Wordless Wednesday

Happy Birthday, Mark!

It's my brother's birthday!  And I've managed to put together a short (random) timeline of photos from over the years.

July 1963

Circa 1964-1965 (with me)

1967 (with me)

1971

1990's

2001 (with our father and sister)

Early 2000's (with our stepnephew)

Circa 2010's

Circa 2010's (with our father)

2016

2018 (with his son, wife, daughter, and me)

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Very Best Genealogy Finds in 2023

I didn't find much in 2023, but I did find a few things to write about for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge this week.

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

1.  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted an interesting question last week in Best Genealogy Find of 2023.

2.  What were your very best genealogy finds in 2023?  Elusive ancestors?  Hard-to-find records?  Family photographs?  Family stories?  Family artifacts?  New cousins?  What else?

3. Tell us about one or more of them 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.

* Elusive Ancestor:  Not actually an elusive ancestor, but I may have come closer to finding an elusive relative.  I wrote on December 30 about someone having brought to my attention a person who could be the son my aunt gave up for adoption in 1945.  The man looks absolutely right and knew he was adopted, but he isn't the age expected.  I'm trying to pursue additional information about him to figure out what's going on.  I hope I'm able to determine what his connection is to our family.  Because of the very strong resemblance to one family member, I'm positive there has to be a connection.

* Hard-to-find Records:  I was able to take advantage of two new releases of digitized records:  The Maryland birth/marriage/death records (the Maryland Motherlode!) that were acquired by Reclaim the Records and placed online for free, and the New York City Historical Vital Records Project, a release of a lot of digitized birth/marriage/death records (but with some periods missing).  These weren't necessarily hard to find per se, but they're more easily searchable and accessed now, and I have found many records for my family.  There are still some that don't want to be found, of course, but great progress has been made!

* Family Photographs:  I didn't find the photographs, but my sister sent me scans of my father's photos that were in his house when he passed away.  I have been spending a lot of time trying to identify as many as possible.  I'm going to need help with all the photos of cars.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Happy Ninth Anniversary!

Today is the 9th anniversary for my brother and my sister-in-law, who were married in Elkridge, Maryland.  They chose November 12 as their wedding date as they wanted to honor my deceased mother, whose birthday was November 11, but did not think it appropriate to have the wedding on her actual birthday.  Ergo, it took place the day after.

The traditional gifts for the 9th anniversary, per the lists on Wikipedia, are pottery or leather goods in the United States (or copper in the United Kingdom).  Those sounded kind of blah to me, so I figured a blog post commemorating their special day was a nicer gift.

Happy anniversary!

Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Celebrating Two Big Birthdays with a Small Family Reunion

Wow, what a weekend!  I'm still coming down from something I've been planning for a year.  In 2014, I realized that my father would turn 80 in December this year, and his sister would be 90 in October.  In addition, this year is my father's 35th wedding anniversary, and I thought that should be celebrated as well.  I decided that it would be a great idea to have family members meet up in northwest Florida, where both my father and his sister live, to celebrate these milestones.

I set everything up from California, including finding restaurants, a caterer, a bakery, and an event room.  I kept track of all the responses for who was coming, and unfortunately the one last-minute cancellation.  (We missed you, Ruth Anne!)

And somehow it managed to work.  Family members came from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other parts of Florida, and me from California.  In total we had 20 attendees, which was probably about as many as we could handle.  Several of us had not seen each other for many years, and it was great to get together in honor of the "birthday kids."

I encouraged people to bring photos with them so that they could be scanned and then shared among everyone.  I am so happy some of my relatives took me up on that!  I scanned about 100 photos, and almost all of them are already identified!

One of the highlights of the weekend was sharing with everyone the recent discovery that my grandfather's original birth record said he was female.  My father in particular was highly amused to learn this news about his father.

Here are some of the photos from the weekend.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to coordinate one of all of us together, but everyone shows up in at least a few.

Wordless Wednesday

Merry Christmas!

This is my niece Miriam and nephew Adam in their first Santa photo.  I wish them and everyone else a very happy holiday and a productive and fulfilling new year.