Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Matzoh Ball Soup, Yum!

Somehow, February 4 became National Homemade Soup Day.  I can't find any information on how this came to pass, but more than one site agrees on it, so I'm going with it.

My favorite homemade soup is matzoh ball soup.  I make it for my Passover seders, and I also usually make it for Chanukah, to go along with the latkes and my new favorite fried chicken recipe, which is an Italian Chanukah fried chicken.

When I make matzoh ball soup, it's almost always with chicken.  I make my chicken stock from scratch.  I save bones all year long, in addition to the cut-offs from carrots and celery and the skins from onions.  Sometimes I'll actually go buy a parsnip or two to throw in there, but not often.

Once I made a fish stock for the matzoh ball soup, just to try it.  Fish stock is much lighter than chicken stock, so instead of onions, the recipe called for shallots.

I make my matzoh balls from scratch also, including the super special "secret" ingredient for making the matzoh balls light and fluffy.  I didn't get that from my family, since my mother wasn't particularly domestically inclined and I never knew her to make matzoh ball soup, or any soup from scratch.  (The only Jewish food I vaguely recall her making was chopped liver.)  No, I had to borrow another family's secret ingredient.  But everyone I know has the same secret ingredient:  seltzer water.  There, I've said it.  Now the secret is out.  But if everyone has the same secret, was it really a secret?

I like small matzoh balls, about an inch in diameter.  I find they cook better and actually benefit from the seltzer water, so they really are light and fluffy.  I know that some people prefer big honking huge matzoh balls, the kind that one matzoh ball fills up the whole bowl.  Nope, not for me.  What's the point of the seltzer water if you get this dense, heavy medicine ball?

The soup itself, I don't put any meat or vegetables in it.  It's just the stock and the matzoh balls.

And I am proud to say that everyone loves my matzoh ball soup.  Even Jason (now the husband of my second former daughter-in-law), although it took three times of me bringing some over before he finally remembered to eat it before it went bad in the fridge.  And then he decided he wanted to come over to have it the day it was made, just to enjoy the freshness.  He liked it then also.

When I was still living in the San Francisco Bay area, my friend Anne always came for seder, and usually her daughter Karen did also.  Karen is a vegetarian.  After a couple of years of making the chicken version for everyone else and a small amount of vegetable stock for Karen, I got tired of making two versions and started doing the vegetarian version for everyone.  My secret for that is lots of onions to give it good flavor.  Karen actually asked me for the recipe to make it herself, which I took as a high compliment.  But now that I'm not cooking for a vegetarian, it's back to chicken stock.

Image copyright Just Nora.  Used under a Creative Commons license.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Feed the Birds Today

It's amazing how many dedicated "days" there are out there.  Did you know that today, February 3, is Feed the Birds DayOne page says this was established in 2016 as part of National Bird Feeding Month, which dates back to 1994.

I don't have any bird feeders set up, although I do plan to install a hummingbird feeder this spring.  I am a bird lover, though, so to help celebrate Feed the Birds Day, I found some photos that feature the bird feeder in my late father's back yard.  They all seem to be of the same pair of birds.  These were in the ever-popular photo bonanza scanned by my sister's niece.




Saturday, February 1, 2025

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five Fun or Different Facts

I knew when I read the subject for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun that it sounded familiar.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  We all find fun or different information about ourselves, our relatives, and our ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five fun or different facts in your life or your ancestors' lives?

2.  Tell us about your five fun or different facts in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.   Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

[Thank you to Jacquie Schattner for suggesting this topic last year.]

I'm glad I looked at last year's post on this subject, because the first thing that came to my mind to write about was something I wrote about last year!  But here's a new group of fun and different facts about me and my family members.

• My father played the part of Captain John Landry in a Sanford (Florida) Theatre Guild production of Petticoat Fever in May 1954.  (In the 1936 movie, that part was played by George Hassell.)  I know my father finished high school in Sanford, but I don't know if the guild was connected to his school or was an independent group.  The newspaper review (to the left) calls it a "local amateur group", so I'm leaning toward it being separate from the school.

