This was a very different genealogy today for me. I had a Goodrich engineering retiree lunch today at 11 AM and had a good time - didn't get home until 1:30.
8:00 AM: Email and Bloglines review. Decided to post about the webinar I viewed last night - "Search Like the Pros" on Genea-Musings. Then I called Ancestry and got my "deal of the year" subscription to the US Deluxe Collection extended for another year. I blogged about it here.
9:30 AM: Headed to downtown San Diego to try and get the right death certificate this time. Apparently the index numbers are incorrect -they don't match the death record for some reason. Then the clerk gave me a birth certificate for the right index number but the wrong person, but I wanted a death certificate for my correspondent. The supervisor figured it out and gave me the right death certificate, at no charge. Now it was too late to go to the cemetery so I headed back to Chula Vista for my lunch meeting.
1:30 PM: Back home, checked email and bloglines. Got the two death certificate envelopes ready to send out to my correspondents. Then I checked the new Ancestry databases out and wrote the post about my subscription extension. Nap time, then dinner and watched the Dems debate on TV.
7:00 PM: Email and Bloglines check. Had no ideas for blogging. Decided to help one of my friends out with his brick wall ancestor, and pursued that for two hours. Fun. Frustrating. Even in New England the records are not perfect, especially from 1770 to 1820 or so. I have some ideas for further pursuit after checking out the Ancestry databases, NEHGS databases, LDS databases, the Genealogy.com family finder, Google, the message boards and mailing lists. Then my daughter called, and I went to watch ER.
Genealogy today: 7.0 hours, blogging was 1.0 hour. No work on the scanning project today, no transcribing, no Christmas Journal. Tomorrow may be a better genealogy day - I need to make progress.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/14/07
It seems I'm in a rut - nothing goes exactly the way I plan it. I had a doctors appointment today to see if my weight, blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol were down. I got there on time, but had to wait 20 minutes to get in to see the doctor. Then I told him about my right arm and shoulder having a problem, and he sent me down for X-rays, which took 20 minutes. Then I waited for 45 minutes to see him again, then had to pick up drugs and make a physical therapy appointment. It took 2.5 hours total, and messed up the plans I had for the late morning - to go to the County Clerk's office to fix yesterdays screwup and to the cemetery to get a gravestone picture for a correspondent. Will have to do that tomorrow, or Friday, or next week.
My genealogy day:
8:30 AM: Email and Bloglines were not exciting. Wrote a Genea-Musings post about the Grammar Police over on the APG mailing list, and my own failings as a grammarian.
12:30 PM: Home from the doctor and lunch. Couldn't decide on a blog topic, so I started cropping, editing and fixing the loose photos from my scanning project. Got about half way through them. Then I decided to make a PDF album of the 16 pages that I had scanned from the first of Aunt Gerry's albums - the one with the real old pictures. Opened OpenOffice 2.2, set the page to portrait, and proceeded to add the 16 scanned pages in JPG format. Added an introduction page, saved it, exported it to PDF. Voila. 32 mb. Cool. I think that's what I'll do with all of them. It's easy to do and anybody with a computer can read it and not mess it up. 5 PM, where did the time go? Time for news, dinner, and finish the paper.
7:00 PM: Email and Bloglines. Forgot to send the email to the newspaper about the 11/26 CVGS program, so did it - it's a day late. Drat - I need a tickler file, I guess. Posted the CGSSD meeting notice for 11/17 and then summarized the scanning project on Genea-Musings. Posted my NFL picks for week 11 and team power ratings on RandysBusyLife. Went browsing on Ancestry and found the link to the "Searching Ancestry" webinar held on 29 August. Watched it - 53 minutes, pretty good information; downloaded the slides. It will be blog fodder soon, I think! Now it's almost 10 PM, so will go finish my John Sandford book and hit the sack.
Genealogy today: 7.5 hours, blogging 2.0 hours, scanning 3.5 hours.
