Author: Kathleen

Fearless Females: Playing Favorites

Posted on by Kathleen

I’m participating in Women’s History Month writing prompts during the month of March! I love writing prompts because they give you a subject to write about that you might not have thought of yourself. These prompts were thought of by Lisa Alzo of  The Accidental Genealogist.

March 1st: Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

I think I do a very good job of hiding my undercover preference for my Great-Grandmother Llewellyn Thorward-Moore. Okay, so I don’t hide my obvious preference well. It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t tell you why I feel so connected to her. It might be because I never got to know her, but everyone around me has such warm memories of her. Even when I receive emails from long lost cousins, they tell me all the great memories they have of Llewellyn. I also have learned a lot about her through her records and pictures.

I’ve learned so much about her that I don’t think I could really pin down anything that I’d want to learn. Through her notes, correspondence, photos, and other’s memories I’ve learned more about her then I can ever imagine. Most special to me was seeing genealogy notes. She had obviously been trying to figure out her own family tree from what I can tell. I have her wedding gift registry which gives me the names, addresses, and gifts received for her 1926 wedding to William L Moore. There are little notes about all the milestones from my Grandpa’s early years. Llewellyn left a perfect trail for me to follow in researching her life. I just wish I could say the same about her grandfather! ha.

Really my future goals for researching Llewellyn is just to continue to pour through her journal and documents to get a glimpse into what her life was like. I also hope to continue to hear stories about her from my father and his sisters. They have great stories about growing up with her and William!

Lesson Learned: Take Notes

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About 2 weeks ago, I had a conundrum with George Yohn/George Thorward. The next step in my dilemma was to ask questions. Who else should I ask but my Grandpa Moore! The thing is I’ve had a lot of genealogy conversations over the years and the one thing I forget to do is take notes. I don’t know why I fail to do it everytime. It is what it is. This time was different though.

My next step in this process? Actually having specific questions first. I just realized out of the many, many hours I’ve talked family history with my Dad’s side of the family, we’ve never discussed the Moores except for a little nugget Aunt Lori had for me. So I need to ask Grandpa about what he remembers about the Moores. Then I need to verify the dairy information he gave me last time because I wasn’t clear on it before.

The inset of the picture above is awhat my original notes look like. I am a messy note taker but I can’t stand trying to read those kind of notes on a regular basis. So I got myself a separate notebook just for my neat notes.

I even took both sets of notes with my handy archival pen! I’m learning here folks! Slowly but surely!

A Day at the Beach

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What’s a girl got to do to get an invitation to Beach Day?

I recognize Jennie Love and her husband Lewis Thorward, but the others, well your guess is as good as mine! I’m pretty sure one of Jennie’s sisters is sitting next to her. They look like they could be related.

What fun they must have had. I think I have a whole months worth of beach pictures alone I could post about.

Learning As I Go

Posted on by Kathleen

I’m the youngest child in my family. This has made me be very flexible in everything I do. Sure there are perks to being the youngest as I’m sure any older sibling will be glad to highlight. As a child, I wouldn’t call these life lessons perks, but now that I’m grown, I can appreciate some things I’ve learned. I didn’t need that cookie anyway, it was going straight to my hips. I don’t need to play that video game, because it’s much more fun watching my older siblings play… honest! Basically I’ve learned to roll with the punches in life. There is no doubt life is going to throw me a few lemons. It’s my job to be persistent and not give up. Eventually, I’m going to get a cookie and my turn will come around on the video game. Sure I won’t be as good at them as my sibling are and I’ll end up playing by myself (they were done with the game by this hypothetical time) but my turn is coming!

When I started this blog, I quickly modified a template that allowed me to somewhat match my website design that was already in place at the main website. As time grew, I also grew as an amateur web designer. I’ve learned all kinds of new tricks and it’s always bothered me that I modified a template I didn’t create myself. It was the same when I wasn’t blogging. I was constantly trying to make my own template for TNG. I’ve finally conquered that and now I’m onto conquering WordPress.

What you see above is how far I’ve come on my new design. As you can see, I figured out a lot of the quirks of designing my WordPress template from scratch. However, I have to go back to the drawing board because while I like aspects of the design. Once I had all three columns lined up, it looks too busy for me. Once I started looking at how busy it looked I don’t like many more things about it.

Why am I taking the time to blog about this? Well why not? I love sharing all the aspects of this website on my blog. Mostly because I’m a rambler. I like to talk a lot. Most people think I’m very quiet but if you engage me in website or genealogy talk, I can go for hours. In all honesty I feel like this blog is a glimpse into my life whether it be talking about my Fisher Price Little People, using Google Earth to travel from the comfort of my pajamas, and over-sharing about my website foibles.

So what am I going to change in the new design? Definitely the number of columns. If I stick with three columns (which I doubt), I’ll have the thinner columns on the same side. I really think I’ll go for the 2 column look though. I already have some ideas on how to incorporate the things on the left into the right column.

I refuse to give up though. More than once I’ve wanted to just chuck all this product testing and find a template to use. I won’t learn anything from that though. So my training as the youngest in the family is kicking in and I’m learning patience again. Not to mention this website is something that I’m really proud. I’ve learned a lot about myself by teaching myself everything that I’ve put up here. It’s something that I’ve done that impresses my siblings and my parents. Any younger sibling will tell what a feat that is! I’ve impressed them! They think I’m a little bit cool!

So that’s the latest chapter in my website soap opera. Now it’s time to go to PhotoShop and start messing around with colors and design. That’s the fun part!