• My mother liked to name our cats with different names for the Devil and similar creatures.  We had Beelzebub, Demon, Diablo (Spanish for devil), Lucifer, and Shaitan (which she told us was Hebrew for the Devil, but which Wikipedia identifies as an evil spirit in Islam), among others.

• My sister Laurie has gotten big into dragon boat racing and competes internationally.

• My uncle Marty was stationed with the U.S. Air Force in Alaska during the Good Friday earthquake in 1964.  When I asked him what he remembered about the quake, all he could come up with is that they had to help clean stuff up in Anchorage.

• The only F I have ever gotten in my academic career came in physical education when my teacher (may she forever be cursed) failed me because she thought I was faking it when I couldn't do a cartwheel.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Turkish Coffee with No Sugar???

Today is January 30, which on the Jewish calendar was 1 Shevat (I say "was" because I'm writing this after sundown, which means it's now 2 Shevat; I had a busy day).  And 1 Shevat is my mother's yahrzeit and the day I've chosen to write about my memories of her on my blog.

Even though it's rather late in the day at this point, I was thinking about coffee, which was one of my mother's favorite things to drink.  She always had to start her day with at least one cup of coffee, and she would drink it throughout the day also.

And that coffee was always strong and black.  She never added anything to her coffee — no sugar, no cream, no nothin'.  Just plain black coffee.

Well, sure, I hear you saying, there's nothing special about that.  Lots of people like black coffee.

But do lots of people like their Turkish coffee that way?

See, my mother didn't even like sugar in her Turkish coffee, which I've always heard is the traditional way to drink it.  Because Turkish coffee is really, really strong.  The kind where people joke it's only strong enough when the spoon stands up on its own in the cup.

Nope, no sugar in that either.  Just plain and black, please.

Now that's a woman who really liked her coffee.

My mother and I talked about coffee only once that I can recall.  It was after I had started college.  I was probably visiting for the holidays.  I think she was drinking a cup of coffee and offered me one.  I told her I didn't like coffee.  She was surprised and said that she used to drink a lot of coffee when she was in college and cramming for her exams.  I remember telling her that was the difference — I didn't have to cram for my exams.  She never asked me about coffee again.

I still don't like coffee.  My idea of the perfect cup of coffee is you take a big mug, pour a packet of instant hot chocolate into the bottom, add two spoonfuls of sugar, fill it about one third of the way with coffee, stir it up really well, and then fill the rest of the mug with half and half or whole milk.  Yes, I know that coffee drinkers sneer at me.  But I think of it as kind of like starting the day with a milkshake.

Turkish coffee image by Engin Akyurt and used under the Pixabay Content License.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Would It Have Been Three Generations of Illegitimate Births?

It occurred to me that we almost could have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births in my family.

We start with my grandfather.  I have written previously about how my great-grandmother Laura, way back in 1903, had my grandfather without the benefit of marriage.  His original birth certificate had the socially disapproving "OW" ("out of wedlock") written on the line where the father's name would normally have been.  The form actually included instructions to write OW if the child was born out of wedlock.  I guess you weren't allowed to put the father's name under those circumstances.

Sure, my great-grandmother went back 37 years later and amended the birth certificate to include her (then deceased) first husband's name as the father, but I proved through Y-DNA testing that Cornelius Elmer Sellers was not my grandfather's biological father.  I'm very happy that Elmer was willing to marry Laura and accepted her 7-month-old son as his own.  Neither my grandfather nor any of his siblings had any idea, as far as I can tell.  But Grandpa was still born illegitimate.

Grandpa went on to marry in 1923, and he and his first wife, Elizabeth, had three children.  The first one, a little boy, died at just 20 months old, but my two aunts lived long lives, and I knew both of them.