Good news on the medical front - all of my numbers were down. The drugs work! Except for the coughing aside effect, so the doc gave me a more expensive drug for blood pressure. The new one may make me dizzy - I may need my wife to catch me if I fall. May be fun.
My genealogy day:
8:30 AM: Email and Bloglines were not exciting. Wrote a Genea-Musings post about the Grammar Police over on the APG mailing list, and my own failings as a grammarian.
12:30 PM: Home from the doctor and lunch. Couldn't decide on a blog topic, so I started cropping, editing and fixing the loose photos from my scanning project. Got about half way through them. Then I decided to make a PDF album of the 16 pages that I had scanned from the first of Aunt Gerry's albums - the one with the real old pictures. Opened OpenOffice 2.2, set the page to portrait, and proceeded to add the 16 scanned pages in JPG format. Added an introduction page, saved it, exported it to PDF. Voila. 32 mb. Cool. I think that's what I'll do with all of them. It's easy to do and anybody with a computer can read it and not mess it up. 5 PM, where did the time go? Time for news, dinner, and finish the paper.
7:00 PM: Email and Bloglines. Forgot to send the email to the newspaper about the 11/26 CVGS program, so did it - it's a day late. Drat - I need a tickler file, I guess. Posted the CGSSD meeting notice for 11/17 and then summarized the scanning project on Genea-Musings. Posted my NFL picks for week 11 and team power ratings on RandysBusyLife. Went browsing on Ancestry and found the link to the "Searching Ancestry" webinar held on 29 August. Watched it - 53 minutes, pretty good information; downloaded the slides. It will be blog fodder soon, I think! Now it's almost 10 PM, so will go finish my John Sandford book and hit the sack.
Genealogy today: 7.5 hours, blogging 2.0 hours, scanning 3.5 hours.
Good news on the medical front - all of my numbers were down. The drugs work! Except for the coughing aside effect, so the doc gave me a more expensive drug for blood pressure. The new one may make me dizzy - I may need my wife to catch me if I fall. May be fun.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/13/07
This was a fairly productive but ultimately frustrating genealogy day.
8:00 AM: Got started with email and Bloglines, and interrupted by Linda, so I went for a shave and shower. Back before 9, and posted "What is Your Genetic Identity?" on Genea-Musings. I'd been thinking about it for awhile, and after seeing Megan's article I decided to put my oar in the water.
10:00 AM: Took off for the San Diego County clerk's office to get the 3 death certs I promised to correspondents. The visit went real smooth - I got the three in about 40 minutes. While I waited, I played a bit more on the computer system there looking in the death index and the tax assessor records. Then to the Chula Vista library and home.
12 noon: After lunch, I read the Ancestry digital magazine - interesting articles, but not really research oriented. I posted the Table of Contents on Genea-Musings. I figured I had messed around enough without doing something productive, so I went back to my scanning project. I scanned about 10 loose photos and 50 album pages in the next three hours. Somehow I made them JPG and not TIF - drat. Oh well, I'm not going to do it again. There's 50 more pages from that album to go, and a third album too. TV, nap, dinner, read, TV.
6:30 PM: Emailed the two correspondents about the death certificates. When I was ready to put them in an envelope, I noticed that one of them wasn't the right one. I'll have to go back downtown - maybe tomorrow. Posted "Four Steps Forward, One Step Back" about my County Clerk experiences. Tried to crop individual pictures from the collage and album photo pages - damn photo program hung up on me - took forever to get it stopped. Then I was low on virtual memory so I stopped. Frustrated. POed. Went to read and watch TV.
Genealogy time today was 9.0 hours, blogging was 2.0 hours. Scanning was 4 hours.
8:00 AM: Got started with email and Bloglines, and interrupted by Linda, so I went for a shave and shower. Back before 9, and posted "What is Your Genetic Identity?" on Genea-Musings. I'd been thinking about it for awhile, and after seeing Megan's article I decided to put my oar in the water.
