th birthday, so I wrote a post describing his life and impact on me, with several pictures - it's on Genea-Musings here. Then I went and changed Genea-Musings so Comments require registration and a letter verification to stop the d@mn sp@m.
10:00 AM: Went to the library to search for the obituary - looked at SD and CV papers with no luck in late 1997 - they didn't have good coverage then. Drat. I read a bit more of the Everton's GH, then went to Costco to have lunch and look for neat Xmas gifts for me, er, for Angel. Went to pick up George for our bayfront walk, but he wasn't there. Drat again. Went home.
1:00 PM: I need to start working on my Christmas newsletter research - I send a 16 page family history newsletter to the extended family (about 20 people) - I've been doing it for 20 years now. They are always interested in who we are distantly related to. I uploaded my Master genealogy database to Ancestry as a Private Member Tree, then went through the great-great-grandparents one at a time seeking famous ancestors. I found a bunch and will have a page in the newsletter. Cool. Time-waster, eh? I opened my genealogy database and tried to find families that don't have notes, or don't have spouses for the siblings, or dates for the family members. I have notebooks full of good published information (books and journal articles) for some of these families, so I filled out four families that were incomplete, and in the process found several more generations of two families. Cool - I rarely add new ancestors to the databases it seems - I did today. Dinner time - we go out to Daphne's for gyros and to Coldstone afterwards for icecream - yum.
7:00 PM: What to write about tonight on Genea-Musings? Read email and Bloglines. The Ancestry blog had a post about FTM 2008 Books - they want a wish list - I was happy to oblige - posted here on Genea-Musings in addition to filling in their form. Reading the Ancestry blog a bit more, I see that I missed the FTM 2008 webinar. But I can watch and hear it - so I spent an hour watching it, downloaded the charts, and then wrote a post on Genea-Musings about it. Did anybody else blog about it - I don't think so but can't remember back a week! Wrote this journal post, then checked the statistics, and off to bed I go. Yawn. See you tomorrow for tomorrow is another genea... Saturday filled with genealogy promise - who knows what will happen!
Hmmm, about 11 hours today, but only about 1.5 hours blogging, so that's good! Egads.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/01/07
Now I'm in a rhythm - three days in a row! I find that I can remember a lot better at 9 PM today rather than at 9 AM tomorrow what happened today.
This was a day of blogging, corresponding, transcribing, PDFing and reminiscing. All great genealogy activities, right?
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Posted my second article about what Dick and Myrtle predicted for The Future of Genealogy on Genea-Musings, then wrote and posted the third - "The Future of Genealogy - My Turn." That was fun, but challenging. I'm not a visionary it seems - kind of a glass half-full guy.
10:30 AM: I almost went to the library to do the obituary lookup, but figured I can go tomorrow. Why do something today that I can do tomorrow when I'm going out anyway? So I answered an email from a distant Seaver cousin who saw my genealogy reports on my web site at www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/ - I made a report for his Lucy Seaver ancestry and sent it off. Lunch time - soup, cookies, apple - all set for a heavy transcribing session!
12:30 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Wrote two more posts for Genea-Musings on NARA and Footnote from email information. Found the probate record files that I brought home from the FHC last Saturday. I labelled the files "John Pray - Smithfield RI," "Job Card - Charlestown RI," and "Susanna Barber - Charlestown RI" with a page number from the microfilms. Then I opened my FamilyTreeMaker file, found John Pray, and put the Notes page on the top half of my screen. I opened the TIF files of the John Pray probate record pages in my photo program, and put each enlarged page in the bottom half of my computer screen. Then I transcribed the five pages of handwritten information into my Notes from the enlarged photo file. This file was fairly easy to read, except the right margin on two photos was cut off on the microfilm image so I had to guess or use ??? for parts of words on some lines.
3:00 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Opened the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog and posted the 411.com article and wrote the "CVGS Events for November 2007" post. Did a Google search on the Scism family in Dutch Colony New York trying to find Elsje Scism's ancestry - she is a great-grandmother of my Cornelia Bresee. Didn't have much luck - there is one mention of her in a message board post. I need to check some of the databases. Nap time.
7:00 PM: Tonight I need to make PDF versions of my four "Genealogy Online" seminar presentations and the syllabus so we can put them on CDROMs for people who have ordered them in CVGS. This took a long time because the OpenOffice files were 10 to 20 mb in size, and that translated to 2-0-40 mb in PDF format. I essentially crashed the computer by having too many things going on - had to shut down, reboot and work on only one thing at a time. That really worked - I could have saved a lot of time by having only one thing going on in the computer.