In 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression, the four family members were enumerated in the census as living in four different places.  Grandpa was back at home, living with his mother.  The older of my aunts was living in that county in the county children's home.  The younger aunt was living with a relatively well off couple in a different county.  Elizabeth was living in that second county, working as a maid for a family.  My guess is that she moved to that county so one of the parents would be near their younger daughter.

According to the 1930 census, Grandpa was working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  Coincidentally, my grandmother Anna was also working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  My hypothesis is that the silk mill is where they met each other.

However they met, they got along well enough that my father was born in 1935.  And they stayed together for about 17 years or so, until my grandfather decided to run off with a young woman he had met working at the nearby U.S. Army post.

Maybe my grandfather had a reputation.  But that young woman told him that she wasn't going to do anything with him until he proved to her that he was a single man (at least, that's what she told me).  So in 1953, he got divorced — from Elizabeth, not from Anna.  Which meant that he had never been married to my grandmother.  Which then meant that my father was illegitimate.

Hey, now we have two generations!

Many, many years later, my father was married to his third wife.  One day she suddenly decided she wanted to convert to Catholicism.  We learned that part of the process for that was that she had to have her and my father's previous marriages annulled.

When my father's first wife, Mary Lou, heard about that, she was extremely upset.  After all, they had had a daughter together.  And Mary Lou believed that if the marriage was annulled, the daughter (my half-sister) would then be officially considered illegitimate.

My stepmother did not follow through on her conversion, so none of the marriages was annulled, and we didn't have to deal with Mary Lou stressing over my sister being declared illegitimate.

Recently, I learned that the marriage of my cousin's parents was officially annulled.  My cousin thought that had made her illegitimate, and she was still upset about that, even though it had occurred many years previously.

I researched the question, and discovered that in the Catholic church, if a marriage is annulled but was a valid marriage to begin with, the children are still considered to be legitimate.

So not only is my cousin considered legitimate, which definitely made her feel better, even if my stepmother had gone through with her conversion, my sister also would have still been considered legitimate after her parents' marriage had been annulled.

So no, we would not have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births.

But it still makes a good story.

When I discovered that my grandfather's divorce in 1953 was from Elizabeth and not from Anna, I called my father and told him, "Guess what?  You're a bastard!"  He thought it was hilarious.  And my sister was highly amused at the thought that she would be considered illegitimate if her parents' marriage were annulled.  We have a good sense of humor in this family.

Image by Steve Buissinne, stevepb, through Pixabay.  Used under the Pixabay content license.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

One Catholic School Alum in the Family

Today is the beginning of National Catholic Schools Week for 2025.  And Catholic schools actually played a role in my family, notwithstanding that none of my ancestors (at least as far as I know) was Catholic per se.

When my father was born, my grandmother was almost 43 years old (although she thought she was almost 42), which in 1935 was a relatively advanced age to be having a child, especially since her last children (twins) had been born 20 years previously.  She probably was not planning or expecting to become pregnant.

But pregnant she was, and she thought the sun rose and set on my father (which, I have been told, rather annoyed her first child, my father's half-sister who was 21 years older than he).  She wanted the best of everything for him, including an education.  In rural New Jersey in the 1940's, the best education you could find was at Catholic school.  And if you went to Catholic school in the 1940's, that meant you were going through catechism and essentially growing up Catholic.

So my father grew up Catholic.  He told me about the religion lessons and the nuns rapping his knuckles with rulers.  He went through confirmation (his confirmation name was Joseph).

Did he actually get the good education my grandmother wanted?  I haven't seen his school records from New Jersey, so I don't really know.  But if what my mother said about how he did in public high school in Florida was similar to his performance in Catholic school in New Jersey, maybe not.

My mother told me that my father had to take American history three times to graduate.  It wasn't that he didn't understand it, she said (and I know my father was very intelligent), but that he just didn't want to be bothered with it, and so he didn't pass the first two times.  After it was made clear to him that he had to pass the class to get the diploma, he finally did.