10:00 AM: Took off for the San Diego County clerk's office to get the 3 death certs I promised to correspondents. The visit went real smooth - I got the three in about 40 minutes. While I waited, I played a bit more on the computer system there looking in the death index and the tax assessor records. Then to the Chula Vista library and home.
12 noon: After lunch, I read the Ancestry digital magazine - interesting articles, but not really research oriented. I posted the Table of Contents on Genea-Musings. I figured I had messed around enough without doing something productive, so I went back to my scanning project. I scanned about 10 loose photos and 50 album pages in the next three hours. Somehow I made them JPG and not TIF - drat. Oh well, I'm not going to do it again. There's 50 more pages from that album to go, and a third album too. TV, nap, dinner, read, TV.
6:30 PM: Emailed the two correspondents about the death certificates. When I was ready to put them in an envelope, I noticed that one of them wasn't the right one. I'll have to go back downtown - maybe tomorrow. Posted "Four Steps Forward, One Step Back" about my County Clerk experiences. Tried to crop individual pictures from the collage and album photo pages - damn photo program hung up on me - took forever to get it stopped. Then I was low on virtual memory so I stopped. Frustrated. POed. Went to read and watch TV.
Genealogy time today was 9.0 hours, blogging was 2.0 hours. Scanning was 4 hours.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/12/07
Today was a "catch-up" day. Lolo was still here, but they went out shopping this morning so I could get some genealogy work done. I spent all afternoon with Lolo - doing puzzles, playing Disney Channel games on the computer, chasing balls outside and picking flowers on our walk, and then we all went out to dinner at Chick Fil-A. Lolo had a great time on the play equipment. They headed for home, and I was able to get some more genealogy work done plus reading tonight.
9:30 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Got three Genea-Musings written and posted - about the SDGS program on Saturday, the histogram web site, and my Visit to the FHC on Saturday. Then I transferred my 40 pages of Footnote RevWar Pension File images onto the desktop computer from the flash drive. I caught up on my favorite politics sites.
They all came home right after noon, so I took my nap while Lolo took hers. By the time I got back on the computer to do anything genealogical, it was 6:30 PM. I posted the latest installment of Della's Journal on Genea-Musings. More email, including two notes from CVGS members wanting help with queries from friends and cousins. I did a bit of research for both and emailed both of them with my findings. Non-productive, so far. Printed off and read the CVGS newsletter. Answered some CVGS business email. Managed my email list a bit - posted three humor pieces from email on the Randy's Busy Life blog.
9:45 PM: Where did the time go? Oh - Lolo! Making family history instead of blogging about it! No scanning today. No transcribing today. Only about 4 hours of genealogy today, and 2 hours of genealogy blogging. Am I spending too much time blogging and not enough time working on interesting projects?
9:30 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Got three Genea-Musings written and posted - about the SDGS program on Saturday, the histogram web site, and my Visit to the FHC on Saturday. Then I transferred my 40 pages of Footnote RevWar Pension File images onto the desktop computer from the flash drive. I caught up on my favorite politics sites.
They all came home right after noon, so I took my nap while Lolo took hers. By the time I got back on the computer to do anything genealogical, it was 6:30 PM. I posted the latest installment of Della's Journal on Genea-Musings. More email, including two notes from CVGS members wanting help with queries from friends and cousins. I did a bit of research for both and emailed both of them with my findings. Non-productive, so far. Printed off and read the CVGS newsletter. Answered some CVGS business email. Managed my email list a bit - posted three humor pieces from email on the Randy's Busy Life blog.
9:45 PM: Where did the time go? Oh - Lolo! Making family history instead of blogging about it! No scanning today. No transcribing today. Only about 4 hours of genealogy today, and 2 hours of genealogy blogging. Am I spending too much time blogging and not enough time working on interesting projects?
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/11/07
This was not a genealogy day. Our granddaughter Lolo is her with her parents. We took Lolo to church at 10 and got back from lunch at 1. She went down for her nap and I checked my email and Bloglines and wrote my "Best of the Genea-blogs" post and then took my nap, which was shortened by the kitchen timer telling me to get the clothes out of the dryer. Grrr. Read the paper and watcher football.
