Author: Kathleen

Routines are What I Need

Posted on by Kathleen

Who are you? Where on earth have you been?

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated. I have no excuse except that I was thrown completely off my axis. The day after I left the hospital I received a jury summons notice for the month of October. Usually I wouldn’t have minded this disruption, but this was my third time being summoned in five years. Instead of acting outraged over that, I went with it and got excited about the process. In all actuality, I really enjoy jury duty. The people, the legal aspect, and taking part in the community. Before I knew it, the month was over and I hadn’t sat down to write anything.

At the beginning of November, I realized how long it had been since I did anything except my basic things. I hadn’t been reading, I hadn’t been writing and I’d been existing on a little sleep and a lot of Netflix. That’s okay for awhile, but eventually I knew I needed to do something that engaged my mind more. It didn’t take me long to realize that what I was missing was structure in my days. One thing out of sync and it was just throwing me all off.

Then just as I was sitting down to plan and write this blog, my neighbor passed away. We’ve lived next door to her and her daughter since I was in Kindergarten, so we’re all close and are friends. I’ve been spending a lot of time with her daughter and still trying to keep up with my own household. As a genealogist, I know that the people in our lives are so important, and I’ve been making sure that the people in mine know that. On a production level, that leaves me here, one month later exactly and still behind! Now I’m just wondering where to pick up the pieces and get things back on track. The great thing for me is that I had already started to get very organized, digitally at least!

Okay, so where do we start?

Finding out where to start is easy. If you’ve been following my Genealogy Do-Over, then you know I was already starting to get pretty organized.

My Research Plan
My Research Plan

That means that my research/Do-Over will be easy to pick back up. That’s for another entry though. This has nothing to do with my research and everything to do with my new way of keeping a plan together for the blog. The last time you saw my excel file, “Blog Tracker” was in June. That file has gotten a little bit of a makeover.

My Blog Tracker
My Blog Tracker

My Blog Tracker is now bigger and better

Before I just had one tab in the file that was a catalog of my previous blog posts. That now lies in the “Blog Archive” tab of the file. The “Regular Topics” section is what I hope will keep me inspired. I’ve added the daily blogging prompts from GeneaBloggers.com under each corresponding day and I’ve made a list of my regular blog topic series. Only time will tell if this helps me be more regular in my blog writing.

Blog Tracker - Post Ideas
Blog Tracker – Post Ideas

The Post Ideas section is where I am keeping a log of my post ideas with a target date, suggested category, and a brief description of the idea. The rest of the sections will be me logging what I’ve already posted in the regular categories. This will help me know what I’ve posted before. With a blog a few years old, I’d hate to repeat myself when I can just link to a previous entry and then add to the subject.

You can see from my Post Ideas tab that I’m going to try an alternating post schedule. It might take me a few weeks to get into the groove of it but we’ll see how that goes! I’m already one day “behind” because I meant to write this post and finish it on Monday, but I just didn’t make it in time.

Even the Blog has a few new things

I’m not sure if I’ll be doing another entry for this or not, but I’m also overhauling the organization of my blog. As I work on my blog archive, I’m creating indexes for my posts that turned into “series”.

Blog Screenshot
Blog Screenshot

The links to the indexes can be found by hovering over “Indexes” at the top of the screen or using the links in the sidebar.

In Conclusion

I’m feeling really good and organized about the future. Not just for my genealogy and blog, but overall. I’m hoping that by doing this my stress and anxiety levels will start to decline and my night in the hospital will be the last one I have for quite awhile!

I hope you all are doing well and I thank you for always sticking with me through these absences. I really appreciate it.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Bibles Part 2

Posted on by Kathleen

thebibles

Here we are again with a new week and a new “bible”. Okay, so technically this week isn’t a bible. It is very connected to it though, so it fits with my theme from last week. This book is called Four Thousand Questions & Answers.

sundayschool-03

The copyright is from 1898, so for a book over a hundred years old, it’s in great condition. As you can tell from the title page, this book was for Students and Sunday-School Teachers. This wasn’t a surprise to me, because Llewellyn and her family were very involved with the church. I believe Llewellyn even taught Sunday School herself if her Diary is any indication. Before taking the pictures for this blog post, I just assumed this book was my Grandfathers since I have so much documentation from his early years.

sundayschool-02

I thought that until I actually read through the whole inscription.

Presented to William Moore by his S.S. teacher for his punctual attendance 51 Sundays. Xmas 1913

Well, that is definitely not Grandpa’s book because he was born in 1930. This must be his father’s book! To have such an old memento from the Moore family is very rare. In the first place, there aren’t a lot of people around that can identify any Moores in pictures. Secondly, for a few generations the mothers died early on and the children were working from a young age, leaving little time for many mementos. That’s what makes this one so special.