And here's the proof:

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Is the Most Unusual Cause of Death You Have Discovered?

I have to veer a little off to the side for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision

1.  What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors?

2.  Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

The reason I have to veer off a little is because I haven't found any particularly unusual causes of death in my own family, for my ancestors or collateral relatives.  And while I didn't find an unusual cause of death in my half-sister's family, I did find a situation regarding deaths that is worthy of note.

A few years ago I wrote about the time I printed out a five-generation family tree for my half-sister's mother's side of the family and discovered that not a single man in the family had reached the age of 60.  Every man but one had died of a heart attack by the age of 59.  So, not an unusual cause of death, but an unusual number of the same type.

At the time I made this grisly discovery, that cousin had not yet reached 59.  I never learned whether he had made the same observation about the men in his family, but he retired before turning 60.  He lived to the ripe old age of 79, dying just shy of his 80th birthday.

During my research for others, the most unusual (and unexpected) cause of death I have found was described thusly:

In case you're having trouble reading that, it's:

(a) Shock, Traumatic

Due to (b) Hemorrhage & Concussion of Brain

Due to (c) Multiple injuries of head

And in case you were wondering, the coroner's jury did come back with a verdict of homicide.

I would like to think that is still considered an unusual cause of death.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Share a Recent Genealogy Find about an Ancestor or Family

I have found several cool things recently, but one in particular stands out, and that's what I'll write about for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Share a recent genealogy find about an ancestor or family, such as a new name, document, or even a clue toward cracking a brick wall.

2.  Tell us about your recent genealogy find in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic — I will probably use it again!]

This is another time when the coolest discovery I made recently wasn't for my own family.

My sister and her significant other were in Greece last year.  I did not know this until then, but his grandfather immigrated to the United States from Greece.  My sister told me there has always been a big mystery about what his name was originally and where he was born, partly because he told different stories at different times to different people.  Could I find anything?

Well, I didn't find anything at the time, but I continued to look.  And a new resource that I learned about provided a huge clue.

Lara Diamond, who has a blog called Lara's Jewnealogy, wrote not too long ago about a new index on the National Archives site.  It's an index to Alien Registration forms (AR-2's) from World War II.

Nonnaturalized aliens in the United States were required to fill out AR-2's under the Alien Registration Act of 1940.  Information requested included facts such as where the person was born, mother's name including maiden name, and all names the alien had used.  A brilliant feature of the index is that once you find someone under one name and have an A number, you can then search for that number and find how many names are listed for it, which can help you verify whether it's for the person you want.

So I searched for James Thomas in Ohio (because he lived in Cincinnati) with his rough year of birth and had one relevant result.  When I searched for that person's A number in a subsequent search, I had two results:  James Thomas and Dems Tomas.  (I'm pretty sure Dems will turn out to be Demetrios.)  There's no real doubt this is the person I was looking for.  And I was able to deliver the news on the significant other's birthday, no less!  How is that for a great birthday present?

I actually did find some cool things in the index for my own family.  My great-great-grandfather, whom I knew had never naturalized, is in there, as is his cousin.  For both of them I have their father's names and their mother's given names but no maiden names.  So now I'm saving my money to order the two forms ($17 each, which is almost a steal considering the great information).

Oh!  And I just thought of someone else I need to look up!

Top 10 Posts of 2024

I'm only a little late figuring this out.  We're just barely past halfway through January.  Now, if it were all the way at the end of January, that would really have been dragging my feet.  The big news is that this is the first time I've posted my Top 10 since the 2020 listing.  I guess I really did have a few rough years in there.

So, without further ado, what were the ten most popular topics (by readership) on my blog this past year?

Starting the list at #10 was the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to use FamilySearch Full-Text Search.  My searches didn't go well, but my frustrations apparently engaged people.

#9 was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, this time about the best newspaper article I had found for my family history.  One of the articles had a photo of me!