When Lolo woke up, we watched some football then the Chargers game came on and we had dinner watching the game. The first half was great but the second half was tense. The Chargers won 23-21 but it wasn't pretty. Lolo went to bed at about 9 PM. I had to type and print a roster for Linda after the game, and then watched Desperate Housewives for therapy.
Genealogy for today: 1 hour at most, about 0.5 for blogging. Oh well - maybe I can get a full day in tomorrow.
When Lolo woke up, we watched some football then the Chargers game came on and we had dinner watching the game. The first half was great but the second half was tense. The Chargers won 23-21 but it wasn't pretty. Lolo went to bed at about 9 PM. I had to type and print a roster for Linda after the game, and then watched Desperate Housewives for therapy.
Genealogy for today: 1 hour at most, about 0.5 for blogging. Oh well - maybe I can get a full day in tomorrow.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/10/07
This was a decent genealogy day, but short! When I got home at 3, my son-in-law and granddaughter were here. James got my router working again. Tami came and we all went out to dinner at Daphnes, came home and I gave Lolo a bath, and we watched football all night.
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Printed off flyers to deliver to the FHC. Wrote two Genea-Musings posts. Left at about 9:50 for the FHC. When I got there, I got on the computers and went right to the Premium Databases now available there. Worked in WorldVitalRecords a bit - found nothing much of interest on several surnames. I really wanted to work in footnote and see what I've missed by getting only the 10 page maximum on HQO for my RevWar guys. I downloaded two whole files (about 20 pages each) for Robert Seaver and Ichabod Seaver - not my ancestors, but stuff I have not seen and it may be helpful in filling out their family history. Checked for mentions of Norman Seaver and Benjamin Seaver in the RevWar Pension files - found several, including one affidavit that describes what the unit did. It sounded like what is in the RevWar Service files. At 11;45 I left for the SDGS meeting in San Carlos.
12 noon: The SDGS speaker was John Carpenter and the subject was DNA. His first talk was very technical - about Y-DNA, mtDNA, alleles, haplogroups, etc. He knows his stuff. The only thing I learned was that there are now more haplo sub-groups and they will identify many more. That's probably good. After a break, John covered the ancient and famous DNA information - from Niall of the Nine Hostages to Joseph Stalin, with Jefferson, Franklin and others included. Interesting but not too useful. Then it was home.
7:30 PM: Read email and Bloglines again - but went back to the football game.
Genealogy time today: 7 hours, of which 1 hour was blogging. Two hours at the FHC and 2.5 hours at the meeting.
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Printed off flyers to deliver to the FHC. Wrote two Genea-Musings posts. Left at about 9:50 for the FHC. When I got there, I got on the computers and went right to the Premium Databases now available there. Worked in WorldVitalRecords a bit - found nothing much of interest on several surnames. I really wanted to work in footnote and see what I've missed by getting only the 10 page maximum on HQO for my RevWar guys. I downloaded two whole files (about 20 pages each) for Robert Seaver and Ichabod Seaver - not my ancestors, but stuff I have not seen and it may be helpful in filling out their family history. Checked for mentions of Norman Seaver and Benjamin Seaver in the RevWar Pension files - found several, including one affidavit that describes what the unit did. It sounded like what is in the RevWar Service files. At 11;45 I left for the SDGS meeting in San Carlos.
12 noon: The SDGS speaker was John Carpenter and the subject was DNA. His first talk was very technical - about Y-DNA, mtDNA, alleles, haplogroups, etc. He knows his stuff. The only thing I learned was that there are now more haplo sub-groups and they will identify many more. That's probably good. After a break, John covered the ancient and famous DNA information - from Niall of the Nine Hostages to Joseph Stalin, with Jefferson, Franklin and others included. Interesting but not too useful. Then it was home.
7:30 PM: Read email and Bloglines again - but went back to the football game.
