Tag Cloud

A look at a glance at what I've been talking about lately : )

ago agostini ancestors anchorage away berge bit blog brings butternut car change coglievina comments consorti cover door driver enough events family five fulmer fun gamez gardens genealogy going history kirkhuff knapp labels laundromat laundry librarything life light lines living locks marj44 mary mcnally mexico morning national nicoletta open pennsylvania pm posted program research sage sanders search seems site snow soup squash started time-line timeline today used villarreal warm web william window winter working year-old years

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Where were they in 1908?

Recently I came across a blog post that raised the question "Where was your family in 1908?" I find this question intriguing for the very reason that draws me to genealogy. I enjoy genealogy not simply as an exercise in collecting as many generations as possible, but even more because it provides a way to know history by imagining my family in a particular time and place. Investigating the historical events and forces that impacted their lives is the real joy.

I began my genealogy research over 30 years ago with my immediate ancestral lines, but soon branched out to in-laws' lines as well. Now I can add Gamez and Villarreal, Consorti and Coglievina to Sanders, Fulmer, Kirkhuff, McNally, Knapp and others, taking me to new corners of the globe for fascinating research.

100 years ago...

• Juan and Enriqueta Villarreal de Gamez were living with their two young sons in the small village of Santa Fe, Villaldama, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The revolution in Mexico, that would drive them north was just two short years away.
• 8 year-old William Allen Fulmer was living in Philadelphia with his parents, William and Hannah, never dreaming that in eight more years he would enlist in the Pennsylvania National Guard and be sent into Mexico in a futile attempt to capture the revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa.
• William Sanders is shown on the 1910 census, living with his parents, Charles (a civil war vet), and Mary (McNally) in Avoca, Pennsylvania and working as an electrician. In 1908, he probably would have just finished school. His future bride, Florence was going to school in nearby Scranton and living with her father William Berge, MD and her mother Anna (Kirkhuff).
• Guido Consorti was an 11 year-old in Ascoli Piceno, Italy. Did he know in 7 more years he would be boarding a ship to immigrate to the United States? His bride to be Domenica Agostini was living in Venarotta, 8 km away.
• 25 year old Pietro Coglievina had just left his wife Nicoletta (Ceglian) and baby daughter behind in Cherso when he left that tumultuous region to seek a better life in the US. Nicoletta and young Mary would wait a decade before enough funds were saved to send for them.
  

LibraryThing

Having a bit of fun today with a tool suggested by the folks at LibraryThing.

LibraryThing is an online book cataloging site that I started using a year or so ago. One of the users created a photomosaic of himself using all the covers of books in his library - "you are what you read".

I used a free photomosaic creation program, MacOSaiX for the Mac (a free PC program AndreaMosaic is also available) to quickly put together these pictures. I think I could have some fun doing some on cards for family members- pictures of the house, kids, pets etc.

Sage Gardens and snow

Shoveled another 6 inches or so of new snow this morning- no plans to go out until tomorrow, but the mailman will be happier.

The rest of the time this morning, I worked a bit on the next stage of my web site design. I've played around with a new background, while trying to determine the scope of the content.

Family History Timeline

Burr... -3 degrees for the high in Anchorage today. Sounded cold to me until the high for Fairbanks was announced at -30. I'll be happy to spend the morning inside "doing genealogy".

I'm working up time-lines for some of my family groups. After locating ancestors on federal censuses and then pulling together, birth-marriage-death records, I've found that a good way to help put their lives into perspective is to work out a time-line of events that would have influenced their existence.

I'm starting with 20th century ancestors and notating everything from international, national and local events to music, entertainment, fashion, food, etc. It's pretty mind-blowing to realize that my Dad's life spanned the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Regan, as well as the Wright brother's first flight to man's landing on the moon!

Butternut Squash Soup

Beautiful sunny morning in Anchorage. The trade-off for sun is the temperature drop. The high today is expected to be about 8 degrees. But the sun shinning always makes me happy, so on with the long underwear and let's make some soup.

I picked up the ingredients for "golden winter soup", featured on the cover of the latest issue of Cooking Light. It uses butternut squash, potatoes and leeks, cooked in chicken broth. Yum!

I'm working on the re-launch of my web site while I let the soup simmer on the stove. I hope to finish it (the website, not the soup) and get it online before I head back east for a few weeks in March . I've neglected sagegardens, since I've spent so much time this winter on family history research. The deadline I gave myself back in June to get the site revised by early 2008, seemed like plenty of time then, now that Jan is half over - not so much.

I look forward to doing some on-site genealogy work in Harrisburg and Philadelphia in March to gather some source materials, so I'll have to get all the research organized before I leave.

Lots to do in the next six weeks!

January brings snow

View out the kitchen window....
Five more inches of snow yesterday and we're finally catching up to the normal snowfall amount for the winter.

Laundry day in Anchorage

I set out this morning just after 7am (my preferred time to go to the laudromat). The sky was as dark as midnight, and with temperatures overnight in the single digits, it was COLD.

I got the laundry bag into the car on the passenger side, but when I went around to the driver's side to start the car and let it warm while I scraped the ice-covered windshields, the door lock wouldn't open. I wasn't quite ready to let this development frustrate my intentions, so I returned to the passenger side and crawled across.

The car started easily enough, but as I attempted to open the driver's door from the inside (I still need to scrape the windows), all the automatic locks froze in the locked position.

Now I AM beginning to get annoyed... The whole point of going to the laundromat this early is to find three unused washers, (preferably in a row). So now I'm wondering how long it will take the car to warm up enough to allow the locks to function again? or what if they won't open? I check the window, and thankfully discover that it will open- though the prospect of having to scramble out that way is not one I relish.

Patience is rewarded though, and in another 10 minutes the ice on the front and back windows has melted, and the door locks will now open. It's been 40 minutes (seems longer) but I'm off to get my clothes cleaned. Luckily the laundromat is just five blocks away, so maybe I'll still get there in time to snag 3 washers! I pull up to the laundromat at 7:54am, only to find the doors locked and the lights off. Since it's almost an hour past the scheduled opening, it doesn't seem as though today is going to be wash day after all.

winds of change...

Just finished watching Barack Obama's speech after his caucus win in Iowa. What a historic and hopeful event! Barack's win and record numbers of caucus participants speaks to a real desire for major change in the country. I'm anxious to participate in Alaska's caucus in just about a month.