While I was doing that, I decided to review some of the stuff that I got from my Aunt Geraldine's estate. I promised my cousins that I would scan all of the papers and pictures and send them a CDROM for Christmas. I need to get started on that! I went through the papers, her photo album and the loose pictures, and there is quite a number of things to scan. There were several pictures of my father as a boy, and of my family when I was a boy, and my family when I was a parent. She essentially saved everything anybody sent to her and put them in envelopes by family. Unfortunately, they are sort of mixed in together in some cases. There are also nice photos of Gerry as she grew up, and some, but not many, photos of her parents and grandparents.
9:15 PM: Now it's time to journal for the day, hoping I can remember what I did. How long will Blogger keep this stuff online - anybody know? What? Forever? Or until the lights go out at Blogger. I guess I'd better save the monthly archives, eh? Off to read my book and watch ER tonight. I'll check statistics later.
This was a day of blogging, corresponding, transcribing, PDFing and reminiscing. All great genealogy activities, right?
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Posted my second article about what Dick and Myrtle predicted for The Future of Genealogy on Genea-Musings, then wrote and posted the third - "The Future of Genealogy - My Turn." That was fun, but challenging. I'm not a visionary it seems - kind of a glass half-full guy.
10:30 AM: I almost went to the library to do the obituary lookup, but figured I can go tomorrow. Why do something today that I can do tomorrow when I'm going out anyway? So I answered an email from a distant Seaver cousin who saw my genealogy reports on my web site at www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/ - I made a report for his Lucy Seaver ancestry and sent it off. Lunch time - soup, cookies, apple - all set for a heavy transcribing session!
12:30 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Wrote two more posts for Genea-Musings on NARA and Footnote from email information. Found the probate record files that I brought home from the FHC last Saturday. I labelled the files "John Pray - Smithfield RI," "Job Card - Charlestown RI," and "Susanna Barber - Charlestown RI" with a page number from the microfilms. Then I opened my FamilyTreeMaker file, found John Pray, and put the Notes page on the top half of my screen. I opened the TIF files of the John Pray probate record pages in my photo program, and put each enlarged page in the bottom half of my computer screen. Then I transcribed the five pages of handwritten information into my Notes from the enlarged photo file. This file was fairly easy to read, except the right margin on two photos was cut off on the microfilm image so I had to guess or use ??? for parts of words on some lines.
3:00 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Opened the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog and posted the 411.com article and wrote the "CVGS Events for November 2007" post. Did a Google search on the Scism family in Dutch Colony New York trying to find Elsje Scism's ancestry - she is a great-grandmother of my Cornelia Bresee. Didn't have much luck - there is one mention of her in a message board post. I need to check some of the databases. Nap time.
7:00 PM: Tonight I need to make PDF versions of my four "Genealogy Online" seminar presentations and the syllabus so we can put them on CDROMs for people who have ordered them in CVGS. This took a long time because the OpenOffice files were 10 to 20 mb in size, and that translated to 2-0-40 mb in PDF format. I essentially crashed the computer by having too many things going on - had to shut down, reboot and work on only one thing at a time. That really worked - I could have saved a lot of time by having only one thing going on in the computer.
While I was doing that, I decided to review some of the stuff that I got from my Aunt Geraldine's estate. I promised my cousins that I would scan all of the papers and pictures and send them a CDROM for Christmas. I need to get started on that! I went through the papers, her photo album and the loose pictures, and there is quite a number of things to scan. There were several pictures of my father as a boy, and of my family when I was a boy, and my family when I was a parent. She essentially saved everything anybody sent to her and put them in envelopes by family. Unfortunately, they are sort of mixed in together in some cases. There are also nice photos of Gerry as she grew up, and some, but not many, photos of her parents and grandparents.
9:15 PM: Now it's time to journal for the day, hoping I can remember what I did. How long will Blogger keep this stuff online - anybody know? What? Forever? Or until the lights go out at Blogger. I guess I'd better save the monthly archives, eh? Off to read my book and watch ER tonight. I'll check statistics later.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Genea-Journal - 10/31/07
I really made little genealogy progress today - but I did clean up my desk a bit and caught up on some paperwork.
8:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. I changed my Genea-Musings blog colors from red and blue to Orange and Black for Hallowe'en. Then I found the Hallowe'en Personality web site and took the test, then posted "Your Hallowe'en Personality" to Genea-Musings. I thought up the idea of doing these daily journals and wrote up the last two days.