Genealogy time today: 7 hours, of which 1 hour was blogging. Two hours at the FHC and 2.5 hours at the meeting.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/09/07
Today was another unproductive genealogy day. My morning got messed up by an unforeseen problem, and I scanned all afternoon. I've done some checking of my database information against online information, for several ancestors, but found nothing special.
7:30 AM: The morning started with email and Bloglines as usual, and a song in my heart. So I wrote a Genea-Musings post about published "family tree" and "genealogy-related" topics. I wrote several emails to my CVGS board members passing information to them that they requested. At 10 AM, I went off to the County Clerk's office to get 3 death certificates, and spent an hour waiting for them ,getting only 1 because of some snafu at the office. I went to lunch and to the library, got gas on the way home, and got home about 12:15 feeling lethargic. So I took a power nap, watched TV and read the paper a bit and dozed off again.
2:00 PM: Checked email and Bloglines again. I posted the Family Tree Magazine table of contents on Genea-Musings (I like doing this - it helps ME find things in the magazine). They had a good software review section in this issue. I remembered that I need to hook up my router again so my daughter can use her laptop here this weekend. Hooked it up, rebooted the computer, and ... it doesn't work. Wonder why? It's a job for my IT guy - my son-in-law is coming tomorrow and he can show me the error of my ways. Drat. Then it was scanning until 5:30. I will probably post something about my process on Genea-Musings tomorrow. I got all of the loose photos from the album into the computer as TIFs and converted them and the album pages to JPG format. I also picked some of the photos off the album pages and saved them as individual photos.
7:30 PM: Check email and Bloglines. Hey, who else writes three posts a day? I emailed my correspondent who wanted the death certificates. Then I wrote up my "lesson learned" from the County Clerk's office in a Genea-Musings post here. I try to learn something new every day! I remembered that I have limited information about my John Kenyon/Anna --?-- family in RI/CT, so I checked Ancestry.com to see if anybody has anything better. I don't think they do - too bad. The Kenyon surname book has my line wrong, but a Kenyon family web site has the same info that I do. I'm going to call it a night and get ready for an FHC visit and the SDGS meeting on Saturday by going to bed early.
Genealogy today: 7 hours, of which 1.5 was blogging. 1 hour was waiting at the Clerk's office. 1 hour was wasted on the router problem. The scanning and photo manipulation was the only useful thing I did today. Oh well - tomorrow is another genealogy today - just watch someone mess it up.
7:30 AM: The morning started with email and Bloglines as usual, and a song in my heart. So I wrote a Genea-Musings post about published "family tree" and "genealogy-related" topics. I wrote several emails to my CVGS board members passing information to them that they requested. At 10 AM, I went off to the County Clerk's office to get 3 death certificates, and spent an hour waiting for them ,getting only 1 because of some snafu at the office. I went to lunch and to the library, got gas on the way home, and got home about 12:15 feeling lethargic. So I took a power nap, watched TV and read the paper a bit and dozed off again.
2:00 PM: Checked email and Bloglines again. I posted the Family Tree Magazine table of contents on Genea-Musings (I like doing this - it helps ME find things in the magazine). They had a good software review section in this issue. I remembered that I need to hook up my router again so my daughter can use her laptop here this weekend. Hooked it up, rebooted the computer, and ... it doesn't work. Wonder why? It's a job for my IT guy - my son-in-law is coming tomorrow and he can show me the error of my ways. Drat. Then it was scanning until 5:30. I will probably post something about my process on Genea-Musings tomorrow. I got all of the loose photos from the album into the computer as TIFs and converted them and the album pages to JPG format. I also picked some of the photos off the album pages and saved them as individual photos.
7:30 PM: Check email and Bloglines. Hey, who else writes three posts a day? I emailed my correspondent who wanted the death certificates. Then I wrote up my "lesson learned" from the County Clerk's office in a Genea-Musings post here. I try to learn something new every day! I remembered that I have limited information about my John Kenyon/Anna --?-- family in RI/CT, so I checked Ancestry.com to see if anybody has anything better. I don't think they do - too bad. The Kenyon surname book has my line wrong, but a Kenyon family web site has the same info that I do. I'm going to call it a night and get ready for an FHC visit and the SDGS meeting on Saturday by going to bed early.
