Saturday, July 30, 2011

Saturday Night Fun GOCD

Hey genea-addicts, it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and I hope that all of you do!), is to:

1) Read Michael John Neill's post 10 Signs You Have Genealogy OCD (come on, give Michael some link love).


2) Make up any number of sentences that will add to his list of signs that you have Genealogy OCD. From one to many, no limit!




1. You wake up at 4 O'clock in the morning to go to the bathroom and stop to check Ancestry on the way back to bed.

2. You turn off your computer and get an awful empty feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

3. You start using smileys in your snail mail to courthouses.

4. When your queries on RootsWeb message boards show "no new messages" that makes you feel really depressed.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

52 Weeks to Personal Genealogy First Job

Week #30 – Employment

Week 30: Employment. Describe your first job. What did you do? Were you saving for something in particular, or just trying to make a living? Did that first job provide skills and make an impact on your life today?


Well I did some work for my mom early on, she had a bookkeeping and income tax business and I did some typing for her, got so much a page I think it was a dime a page, and I made quite a lot. I also subbed at a gas station for a friend when he had a doctor appointment or something like that, but really did not get paid for that.
My real first job was parking cars at the Roosevelt Apartments Garage, I got minimum wage for that I think it was $1.60 an hour. The garage only had about 36 parking spots and it had been built in the 1920s so the spots were sized for Model T's and when I worked there in the 1960s all the cars were very much bigger than a Model T. The people would come in and I parked the car in the spot each person had picked for their car. We backed them in so they were within about 6 inches from the posts between the cars. Each space was big enough for two cars and an isle between the cars big enough to walk in. My favorite car to park was the 1952 or 1953 Packard, but that gentleman did not drive much so I did not get to park that car very often.
I was going to the community college when I had this job, so all the money I made went for books and tuition, etc.
I can still park a car in a small space in a parking garage, so I guess it was a good learning experience.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

52 Weeks to Personal Water

Week #29 – Water

Week 29: Water. Do you have any memories of the sea or another body of water? Did you live there or just visit? What did you do there? You can also describe a body of water by which you live or visit in the present day.


Well I have previously written about going to Ocean Shores, Washington to go clam digging, and my sister still owns a trailer lot there, but the body of water we go to a lot more is Twin Lakes in Northern Idaho. It is a lake carved out of the mountains by the glaciers. It is actually two lakes connected by a channel, Upper Twin is oval and pretty shallow about 35 feet at the deepest, while Lower Twin is long and narrow and very deep in places over 100 feet deep. When we were first there they used the water for irrigation and so the lake would drop about 7 feet in the summer, but all the farms but one have quit farming and so the lake only drops about 3 feet a year now.
The pictures below are from the parade of boats on the Fourth of July this year, the first one is our neighbors boat with his girl friend in the Statue of Liberty costume, while in the back is George & Martha Washington.



This is the fireboat coming up the rear in the boat parade.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Saturday Night Fun Sweet Sixteen

This week’s challenge from Randy is:

List your 16 great-great-grandparents with their birth, death and marriage data (dates and places).
Determine the countries (or states) that these ancestors lived in at their birth and at their death.
For extra credit, go make a "Heritage Pie" chart for the country of origin (birth place) for these 16 ancestors. [Hint: you could use the chart generator from Kid Zone for this.] [Note: Thank you to Sheri Fenley for the "Heritage Pie" chart idea.]





Mikkel Madsen b. 11 May 1807 d. 8 Sep 1888 Denmark

Kristen Hansdatter b. 21 May 1804 d. 23 Jan 1880 Denmark

Jorgen Pedersen b. abt 1791 Denmark

Johanne Margrethe Jensdatter b. abt 1803 Denmark

Enos Dillingham b. 10 Aug 1804 d. 12 Jun 1876 Maine English

Clarissa Virgin b. abt 1806 d. 25 May 1853 Maine English

Richard Hellenbolt b. abt 1815 New York German?

Rhoda Preston b. abt 1816 Canada English?

Thomas Kelly b. 27 Apr 1827 Kentucky d. 1 Mar 1896 Missouri Irish

Margaret Josephine Forsyth b. 29 Dec 1833 Illinois d. 28 Jul 1905 Missouri Scotish

Joseph Hert b. 29 Jun 1830 Indiana d. 12 May 1912 Missouri ???

Sadie Jane Selson b. 18 Mar 1832 Indiana d. 26 Jul 1913 Missouri ????

Daniel Columbus Travis b. 4 May 1833 Illinois d. 27 Mar 1905 Missouri Irish

Mary Elizabeth Travis b. New York d. 27 Oct 1927 Missouri Irish

Joseph Vanderpool b. Abt 1831 Tennessee d. 1 Oct 1929 Oklahoma Dutch

Margaret Loe b. 3 Aug 1837 Missouri d. abt 1901 Missouri German

Friday, July 15, 2011

52 Weeks to Personal Genealogy Summer

Week #28 – Summer

Week 28: Summer. What was summer like where and when you grew up? Describe not only the climate, but how the season influenced your activities, food choices, etc.