10:30 AM: Decided to go to the library to find the obituary for the CVGS query. I got there just in time to watch the toddler costume parade through the library - it was really cute. Some of the staff had great costumes, especially Queen Ariachnia (Kim). The microfilm machine was in use by someone else, so for the next two hours I shuffled books into their right places in the Genealogy collection, reviewed the stuff in the file cabinets and read the new issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper. I never did get to the obituary. Dropped my November CVGS flyers to the library staff. Off to McDonalds for lunch.
1:30 PM: Read email and bloglines. Worked on the Genea-Musings post "Trick or Treat?" I decided that I should try to thin my "in-box" paper stack so I input many bits of genealogy info into my databases and transferred the papers to my bookcase stacks. Such is the filing system of a geneaholic too lazy to file stuff away. This took quite awhile, and I discovered several useful things that I've been missing for awhile. At 4:30 PM, I stopped and went to watch the news.
7 PM: After dinner, I decided to write up the "Five Questions - Favorites" post on Genea-Musings. Read email and Bloglines. Then I figured out that I want to answer the question posed to me at the seminar about the future of genealogy. I Googled [future genealogy predictions] and got over 100,000 hits. Reading the first page, there were articles by Howells, Eastman and Myrtle, so I decided to review those. I wrote a blog post for tonight "The Future of Genealogy - Part 1 (1998 Version)" for Genea-Musings, and a second one for tomorrow (see, I occasionally do work ahead). Then I decided to change my blog colors to Orange and Light Blue - on Genea-Musings - do you like? Those are probably my favorite colors. Finally, I reviewed my blog statistics. Genea-Musings has the highest number of Visitors (over 6,600) and Page Views (over 10,500) ever for a month, according to SiteMeter. Woo hoo - I care, but not that much. OK, I do care a lot. So much for humility. Off at 10:30 to do dishes and read a bit.
8:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. I changed my Genea-Musings blog colors from red and blue to Orange and Black for Hallowe'en. Then I found the Hallowe'en Personality web site and took the test, then posted "Your Hallowe'en Personality" to Genea-Musings. I thought up the idea of doing these daily journals and wrote up the last two days.
10:30 AM: Decided to go to the library to find the obituary for the CVGS query. I got there just in time to watch the toddler costume parade through the library - it was really cute. Some of the staff had great costumes, especially Queen Ariachnia (Kim). The microfilm machine was in use by someone else, so for the next two hours I shuffled books into their right places in the Genealogy collection, reviewed the stuff in the file cabinets and read the new issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper. I never did get to the obituary. Dropped my November CVGS flyers to the library staff. Off to McDonalds for lunch.
1:30 PM: Read email and bloglines. Worked on the Genea-Musings post "Trick or Treat?" I decided that I should try to thin my "in-box" paper stack so I input many bits of genealogy info into my databases and transferred the papers to my bookcase stacks. Such is the filing system of a geneaholic too lazy to file stuff away. This took quite awhile, and I discovered several useful things that I've been missing for awhile. At 4:30 PM, I stopped and went to watch the news.
7 PM: After dinner, I decided to write up the "Five Questions - Favorites" post on Genea-Musings. Read email and Bloglines. Then I figured out that I want to answer the question posed to me at the seminar about the future of genealogy. I Googled [future genealogy predictions] and got over 100,000 hits. Reading the first page, there were articles by Howells, Eastman and Myrtle, so I decided to review those. I wrote a blog post for tonight "The Future of Genealogy - Part 1 (1998 Version)" for Genea-Musings, and a second one for tomorrow (see, I occasionally do work ahead). Then I decided to change my blog colors to Orange and Light Blue - on Genea-Musings - do you like? Those are probably my favorite colors. Finally, I reviewed my blog statistics. Genea-Musings has the highest number of Visitors (over 6,600) and Page Views (over 10,500) ever for a month, according to SiteMeter. Woo hoo - I care, but not that much. OK, I do care a lot. So much for humility. Off at 10:30 to do dishes and read a bit.
Genea-Journal - 10/30/07
Tuesday, 31 October 2007 (cooler, cloudy, no wind, a free day for genealogy):
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Arlene and Steve are on the road - reminds me of my trips. Write Genea-Musings post on "Genealogy road trips."
9:00 AM: Answer several emails. Research a query submitted to CVGS - go search San Diego county probate index and deed index. No luck there. Checked the San Diego Union-Tribune for a 1997 obituary - nope, they start in 2000. I'll have to go to the library to find the obituary.