Genealogy today: 7 hours, of which 1.5 was blogging. 1 hour was waiting at the Clerk's office. 1 hour was wasted on the router problem. The scanning and photo manipulation was the only useful thing I did today. Oh well - tomorrow is another genealogy today - just watch someone mess it up.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/08/07
It was a pretty quiet day here at the Genea-Manor. Two appointments this morning for car maintenance and financial advice cut down on my endless quest for 24 hours of genealogy. Tonight I decided to watch CSI and ER rather than mindlessly search for strange names on Ancestry, or input more information into my databases.
7:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. No one has commented on my music posts at Genea-Musings yet. Oh well. Wrote a Genea-Musings post about Connecting the Dots, based on my work last night trying to find Adam Seaver's parents. Read my politics and sports sites too.
12:30 PM: Back from the appointments and lunch - I wrote up my NFL picks on the Busy Life blog. I also posted "The Best Day of My Life" on Genea-Musings. Then I figured I'd better get on with my scanning project. I worked my way through the last 20 or so loose photos, and even scanned the pages from the first Album (comb-binding, magnetic, with mylar sheets, pictures pasted down). That worked out pretty well - the pages laid pretty flat. The TIF files of the 9 by 12 sheets are 27 mb. If I want to, I can select individual photos using my Photo software and save them too. Then I found the two boxes of stuff that my cousins sent me, and I scanned the diplomas and useful papers from that box also. Finally, I got the big box that had three more albums and some larger pictures in it - more work to do. I'm tired of scanning! News and dinner time.
7:00 PM: Back at it with email. Remembered that I had not posted the SDGS meeting notice on Genea-Musings, so I did that. Then I posted two things on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog that I had written earlier on Genea-Musings. Back to Bloglines to read posts and commented on two of Terry's that were interesting. Even found the San Diego place names book and used it tonight. Now off to statistics, my book and the TV.
Genealogy today: only 7 hours - of which 2.5 hours were blogging.
7:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. No one has commented on my music posts at Genea-Musings yet. Oh well. Wrote a Genea-Musings post about Connecting the Dots, based on my work last night trying to find Adam Seaver's parents. Read my politics and sports sites too.
12:30 PM: Back from the appointments and lunch - I wrote up my NFL picks on the Busy Life blog. I also posted "The Best Day of My Life" on Genea-Musings. Then I figured I'd better get on with my scanning project. I worked my way through the last 20 or so loose photos, and even scanned the pages from the first Album (comb-binding, magnetic, with mylar sheets, pictures pasted down). That worked out pretty well - the pages laid pretty flat. The TIF files of the 9 by 12 sheets are 27 mb. If I want to, I can select individual photos using my Photo software and save them too. Then I found the two boxes of stuff that my cousins sent me, and I scanned the diplomas and useful papers from that box also. Finally, I got the big box that had three more albums and some larger pictures in it - more work to do. I'm tired of scanning! News and dinner time.
7:00 PM: Back at it with email. Remembered that I had not posted the SDGS meeting notice on Genea-Musings, so I did that. Then I posted two things on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog that I had written earlier on Genea-Musings. Back to Bloglines to read posts and commented on two of Terry's that were interesting. Even found the San Diego place names book and used it tonight. Now off to statistics, my book and the TV.
Genealogy today: only 7 hours - of which 2.5 hours were blogging.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/07/07
Well, it had to happen. I sort of flipped. I got the wild idea in the shower of writing lyrics about genealogy to the tune of old rock songs. So ...
