I watched a great tutorial video from Amy Johnson Crow about Adobe Spark. I was inspired to make a video about my grandmother’s ancestors to share with my family. I also attended a Google Hangout with DearMYRTLE’s distant cousin, Sweet Sadie, which was another great walk-through of creating a video. It was a fun, quick process… well besides hearing myself talk. That’s always strange!
Continue reading “Adobe Spark”Author: Kathleen
Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
This post is about the procedures and guidelines I am setting up for myself. I even made pretty Word documents, because if I make a list, that means I mean business! I hope at least!
Continue reading “Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines”Decoration Day, 1923
In 2011, I posted one picture from my great-grandmother’s collection. It was of a Decoration Day parade in Caldwell, New Jersey. Here is another few pictures from that same day. I happen to also know thanks to Llewellyn’s diary, that her and her mother used to volunteer with her church to decorate the graves of veterans also. She sure was one great lady. I am thinking of all our fallen soldiers today.
SNGF: My Ancestor’s Occupations
Randy Seaver has posted another great Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic! The mission this week is to list the occupations of my ancestors. Well, I certainly can do that! To protect privacy, I will omit anyone who is still living.
Randy suggested using the Ancestor Chart number for each person, so here we go!
Continue reading “SNGF: My Ancestor’s Occupations”Herbert Redford
Herbert Redford happens to be one of my favorite ancestors. I know I’m not supposed to play favorites but I just can’t help it. He is the first ancestor whose record I sent away for. I was so excited and it took quite a long time. It was well worth it though. 🙂 Plus I have this photo I believe to be him. It was passed down through the family and I was given a photocopy of it where someone identified him as “Herbert Redford”.
Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
Okay, so the best way to get through things is to just jump right into them. I’ve learned that about myself over the years. Starting on Thursday of last week, I started getting things ready for my Genealogy Go-Over. The first section of the Do-Over/Go-Over is to clear your slate. I know myself, which means I’m going to have some problems keeping my fingers out of the cookie jar. My intention isn’t to start completely over from scratch. What I do want to do is revisit my current family file person by person. One of the big things that I wanted to happen in my Family File Cleanup was I wanted a good sync between my Ancestry.com DNA Family Tree, my computer database and my website database. I don’t want to have one thing in one, and have to use another for something else.
Continue reading “Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started”Not a Brick Wall but a Brain Wall
Just last week, I wrote about how my thinking has changed over the 13 years I’ve researched my family history. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two weeks watching videos and reading genealogy books. It’s very funny how much my thinking has changed over just the last few weeks. The more I learn, the more I realize that I didn’t have brick walls before but brain walls.
The reason I say brain walls is because what used to seem insurmountable, just isn’t anymore. Things are challenging, or they test my knowledge but never does it feel like I’m stuck. Okay, George Thorward sometimes makes me feel stuck. That’s only because I need to get access to more records or learn more about something. It feels like something finally switched in my head. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m analyzing the data better or because I’m becoming more knowledgeable about how to do things. I don’t have a college educated background in research and things, so I didn’t start with all this knowledge on how to write-up reports or do huge research projects. I’m just trying to learn the best I can. Really that’s all any of us can do I guess.
Have you ever had something just click in your head? I’m sorry for all the rambling posts lately, I am just being very contemplative as I get ready for my Genealogy Do-Over.
Credit: Lightbulb image is a free stock photo.
William Harmon Mays
This weeks timeline focus is my great-grandfather, William Harmon Mays. Lets see what I can find to do next with him. 🙂
Continue reading “William Harmon Mays”The Genealogy Breakthrough that Made Me Cry
I don’t usually do blog posts this close together, but I just had to share my latest break through. I was attending one of Legacy Family Tree’s webinars (Mining Uber-sites for Germany Ancestors by James Beidler) and using one of the tips, broke down my not-so brick wall. This brick wall has stumped us all for years. I’ve talked about George Thorward before.
- Wordless Wednesday: George Thorward – 1st Car
- Tombstone Tuesday: Thorwards – Tombstone pictures for George and his wife Josephine, plus an extra one of them outside their house.
- Did I Find Him? – An entry where I first wonder about the George Thorward/George Yohn question.
- Surname Saturday: Thorward – A very brief glimpse of what I knew of the Thorwards in July of 2010
- An Unexpected, Yet Expected Turn – George shows up in his marriage record as George Yohn and I end the entry with the question: Who are you George?
- Mysterious Ancestors: I tried to examine this George Yohn/George Thorward thing yet again.
- George Yohn… Again: I got Josephine and George’s marriage record in the mail
- Timeline: George Thorward: Again, I use a timeline strategy to sort out what I know about George Thorward/Yohn. Note: Eagle eye readers will notice I state at the beginning that I lost the article that showed where he came from in Germany. Then post that same article at the bottom of the post. Talk about losing things right in front of your face!
Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?
I have been equally overwhelmed and inspired since returning from my genealogy break. Coming back from a long break has left me with fresh eyes, and a mostly fresh brain. What isn’t fresh, is my computer files. After all the stress and heartache of 2014, I just didn’t have it in me to continue trying to fix the mess my computer swap left me. I basically just walked away from the task and didn’t think about it anymore.
I previously talked about it in a March 2014 post. So now here I am. Wondering how I’m going to get started again. Sure I’ve been researching, but I am limping along. My digital organization is working alright, though I’m still trying to better it. I have an overabundance of files after my computer switch and then a software switch after The Unforgivable Act (TUA). Honestly, I don’t even know if I got around to telling you the details about that aftermath. In the interest of saving web space, I will just briefly say that I was using Family Tree Maker and was test driving Legacy Family Tree. Family Tree Maker crashed for the thousandth time and corrupted my file. I restored it just fine but I officially signed off Family Tree Maker that day and started to use Legacy full-time. I was just done with dealing with it.
Continue reading “Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?”