9:30 AM: I opened my FTM database, and decided to see what I have for my RevWar Loyalist William Hutchinson, and try to find out how he got to New Brunswick and Ontario. I found that I had already captured notes from a WorldConnect database with lots of information form published books. I reviewed all of these and edited my notes - giving credit to the database owner and keeping the book citations. I added data for the children and their spouses of William and Catherine (Lewis) Hutchinson. Are there web sites for Loyalist information? Yep - I found several - some stuff on WmHutch too. Then I wrote the post "William Hutchinson (1745-1826) Family History - Part 1" on Genea-Musings. He was a really interesting guy! These notes will provide blog fodder for quite a while! Lunch time.
1:00 PM: Back at it - checked email and Bloglines. I still have to enter more data on the ancestry of Cornelia Bresee that I found back in the spring and summer. I'm pretty sure of the Bresee line from all of the Dutch church records in the Hudson River valley - it all hangs together well. I had found data on two of the maternal lines - the Van Deusen and Dyckman families, but not on the Scism family. The Dyckman data in the 1988 book by Marjorie Chamberlain is excellent - well sourced and very complete. I entered the vital records data and summarized the notes for four generations. Good stuff. Where did the time go? It's 5 PM - time for O'Reilly and dinner.
6:30 PM: Checked email and Bloglines. Wrote the "Testing 411.com to Find Living People" post on Genea-Musings. Printed out an ahnentafel report for Cornelia Bresee. I thought I could find something funny about haunted houses or cemetery apparitions in the historic newspapers - but I didn't find a lot of useful blog material. There were lots of long stories, but few short stories suitable for a blog post. Wasted a lot of time, I guess.
10:00 PM: I'm done...check my blog statistics and then go wash the dishes, read my book, watch the news. Yawn.
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Arlene and Steve are on the road - reminds me of my trips. Write Genea-Musings post on "Genealogy road trips."
9:00 AM: Answer several emails. Research a query submitted to CVGS - go search San Diego county probate index and deed index. No luck there. Checked the San Diego Union-Tribune for a 1997 obituary - nope, they start in 2000. I'll have to go to the library to find the obituary.
9:30 AM: I opened my FTM database, and decided to see what I have for my RevWar Loyalist William Hutchinson, and try to find out how he got to New Brunswick and Ontario. I found that I had already captured notes from a WorldConnect database with lots of information form published books. I reviewed all of these and edited my notes - giving credit to the database owner and keeping the book citations. I added data for the children and their spouses of William and Catherine (Lewis) Hutchinson. Are there web sites for Loyalist information? Yep - I found several - some stuff on WmHutch too. Then I wrote the post "William Hutchinson (1745-1826) Family History - Part 1" on Genea-Musings. He was a really interesting guy! These notes will provide blog fodder for quite a while! Lunch time.
1:00 PM: Back at it - checked email and Bloglines. I still have to enter more data on the ancestry of Cornelia Bresee that I found back in the spring and summer. I'm pretty sure of the Bresee line from all of the Dutch church records in the Hudson River valley - it all hangs together well. I had found data on two of the maternal lines - the Van Deusen and Dyckman families, but not on the Scism family. The Dyckman data in the 1988 book by Marjorie Chamberlain is excellent - well sourced and very complete. I entered the vital records data and summarized the notes for four generations. Good stuff. Where did the time go? It's 5 PM - time for O'Reilly and dinner.
6:30 PM: Checked email and Bloglines. Wrote the "Testing 411.com to Find Living People" post on Genea-Musings. Printed out an ahnentafel report for Cornelia Bresee. I thought I could find something funny about haunted houses or cemetery apparitions in the historic newspapers - but I didn't find a lot of useful blog material. There were lots of long stories, but few short stories suitable for a blog post. Wasted a lot of time, I guess.
10:00 PM: I'm done...check my blog statistics and then go wash the dishes, read my book, watch the news. Yawn.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Genea-journal - 10/29/07
I thought I would try a genealogy journal just to see how much time I spend on genealogy research.
Monday, October 29, 2007 (warm, high clouds, still):
8:00 AM: Read my email, checked Bloglines, wrote a post " 'Mastering Family Search' Videos" on Genea-Musings. Got my stuff together for the CVGS meeting. Programs, speaker handouts, syllabus copies, poster boards, sign, all set. Go to post office, then library. Enter auditorium early, put stuff out, wait for everybody else.