8:00 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. Not much interesting, actually. First, I wrote a post about a problem with Ancestry that my colleague Chuck has - it's here. I went to http://www.oldielyrics.com/ and printed lyrics to "Searchin'" by the Coasters and "Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys. That should get me started! Uh-oh, it's almost time to go to the CVGS Board meeting. I copied the seminar PDFs onto my flash drive, gathered up my papers and dashed out the door. To the post office (lots of mail - cool), then to the library in time.
10:00 AM: Led the board meeting - only had 8 of us, so it went smoothly and quickly. Good discussion about the seminar feedback and what we could improve on. After the meeting, I copied the seminar PDF files to Gary's computer so he can make the CDROMs to sell. Then we went to lunch at Big Daddy's.
1:00 PM: Home again. OK, let's do the lyrics for "Ge-ne-al-o-gy" sung to "Surfin' USA" music. Here it is! I'll do the other one later. I need to scan more loose photos for the Christmas CDROM. I found my stack "to-do" and spent about three hours on it. Almost done with the loose ones. What else can I post? I want to put biographies online about my grandparents - so I did one for my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver here. Nap and news time before dinner.
7:00 PM: Email and Bloglines. Some good writing on the blogs - gotta note them for my "Best of" post on Sunday. I got an email from a lady looking for Adam Seaver (1811-1889). He was born in NY, moved to IL and IA, and died in KS. Looked in my database - don't have him in all my Seavers but I've heard of him before. Checked Ancestry records, family trees and stories, and there was one family tree with a little info - it's the lady who wrote me. The census records for 1840 to 1880 are complete - 6 kids, 2 wives. Matches the family tree (probably the same sources!). But I still can't place Adam in a family. Input Adam and his family data into my Seaver database so that I have it available next time. Now - it's time to lyricize "Searching" - this one is harder because of the slang used in the original song. Oh well, I'll do a whitebread version - see it here. Well, that's enough - time for email check, the stats and go watch the news a bit before bed. Will I dream of Thomas J. Newton, Elizabeth Dill, William Knapp and Cornelia Bresee tonight? If I do, I hope they tell me who their parents were!
Time for today: Genealogy = 11 hours, blogging = 2.5 hours. But I did some research and almost got my photo scanning done.
8:00 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. Not much interesting, actually. First, I wrote a post about a problem with Ancestry that my colleague Chuck has - it's here. I went to http://www.oldielyrics.com/ and printed lyrics to "Searchin'" by the Coasters and "Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys. That should get me started! Uh-oh, it's almost time to go to the CVGS Board meeting. I copied the seminar PDFs onto my flash drive, gathered up my papers and dashed out the door. To the post office (lots of mail - cool), then to the library in time.
10:00 AM: Led the board meeting - only had 8 of us, so it went smoothly and quickly. Good discussion about the seminar feedback and what we could improve on. After the meeting, I copied the seminar PDF files to Gary's computer so he can make the CDROMs to sell. Then we went to lunch at Big Daddy's.
1:00 PM: Home again. OK, let's do the lyrics for "Ge-ne-al-o-gy" sung to "Surfin' USA" music. Here it is! I'll do the other one later. I need to scan more loose photos for the Christmas CDROM. I found my stack "to-do" and spent about three hours on it. Almost done with the loose ones. What else can I post? I want to put biographies online about my grandparents - so I did one for my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver here. Nap and news time before dinner.
7:00 PM: Email and Bloglines. Some good writing on the blogs - gotta note them for my "Best of" post on Sunday. I got an email from a lady looking for Adam Seaver (1811-1889). He was born in NY, moved to IL and IA, and died in KS. Looked in my database - don't have him in all my Seavers but I've heard of him before. Checked Ancestry records, family trees and stories, and there was one family tree with a little info - it's the lady who wrote me. The census records for 1840 to 1880 are complete - 6 kids, 2 wives. Matches the family tree (probably the same sources!). But I still can't place Adam in a family. Input Adam and his family data into my Seaver database so that I have it available next time. Now - it's time to lyricize "Searching" - this one is harder because of the slang used in the original song. Oh well, I'll do a whitebread version - see it here. Well, that's enough - time for email check, the stats and go watch the news a bit before bed. Will I dream of Thomas J. Newton, Elizabeth Dill, William Knapp and Cornelia Bresee tonight? If I do, I hope they tell me who their parents were!