Summer meant hot weather and swimming, my parents had bought a lake lot at Twin Lakes in north Idaho, and we built a cabin on the lot, so nearly every weekend in the summer we headed for the lake. My sister and I would swim, fish, go boating, and later on water skiing. Usually June was cool and by July 4th the lake would warm up to the mid 70s and be a great lake for swimming. By August it would usually hit 80 degree water. We are still in an area with low humidity, so a nice warm lake to swim in is wonderful in the summer. We also live in an area with a lot of fresh fruit, so mom canned and froze almost any fruit in season, so nice to open a jar of canned peaches in January or a container of raspberries from the freezer, mmmmmmmm. We usually had a garden also so fresh vegetables and some were canned or frozen, but a lot never made it to the house.
Hot weather also meant we stayed outside a lot and with my fair skin and no sun screen then I got sunburned a lot. Mom sprayed us with McNess spray that killed the burning, but I still pealed a few times before I finally tanned enough to not burn. So I wore a t-shirt nearly all day in the water or not, and that helped. My sister had darker skin that tanned real fast so she seldom got sunburned. Today I live with sun screen in the summer.

Now above I kept saying usually, for this summer has been very cold and wet, our first 80 degree day was late in June this year, while it usually in May or even April, and we did not hit 90 till July this year about a month later than usual.
The picture below is out my back door looking at my rain gauge, it has over an inch of rain. The white pile in back is hail that ran out of my rain gutter and piled up. This picture was taken on June 2 and the storm was June 1st. I was so surprised that the pile of hail had not melted yet, and there was still some left on June 3.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

My Second Blogiversary

Wow it seems like a long time since my first Blog post in 2009, but it has gone well and I keep learning more and more by reading other blogs. I have about 280 blogs my Google Reader that I read, and like last year about a third of them are not genealogy related, but very interesting anyway. This year I wrote 189 blog posts or slightly more than last year when I had written 172 blog posts.
I am still doing research for Eastern Washington Genealogical Society and occasionally I post on the EWGS blog, so it was nice to have the EWGS blog picked as One of Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs for 2011!
Will Mikkel's Hus ever be one of the top 40? I hope not, there are a lot of better blogs than mine on geneabloggers, but I will keep plugging away for another year.


Charles

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Saturday Night Fun Elevator Pitch


Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
I saw Tonia Kendrick's post #31WBGB: Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog and thought to myself "self, that would make a good SNGF - and lead more readers to Tonia's 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy blog too" which may help all of us! So:

1) Write your Elevator Speech...see suggestions in #31WBGB: Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog. The essence of it is: "It’s a brief overview that can be delivered in the space of an elevator ride (hence, the name). “The idea is that you have a short and sharp piece that you can say about yourself when the opportunity aris
es..."

I like genealogy research because of the quiet solitude of the library and archives, but the most uplifting part of genealogy is all the friends you meet up with helping others to the next step of their genealogy.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

52 Weeks to Personal Genealogy Vacations

Week #27 – Vacation

Week 27. Vacations. Where did your family go on vacation? Did you have a favorite place? Is it still there? If not, how has the area changed?


Well we went a lot of places on vacations, Glacier Park, Yellowstone, Disneyland, and California once. Mom had a friend from school and she was living in Truckee, California when we went to see her. We stopped at Mt. Lassen, and Mt. Shasta on the way down and while at Truckee we saw Donner Pass and Squaw Valley Ski Area, but most years we went to the coast of Washington near Ocean Shores and went clam digging. Finally mom and pop and my uncle bought a lot at Ocean Shores and so we had a place to stay when we went clam digging. My sister bought it from my uncle and parents and so we still go there on vacation, but neither my sister or I are very fond of clams so have not gone clam digging in a lot of years. Mostly now we just go and mow the lawn and trim the bushes that grow at an amazing rate to us from the dry east side of Washington.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Happy Fourth of July

Tonight we set off our fireworks next to the lake, and then watched as several others around the lake fired of their fireworks. We have done fireworks for at least the last 50 years, but they are getting pretty expensive.

On the Fourth the "Parade of Boats start about 11 a.m. All decorated with flags and one even has a Statue of Liberty.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Saturday Night Fun Bucket List

Knowing that a "Bucket List" is a wish list of things to do before death:

1) What is on your Genealogy Bucket List? What research locations do you want to visit? Are there genea-people that you want to meet and share with? What do you want to accomplish with your genealogy research? List a minimum of three items - more if you want!

2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own (please give me a link in Comments).


Well I have visited Minnesota and Wisconsin where my Hansen's settled from Denmark, and Missouri where my mom and a few generations settled, so for places to visit:
1. Denmark is number one, I would really like to see where my grandfather and great, great grandparents lived.
2. Colborg, Ontario, Canada. Seems like several of my ancestors moved there or were born there, and also a few collateral families.
3. Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, got a few ancestors from there and then the moved north to Maine, so I could see that area also. And while I am there visit the New England Historical Society library.

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