10:00 AM: Library doors open, speaker there - good. Uh-oh - the projector didn't make it, Gary goes to get it. Meet and greet while sign-ins occur. Start the meeting in the auditorium, go through agenda, no surprises. Gary comes with projector - hooks it up quickly, everything works. Speaker starts presentation - a good one!
12 noon: Speaker ends, we ask for questions. Thank you, here's certificate, clap-clap. Have some snacks, then go to lunch with speaker and 4 board members at Marie Callender's. We had a great conversation.
2:30 PM: Go Home. Post "Della's Journal - Week 44" on Genea-Musings. Hey, I printed off all of that Lewis and LaTourette surname material - I should put it into FamilyTreeMaker. I do that - including notes from old books found on Ancestry. The Lewis data in a WorldConnect database looks very good. I should check the LDS databases and see if the names/dates/places are in original records for NYC, Long Island and Staten Island. Nope - some are in LDS submitted family group sheets and sealings, but not in town records. There are birth and christening dates for some - probably taken from Bible records - I wonder where they are? Printed film notes for some sources. 5 PM - Dinner time.
7:00 PM: Wrote post on Genea-Musings for the "Digging Up the Un-Dead" program today. Check my email again, and Bloglines for posts. What now? Work on finding Hallowe'en oriented names in the WorldConnect databases. Didn't I do this last year? Yep - add to it, make it look like a new post. Posted on Genea-Musings "Hallowe'en Names." Go watch TV and read my book.
10:00 PM: Check my email and Bloglines, then check blog statistics and go do the dishes. 10:30 PM - Yawn.
Monday, October 29, 2007 (warm, high clouds, still):
8:00 AM: Read my email, checked Bloglines, wrote a post " 'Mastering Family Search' Videos" on Genea-Musings. Got my stuff together for the CVGS meeting. Programs, speaker handouts, syllabus copies, poster boards, sign, all set. Go to post office, then library. Enter auditorium early, put stuff out, wait for everybody else.
10:00 AM: Library doors open, speaker there - good. Uh-oh - the projector didn't make it, Gary goes to get it. Meet and greet while sign-ins occur. Start the meeting in the auditorium, go through agenda, no surprises. Gary comes with projector - hooks it up quickly, everything works. Speaker starts presentation - a good one!
12 noon: Speaker ends, we ask for questions. Thank you, here's certificate, clap-clap. Have some snacks, then go to lunch with speaker and 4 board members at Marie Callender's. We had a great conversation.
2:30 PM: Go Home. Post "Della's Journal - Week 44" on Genea-Musings. Hey, I printed off all of that Lewis and LaTourette surname material - I should put it into FamilyTreeMaker. I do that - including notes from old books found on Ancestry. The Lewis data in a WorldConnect database looks very good. I should check the LDS databases and see if the names/dates/places are in original records for NYC, Long Island and Staten Island. Nope - some are in LDS submitted family group sheets and sealings, but not in town records. There are birth and christening dates for some - probably taken from Bible records - I wonder where they are? Printed film notes for some sources. 5 PM - Dinner time.
7:00 PM: Wrote post on Genea-Musings for the "Digging Up the Un-Dead" program today. Check my email again, and Bloglines for posts. What now? Work on finding Hallowe'en oriented names in the WorldConnect databases. Didn't I do this last year? Yep - add to it, make it look like a new post. Posted on Genea-Musings "Hallowe'en Names." Go watch TV and read my book.
10:00 PM: Check my email and Bloglines, then check blog statistics and go do the dishes. 10:30 PM - Yawn.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Why are Family Trees depicted wrongly?
Something that has bothered me for a long time has been the depiction of our ancestors perched in a "family tree." As an example, here is a nice graphic from http://www.nalw.org/.
Why do they depict the tree this way? I think it is because we want an ordered graphical depiction of our ancestry. Branches and leaves are brown and green and pretty, roots are dark and gnarled and semi-ugly. We know how many people are in each generation and so the "family tree" above the ground can have a set number of branches and leaves. If we put descendants above the ground in the graphics, then each tree would be different - some families have many children, and some have only one or none.
I guess it is my scientific, engineering and Presbyterian mentality that requires "order" above all. It has always bothered me for some reason.
To fill this tree out, you put a living person or a recent ancestor at the bottom position on the tree, and then add parents above them, grandparents above them, great-grandparents above them, and so on. The earliest ancestors are higher up in the tree. Descendants are shown below the ancestors higher in the tree, which has some logic to it. Of course, the graphic above doesn't even have all of the boxes in the right place!