Time for today: Genealogy = 11 hours, blogging = 2.5 hours. But I did some research and almost got my photo scanning done.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Genea-Journal - 11/06/07
This was an interesting day, I made genealogy and family history progress on several fronts.
8:00 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. I decided to watch the AncestryPress Webinar from 11/1/07 and learned a lot from it. I posted about putting pictures in FTM and Ancestry here. Then I posted a summary of the Webinar here. Then it was off to the bank and the doctor.
11:30 AM: I need to start my scanning project today since I promised my cousins a CDROM for Christmas with Aunt Gerry's pictures on it. I got the box of pictures and decided to scan the loose pictures first, one at a time. I created a separate directory for them and put in about 90 pictures as TIF files, trying to title the files with persons, place and year. I'm about 80% done with the loose pictures. Linda needed to use the computer for awhile, so I took my nap and watched TV for awhile. I'm not sure how to proceed with the photo album - I can't take it apart or take the pictures off the pages, so I wrote a post here asking for suggestions on how to deal with it. Then it was dinner time and news time.
6:30 PM: Email and Bloglines. Two people have asked for Seaver information so I investigated that in my database. Will write emails back. A CVGS colleague had trouble finding a marriage in Indiana, so I helped him with that. I decided to try to find out Jessie's surname - she was the wife of Lewis Soule of Salem NH, married about 1922. When I put "Lewis Soule" and "Jessie" into the Ancestry search engine, it gave me some newspaper entries for Lewis' probate filings in 1942, and a link into a Soule surname book. The book had Jessie's full name (Jessie Rebecca Bleakney) and her birth date, which matched the birth date I had for her from the SSDI. Then I found that exact name and birthdate in a OneWorldTree database with several generations of ancestry, submitted by a Bleakney researcher. I spent some time inputting the Bleakney and collateral lines data, plus doing more of the Soule data from the Soule book. I'm going to shut down early and read my book after I check the stats.
Genealogy hours today: 10 hours, of which 1.0 was blogging.
8:00 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. I decided to watch the AncestryPress Webinar from 11/1/07 and learned a lot from it. I posted about putting pictures in FTM and Ancestry here. Then I posted a summary of the Webinar here. Then it was off to the bank and the doctor.
11:30 AM: I need to start my scanning project today since I promised my cousins a CDROM for Christmas with Aunt Gerry's pictures on it. I got the box of pictures and decided to scan the loose pictures first, one at a time. I created a separate directory for them and put in about 90 pictures as TIF files, trying to title the files with persons, place and year. I'm about 80% done with the loose pictures. Linda needed to use the computer for awhile, so I took my nap and watched TV for awhile. I'm not sure how to proceed with the photo album - I can't take it apart or take the pictures off the pages, so I wrote a post here asking for suggestions on how to deal with it. Then it was dinner time and news time.
6:30 PM: Email and Bloglines. Two people have asked for Seaver information so I investigated that in my database. Will write emails back. A CVGS colleague had trouble finding a marriage in Indiana, so I helped him with that. I decided to try to find out Jessie's surname - she was the wife of Lewis Soule of Salem NH, married about 1922. When I put "Lewis Soule" and "Jessie" into the Ancestry search engine, it gave me some newspaper entries for Lewis' probate filings in 1942, and a link into a Soule surname book. The book had Jessie's full name (Jessie Rebecca Bleakney) and her birth date, which matched the birth date I had for her from the SSDI. Then I found that exact name and birthdate in a OneWorldTree database with several generations of ancestry, submitted by a Bleakney researcher. I spent some time inputting the Bleakney and collateral lines data, plus doing more of the Soule data from the Soule book. I'm going to shut down early and read my book after I check the stats.
Genealogy hours today: 10 hours, of which 1.0 was blogging.
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