Worked overtime until 7 o’clock. Made the 7:45 home.
A Day at the Beach
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
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!
Diary of Llewellyn: February 24, 1923
Worked over time all Saturday afternoon until 5 o’clock. Went home and went to bed early.
Next Entry: February 26, 1923
Diary of Llewellyn: February 23, 1923
Mr Lillatson asked us to work over time on Income Tax forms. Stayed until about 6:15 and then took train to Montclair and trolley up. Had to go to choir rehearsal. E walked home with me. He was down to Newark and went to the Terminal Theater by himself last night.
Next entry: February 24, 1923
Statistics: February 2011
The last time I posted my statistics was in October, oy!
Okay, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. I won’t make excuses. It just didn’t happen! My individual count is up by 63. I do have to say though, ALL 63 are completely cited. Nothing is in the file without a source citation. So 63 is a bigger number then what you first think.
Continue reading “Statistics: February 2011”Diary of Llewellyn: February 22, 1923
Took a ride to Roseland in afternoon. Pa closed store all day.
Next Entry: February 23, 1923
Seriously, Use City Directories
I don’t know if you can tell or not, but I’m kind of obsessed with City Directories. It started when I was going through them on Footnote.com and learning so much about William Moore. Now it’s a full blown obsession. I just can’t believe the things I’ve learned just by looking up people in the directories. Today though, I found something even crazier then I’ve found in the months since my first look.
From the directory excerpt you see above, what interests me most is the second Thorward on the list.
Continue reading “Seriously, Use City Directories”— George died April 8 1940 age 88
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Week 7
Week 7: Toys. What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?
It goes against everything in me to only choose one thing. I have no idea why I’m like that, but I am. So I’ll just make a brief mention of the other toys I loved. My Little Pony. There I said it. I had more My Little Ponies than I did Barbies. I had Barbies too though, and my Momma made their clothes. How awesome was she? I also loved, loved, loved C.U.T.I.E. figurines. If you do a google image search you can find them but I have a link that does better. There was another toy I loved, they were little clear, plastic princesses I think but no one remembers their names. It reminds me of when I was trying to remember the name of a cartoon I watched as a kid. All I could remember was the little girl in the yellow dress flies out the window with a koala bear. My momma was stuck on David the Gnome. She sure loved David the Gnome. HA. It was called Noozles by the way.
Back onto the subject, I’m here to talk about my number one love. They were called Little People and they were made by Fisher Price. I loved these things. I loved them to death. I even talked about them way back in Childhood Car memories week. This one is made out of wood, and it was bought off eBay probably around 10 years ago. I don’t know what happened to my Little People. Most likely they were given to a family friend who had little girls, much like my Barbie collection. The set I had were plastic. If you want to read about the complete history of these (I’m the only one right? haha), there’s a great write up of their evolution here: link. On that page, the ones I’m familiar with are at the bottom of the History page. I had a million of them though and I had all kinds of accessories. It was my most played with toy and it’s the one I associate with my childhood.
My favorite thing to do was make families, and have them go about their day to day. I’d pick up the kids with the school bus and I’d drop them off all over the house on the “bus route”. It’s probably why I’ve switched to The Sims 2 as I got older. Same concept, just on a computer!
Sadly, Little People are no longer how I remember them. A quick trip to the Fisher Price website will show you how they’ve changed. Visiting the website made me want to go out to the shed and dig out the school bus and house (also from that eBay purchase) I know are in there somewhere. It could be fun to compare them right?
Little People today. Picture from Fisher Price website
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is a weekly series thought up by Amy Coffin and hosted by GeneaBloggers. It encourages genealogy bloggers to share their own memories and history, so that we don’t forget that one day, our own stories will be important to future generations.
An Unexpected, Yet Expected Turn
Yesterday, I was trying to catch up on my genealogy blog reading. The over 500 still unread blog posts in my Google Reader tells me I didn’t make much progress. You see, I have a few favorite blogs that I like to read through first. They’re the ones I’ve been reading the longest.
That’s when I came across Randy Seaver’s blog post, Tuesday’s Tip – Use the list of FREE Online Vital Records Databases on LearnWebSkills.com site. Of particular interest to me was the Vital Records section where the FREE links were. I jumped to New Jersey because New Jersey has been a big problem for me so far. (Note: I’m starting to think I’ve built New Jersey up in my mind as a big hassle. I now realize it might not be as bad as I make it out to be.)
That led me to the New Jersey State Archives website. They have a full list of databases that are searchable online! The unfortunate thing is it also led me to the biggest pet peeve I have.
Please, Please, Please. I’m begging all website developers out there. CHECK YOUR DESIGN IN ALL WEB BROWSERS. No it’s not fun to test in Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari but I do it anyway. Most times there are two categories where websites end up. In the works and doesn’t work category. Most times your design will work in Internet Explorer and not any other browser. Sometimes it will work in Chrome but not Internet Explorer. (Rarely though.) The thing is, it’s all the same code but unfortunately the browsers all process the code differently. I’ve had it all be a horrible jumble in Chrome because an errant SPACE in my .css file. So please, just check it. You want to make sure no matter what browser your visitor is using, they see your vision or even just the content.
Now back to the real reason for this post. You may or may not remember a few months back when I speculated maybe I had found George Thorward in the 1870 census but wasn’t quite sure? Well I didn’t ever get any farther on that. I’ve been searching on and off trying to find immigration records for George but just haven’t found them yet. I would love to head to the Caldwell Library and see what kind of books they have.
Here’s the 1870 census again for reference. Line 18 is my 3rd Great-Grandmother, Josephine Doremus and line 9 is the suspect, George Yohn.
Here is the record I found on the New Jersey State Archives website yesterday. I should have known this would just lead to more questions! In fact, I had even more after I tried explaining to my Dad last night, because he doesn’t ‘get’ the genealogy thing and so it helps me to bounce things off him. That’s when I know whether something is concrete or not.
So here are my questions. What’s with the Yohn? If they were married under the Yohn name, does this mean they legally changed it at some point in time? Their first child, Frank Thorward, was born in 1872. Was Frank born a Yohn? Was Thorward the original name but changed to Yohn at time of immigration? Or was Yohn the original name and he just wanted to change it? Aunt Lori told me George had a brother that also lived in Caldwell but they had a falling out and never spoke again. Is the brother a Yohn or a Thorward? Maybe this is why I didn’t have any evidence of a brother yet.
If you haven’t guessed yet, I didn’t catch up on my Google Reader blog posts.