But then we talk a lot about "ROOTS." Our family "roots" are these same ancestors that we perched high up in the tree. To me, the "family tree" should be depicted with "roots" (ancestors) below the selected person and "branches and leaves" (descendants) above the selected person.
There are some graphics like that available, like here, that put the ancestors below the ground. Isn't that where our ancestors really are? Almost all of them are below the ground, not up in the tree!
I haven't looked for graphics in software programs other than FTM 2005, so there may be some more graphics out there that depict ancestors below the ground and descendants above the ground. I guess maybe I should stay away from graphic depictions of "family trees" that don't show "roots."
Why do they depict the tree this way? I think it is because we want an ordered graphical depiction of our ancestry. Branches and leaves are brown and green and pretty, roots are dark and gnarled and semi-ugly. We know how many people are in each generation and so the "family tree" above the ground can have a set number of branches and leaves. If we put descendants above the ground in the graphics, then each tree would be different - some families have many children, and some have only one or none.
It would be difficult to show 4 or 5 generations of ancestors below the ground and 4 or 5 generations of descendants above the ground on one piece of paper without small print. Perhaps an hourglass chart with a family tree graphic (leaves, branches, trunk and roots) as a background would be the best we can do.
Perhaps the better terms would be "progenitors" for ancestors" and "progeny" for "descendants." Then we aren't (I'm not) confused by "ascending" and "descending. "
I guess it is my scientific, engineering and Presbyterian mentality that requires "order" above all. It has always bothered me for some reason.
Is this a symptom of geneaholism? Probably. Who me, worry?
Friday, August 31, 2007
The plan is working
My counselor in geneaholism matters has counseled me to work on my recovery plan, which includes:
* Take a vacation and get away from genealogy completely. Enjoy the scenery, sleep late, eat well, go to a beach, commune with your family and friends.
* Stop blogging so often - it only makes you think more about genealogy research, finding and/or testing new web sites, etc.
* Don't get so hung up on your genealogy goals and objectives for the year - your dead ancestors will still be there waiting for you to discover them next year.
Well, I partially succeeded, I think. Here's the sad record:
* Angel Linda and I spent a week in Hawaii, but while there we met my cousin from Arizona and talked about family history. Not my fault - she saw me at the beach on Maui! I did take the laptop and checked email and blogged a bit on genealogy, but mostly about our vacation.
* I wrote 72 posts in August 2007 on Genea-Musings, while I wrote 84 posts in July 2007 on Genea-Musings, but I made 50 posts last year in August 2006 on Genea-Musings (I took a longer vacation!). So in the short-term I improved - fewer posts in August than July.
* I am so far behind on my genealogy goals that I set at the beginning of the year. I have gone about monthly to the FHC and ordered microfilms of my Rhode Island ancestors probate records, but I will not complete that this year. I haven't been to the San Diego county probate office yet, or completed my source citations, but there is still time. CVGS seems to be perking along, as is the genealogy blog, my own education efforts (although I only went to a local conference), and my presentations. And we took a trip to Hawaii.
So - you can see that I am slowly recovering my addiction to genealogy research and family history. There are worse things to be addicted to, I guess.
* Take a vacation and get away from genealogy completely. Enjoy the scenery, sleep late, eat well, go to a beach, commune with your family and friends.
* Stop blogging so often - it only makes you think more about genealogy research, finding and/or testing new web sites, etc.
* Don't get so hung up on your genealogy goals and objectives for the year - your dead ancestors will still be there waiting for you to discover them next year.
Well, I partially succeeded, I think. Here's the sad record:
* Angel Linda and I spent a week in Hawaii, but while there we met my cousin from Arizona and talked about family history. Not my fault - she saw me at the beach on Maui! I did take the laptop and checked email and blogged a bit on genealogy, but mostly about our vacation.
* I wrote 72 posts in August 2007 on Genea-Musings, while I wrote 84 posts in July 2007 on Genea-Musings, but I made 50 posts last year in August 2006 on Genea-Musings (I took a longer vacation!). So in the short-term I improved - fewer posts in August than July.
* I am so far behind on my genealogy goals that I set at the beginning of the year. I have gone about monthly to the FHC and ordered microfilms of my Rhode Island ancestors probate records, but I will not complete that this year. I haven't been to the San Diego county probate office yet, or completed my source citations, but there is still time. CVGS seems to be perking along, as is the genealogy blog, my own education efforts (although I only went to a local conference), and my presentations. And we took a trip to Hawaii.
So - you can see that I am slowly recovering my addiction to genealogy research and family history. There are worse things to be addicted to, I guess.
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