Coming in at #8 is one more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun story (are we picking up on a theme here?), with five "different" facts about family members.  This gave me an opportunity to mention that my maternal grandfather supposedly played baseball with Jackie Robinson.

Who could have guessed that a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post would be #7?  This one asked us to write about a day we had fun with genealogy, and it definitely was fun the day I found my great-great-grandparents' Russian marriage record.

The #6 post has nothing to do with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  It was when I celebrated my lucky 13th blogiversary (along with Lisa Hork Gorrell, of course).

#5 is my post lamenting some of the recent changes I have seen occur at the FamilySearch Center at which I volunteer, and pondering what might be coming in the future.

For the #4 post we return to Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, when I listed my genealogy goals for 2024.  I was trying to be cautious and optimistic at the same time.

And another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge comes in at #3.  This time it was the best research achievement I had had during the previous month.

The #2 post was when I noticed a problem with the year in the index of Russian records posted on JewishGen.  I haven't seen any changes to the index since writing about that.

And the #1 post in popularity on my blog in 2024 was when I explained all of the things I am not doing with AI in genealogy for, you guessed it, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  (And I'm still not doing them.)

So last year seven of the top ten posts were for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  That's still not surprising, not only because lots of people read Randy's blog but also because I was almost rebooting my blog after a few years of sparse posting.

I generally don't get a lot of comments on my posts, even those that are read a lot.  The #1 and #2 posts on the popularity list were tied for the most comments this year.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

My 14th Blogiversary!

Today is my 14th blogiversary — the 14th anniversary of the day that I began my blog.  And it's amazing to me that I am still writing a blog!  Me, the person who hates to write.  So I started thinking about why I am still doing it.

It comes down to the fact that I like to tell stories.  Admittedly, I prefer saying them to writing them, but I don't reach as many people that way.  And writing is in many ways a more permanent method of sharing them.

Yes, I know that the Internet is a very impermanent thing.  What's here today can be gone tomorrow, and often is.  But I download and save my blog (semi)regularly, and blogs have a tendency to stay around even after they've been abandoned by their authors.  So I think it'll hang around for a while.

And I have been able to share!  I discovered that several of my family members actually read my posts and sometimes even comment on them.  Plus some of my genealogy colleagues do also.  Occasionally random people find me and have something to add.

In some ways having the blog isn't that difficult, because I can write about anything I want.  But in some ways it is, because I actually have to sit down and write.  I have lots of ideas, but during the past few years I've had many health issues, and they've often interfered with the process of getting the idea onto the computer.  I think I'm finally coming out of that now, and last year I wrote more than the two previous years combined.  I was able to complete the series about births, marriages, and deaths in my family.  And I still have even more things I want to write about and more research to do!

Like all writers, I have posts that work and that people respond to, and others that seem to just fade into the background.  But that's the nature of the beast.  I'm happy when I get those responses, but I don't allow myself to be crushed when I don't.

And it wouldn't be my blogiversary if I didn't mention Lisa Hork Gorrell, who started her blog on the same day I did, lo these many years ago.  Congratulations, Lisa!  We're both still writing!

"14" image by b0red and used under the Pixabay Content License.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Three Grandmothers with the Same Birthday

It's easy to say that something is against the odds, but how do you determine the odds?

I've read about statistics that once you get something like 50 people together in one place, it's almost guaranteed that two of them will have the same birthday.  (I've read it, but I still don't understand it.)  But what about when you're dealing with only two or three people?  The odds have to be much lower, right?

Yet low odds are not impossible odds.

For our example here, we have my half-sister, Laurie.

We have the same father, so we share a paternal grandmother.  Anna Gauntt was born January 14, 1893.

Laurie's maternal grandmother, Louise Elsie Gaynor, was born January 14, 1903.

Okay, all you statisticians out there, can we figure out the odds of that happening?

But I'll go one step further.

Our paternal grandfather married twice after living with our grandmother.  His third wife, to whom he was married before I was born, and who can reasonably be called our stepgrandmother (my mother certainly always told me to call her Grandma), was Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  And she was born January 14, 1914.

What are the odds on that particular situation?  I certainly don't know.  Maybe our brother or sister-in-law can figure it out.  They're the mathematicians in the family.  Which I realize is not the same as a statistician, but it's the closest we have.

So today, on January 14, I'll wish a happy birthday in heaven to three of my sister's grandmothers.

This is the type of thing I noticed while going through a year's worth of births, marriages, and deaths in my family.

Family historians are a strange breed.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Do You Have a Digital Genealogy Library?

This week's challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is much more straightforward than some recent ones.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Do you have a digital genealogy library?  If so, what titles are in it?  If not, why not?

2.  Tell us about your digital genealogy library in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this suggested topic.]

I definitely have a digital genealogy library.  I unfortunately can't easily tell you the titles because I don't have a digital library catalog to go along with it.  But I can do a general breakdown along the lines of Randy's.

• I have a digital folder named Reference Information.  Within it are about 150 subfolders with broad categories such as Adoption, Black Research, California (and many other locations), DNA, History, Journals/Newsletters, Libraries and Archives, Paleography, Photographs, Prison Records, Source Citations, and Women.  Within each of those folders can be a variety of items, such as articles, photographs, and PDF's of books.  A folder can have as few as two items (because I only create a folder for a subject after I have at least two items for that subject) but no real limit for a maximum.  I sometimes will create subfolders if I have a lot of a specific type of resource.  I have a lot of public domain city directory PDF downloads in this folder under specific locations; they're usually in subfolders.  The Journals/Newsletters folder has a subfolder for each journal and newsletter I receive electronically.

• I have another folder named Research Aids.  These are things such as indices, instructions on how to complete a procedure, guides for using sites, and info on converting coordinates.

• I have folders for each of my family surnames and the surnames of extended family and friends for whom I continue to do research.  Along with documents and photographs relating to a given surname, I have some books and articles relating to specific surnames which are filed in the appropriate folders.

• I have a folder for Education.  It holds conference handouts and programs, syllabi, and recordings of presentations.

• I have a folder for my presentations and handouts, although I'm not sure I was counting that as part of my digital library.  I guess I should, though, huh?  It's about genealogy and it's digital.

That is a good representation of the majority of my genealogy digital library.  I have a lot of files taking up lots of disk space, that's for sure.  I'm not into downloading movies or TV series, and I don't play computer games anymore, so I had to find something to fill my hard drives.

Monday, January 6, 2025

Thank You, and You, and You

Coming out of COVID, I really fell behind on posting on my blog, including for such things as thank yous.  Having been raised by my mother to tell people thank you, I have felt very guilty about this.  So I'm going to catch up on my thank yous from 2022 and 2023 and include them with those from 2024.

First I want to thank all those groups that invited me to be a genealogy speaker.  I am honored that you felt that I had information worth sharing with your members and attendees, and I appreciate you having chosen me.

I was mostly able to maintain my genealogy volunteer work.  It's very rewarding being able to give back to a field so near and dear to me.  My health definitely was a factor in my level of involvement, but since so much was (and still is!) remote, I kept plugging along.  So a big thank you to the people I worked with at the Gresham FamilySearch Center, Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon, Genealogical Forum of Oregon in general and the African American Special Interest Group in particular, San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, and (new for me last year) Geneabloggers.

Last on my list but most decidedly not least, thank you to the readers of my blog.  It's rewarding to know that people find it worth spending their time reading my comments and reflections on this incredibly engrossing pastime that we share.  I particularly appreciate when you write to me, online and offline, with your comments and feedback.  I hope you find this year's posts interesting as well.

Graphic created by WiR Pixs.

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Seven Birds for National Bird Day

I'm still working on that photo bonanza I received from my sister.  Among the thousands of photographs my father took, many were of birds that came to visit a bird feeder in his back yard.  I thought National Bird Day was a good way to showcase some of those.

Because my father did not label or identify any of his photos, I don't know when any of these were taken.  The Florida Panhandle can routinely have below-freezing temperatures in winter, so they probably were not taken then.

I freely admit that I was unable to identify a single one of these birds on my own (now, if they had been macaws, I might have gotten somewhere).  I used Google Lens for all of the ID's.  If Google Lens has made a mistake (maybe the Old World sparrow?), please let me know.

Google Lens is not without its quirks.  It decides what to focus on and then identifies that part of your image.  In the photo of the house finches, they apparently were not exciting enough for Google.  Instead of the birds, it focused on the green teardrop-shaped opening in the bird feeder — which it told me was a Jaguar engine mount.  I had to crop out almost that entire section before Google finally found the birds.

bluebird

common blackbird (male and female)

common grackle

house finch

Old World sparrow

purple finch

red-winged blackbird

Saturday, January 4, 2025

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Genealogy Goals for 2025

It's the beginning of the year, so it's time to think about what we want to accomplish with our genealogy, thanks to prodding from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  What are your genealogy goals for 2025?  Consider genealogy research, education, organizing, service, writing, and whatever else you care to share.

2.  Tell us about your goals in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

My list is never as long as Randy's, but I'm not retired yet.  Most of my goals are the same as or similar to the ones from last year.

• Maintain regular posts on my blog.  I did a lot better in 2024 than the previous two years, so I'm hoping I have a rhythm again.  I have several ideas for posts already scheduled in my calendar.

• Finish going through the scans of the photo bonanza I received from my sister.  I probably made it halfway through last year.

• Work on finding a way to do more research on the man who probably isn't the son my aunt surrendered for adoption in 1945.  Even though I no longer think the mystery man is my missing cousin, he does resemble a known family member, so I want to determine if there is a connection.

• Get back to researching my unidentified biological great-grandfather.  Find more information on Bert Mundy, particularly a photograph, so I can either rule him out or keep him as a contender.

• Work on new genealogy presentations.  I have some ideas I've been batting around for a while that I need to finish.

• Continue my volunteer work with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon, San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, and Genealogical Forum of Oregon African American Special Interest Group.

• Continue researching my own family.  I need to devote more in-depth research time to that and follow up on the many clues and document trails that I've discovered during the past few years.

• Determine a systematic way to go through my family tree databases and look for errors, omissions, and items that need to be updated.

• Continue to encourage my brother to start doing the number crunching that's necessary to really do good DNA analysis.  In particular, I'm hoping that work might help us discover who our mystery great-grandfather is (see above).

• Continue my genealogy education through Webinars.  Maybe try to go to an actual in-person genealogy event this year.

• If I really get caught up on other things, return to going through the documents relating to Emma Schafer and the constellation of people around her.  I used the documents as my Treasure Chest Thursday posts.  I began the series on July 20, 2015.  My last post was August 25, 2017, just before I moved to Portland.  Whenever I do get back to these I'll probably have to read through the entire chronology to refresh my memory adequately.

That's eleven items.  I think that's enough to keep me busy for the year.

Significant Anniversaries of 2025

I haven't written about the milestones in my family tree for the past couple of years, but as I try to get back to a regular posting schedule, it's one of the topics I wanted to bring back.  I find it interesting to look at what happened years ago in my family (obviously, or I wouldn't be doing genealogy!), and I like to make sure these people and events are remembered.

200 Years Ago

In January 1825, my 3x-great-grandfather Abel A. Lippincott, son of Stacy B. Lippincott and Alice Parker, was born in New Jersey.  Because New Jersey is the real Quaker state, and because you can't go anywhere in New Jersey without tripping over lots of Lippincotts, I still don't have Abel's complete birth date or where in New Jersey he was born, because Lippincotts are just bloody hard to research.  I wish I could spend a month or two at the New Jersey State Archives and do some in-person research to sort all this out.  And if wishes were horses . . . .

150 Years Ago

Henry Heath, the great-great-grandfather of my aunt Mary McStroul and her sister Anna McStroul and the 3x-great-grandfather of my not-quite-cousin Angela Williams, died December 2, 1875 in Thurman, Warren County, New York.  He was originally from Surrey, England, born roughly between 1816 and 1819 in Haslemere, although I still need to nail that down.  He immigrated to the United States around 1838 and married Eliza Bullock in 1844 in Argyle, Washington County, New York.  I have names for his parents and grandparents but little information beyond that.  More research I need to catch up on!

100 Years Ago

My aunt Dorothy "Dottie" Mae Sellers, daughter of Bertram Lynn Sellers and Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier, was born October 29, 1925 in Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey.  Technically Dottie was my half-aunt, because she was a child of my grandfather's first marriage.  Grampa was still married to Elizabeth while he and my grandmother were living together and my father came along.  (My father had no full siblings but had seven half-siblings, three from his mother and four from his father.)  I met Dottie when I was about 11 or 12 and then stayed in touch with her the rest of her life, through my moves and hers.  She lived to be 95 years old.  I'm still looking for the son she surrendered for adoption in 1945.

My great-great-grandfather Victor Gordon, originally Avigdor Gershovich Gorodetsky, died January 26, 1925 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.  He immigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire in 1914, bringing his two youngest sons with him but leaving his second wife behind (I was told by cousins that she did not want to come).  He lived long enough to see his second-youngest daughter (of eight children) get married, on December 31, 1924, for which occasion a wonderful oversized family photograph with about three dozen people in it was made.  I have a two-piece photocopy of the photograph; I'm working on getting it scanned and tiled so I can share it.

Henry Crawford, son of Wallace Crawford and Louisa, died April 25, 1925 in Upatoi, Muscogee County, Georgia at the age of about 69.  He is the great-great-grandfather of my not-quite-cousin Angela Williams on her father's side.  Henry was Black and born enslaved.  In 1917 he and four family members sued Standard Oil for gross negligence for having misrepresented an explosive for kerosene lamp oil.  Standard Oil settled out of court and they received payment for damages.

75 Years Ago

Richard Wesley Preuss, son of Richard Preuss and Donna Potter, was born March 14, 1950 in Missoula, Missoula County, Montana.  He is my stepfather.  He married my mother December 19, 1977 in Villa Tasso, Walton County, Florida, a small unincorporated community which might have had a grand total of about 200 people living in it.  He used to be a paint and body man, and I learned a great appreciation for car bodywork because of him (although I still don't know why he painted my father's Chevelle BFY).

50 Years Ago

This is one of those years when there was a significant birth, marriage, and death.

In 2021 I wrote about my first cousin Andy Meckler turning 50.  This time around, it's his brother, Todd Meckler, who turns 50.  They're the cousins I knew the most growing up, and it makes me feel really old to know that both of them will have hit the half-century mark.

Also on my mother's side of the family, her 1st cousin Yedida Marcia Amine, daughter of Moshe S. Amine and Florence Meckler, married Richard J. Merrill on December 24, 1975 in San Francisco, San Francisco County, California.  Aviva was born exactly one year after my mother, on Armistice Day, so they had a special connection.

The other notable event of 1975 for my family was the death of my grandfather's brother, George Moore "Dickie" Sellers, on March 26.  One day Grampa was out of town, and when I asked why, my mother told me that his brother had died.  To which my stunned reaction was, "Grampa has a brother?"  It was the first I had heard of him.  Several years later I met their youngest sister, Betty, who told me that his nickname Dickie came from the Dickie Do Flicker.  When I Google that, however, nothing comes up.  When I get no results from Google, I tend to think something is wrong.  Maybe it was an inside family joke.