Great-Grandpa would have just turned 12 when he got this book from his teacher. In just a few years he will have started working for numerous companies as a bookkeeper. His mother could already have passed away. I haven’t found her death certificate yet, but it happened between 1910 and 1915. Within 10 years the whole family dynamic will change. They’ll move from their decades long residence in Brooklyn and move to Caldwell, New Jersey to live with his grandfather and aunt. There he meets his future wife, probably at church. His father and grandfather will pass away in 1925 and 1928. In 1925 he’ll go to work for AT&T as a bookkeeper and he’ll stay there until he retires over 35 years later. In 1926 he’ll marry Llewellyn and they’ll have one son and 5 grandchildren.

I never met William L. Moore, my great-grandfather, but from the records and memories he’s left behind I can tell you a lot about his personality. He came from a family who experienced a lot of hardships and instability. Even though the family was struggling, he still made it to Sunday School for 51 Sundays. He still graduated from night school. He got the education to work as a bookkeeper. From Llewellyn’s diary when they were dating, he worked a lot of overtime but still made sure to meet her at the train everyday. Amidst all that chaos and change, he became one of the most dependable men I think I’ll ever know about. Even through all the hardships they went through the decades they were married, to this day everyone remembers William and Llewellyn as being rocks of the community. They were there when people needed them and everyone speaks so kindly of them. It’s enough to make me sad I was born too late to know them.

Man, who knew I’d get so emotional about a little book, right?

Genealogy Do-Over: Update to my Research Log

Posted on by Kathleen

genealogydoover

This series of posts is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

The last time you saw a glimpse of my Genealogy Research Log was in the post I made titled: More Prep Work. I’ve made some changes since that post. Once I was working through my immediate family members, I got a better feel for what works best for me.

Research Log - Log Tab
Research Log – Log Tab

It is the same basic things I had before, but it’s a little more compact. I went with less fields because I found myself not using the previous version. That defeated the purpose all together, so I sat down and made something that I knew I would use regularly. All the vital things are in there and with my current digital filing system, I’m hoping I won’t miss those extra fields.

Using the filters feature, I can quickly find anything I need by person or type of record. I still analyze the documents in the log and have a citation for each record. The screenshot above shows what I see when I look on my second screen with the file open. There is only one field not visible and that is the “Proven” field.

Genealogy Research Log - Order Tab
Genealogy Research Log – Order Tab

Moving the list of records to find to my research log was a great idea. Its much more efficient in this file. It is right in line with my workflow. I am able to add something in right when I’m already elbow deep in my research. I very easily move from tab to tab from beginning to end. I think the only thing I would change is the order of the tabs. Moving Search Attempts to the beginning would make a lot of sense.

Genealogy Research Log - Plan Tab
Genealogy Research Log – Plan Tab

I’ve obscured the names in my Plan Tab for privacy sake but this little gem is the reason I’m able to know exactly where I’m at in my research. This really helps because I took a break after my brief hospital stay and I’m only just now looking at it again. This tab was born from my previous file that was my Research Plan/Goals. This is streamlined for me, so I can see at a glance what key facts I still need to look for. As a basic guideline, this really helps me and I can easily add to it if I chose to. This will fill in pretty quickly for my immediate family members but once I move on to earlier generations, it’s going to help so much!

Previous Posts in this Series:

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Bibles Part 1

Posted on by Kathleen

thebibles

Welcome back to another post where I brag about my Great-Grandmother Llewellyn Thorward-Moore. Ha! Sorry, but I had to do it. As you all know, I’ve been doing my Genealogy Do-Over for the last few months. In the process of that, I’ve been revisiting all the wonderful things that were in what I’m calling “Llewellyn’s Boxes.” In those boxes were a bunch of bibles. Not all of them were Llewellyn’s and they don’t all have names in them, but I thought it would be cool to highlight one a week here on the blog.

The Dora Thorward-Plume Bible
The Dora Thorward-Plume Bible

The first one we’ll look at is what I will now refer to as the Dora Plume bible. Dora was the sister of my 2nd Great-Grandfather, Lewis Thorward, and the only daughter of George Thorward and Josephine Doremus. The Bible itself was actually in a box with the publisher’s name on it. You can see in the top left photo that it is an Oxford Text Bible. The top right image is the bible itself taken out of the box. The bottom left photo is the bible sitting in the box. Finally the bottom right photo is the goodies that were UNDER the bible. That’s right I said goodies! Can you imagine if I hadn’t of opened the box? If I had thought, oh its just another bible.

goodies

The collage above shows what was found underneath the bible. It clearly shows a name card for the Order of the Eastern Star. I know that Llewellyn was also a member of that organization. Three obituaries were found, George Thorward (Dora’s Father), Josephine Thorward (Dora’s mother), and Lewis Thorward (Dora’s brother). All of them died in the 1940s. I can’t be sure about the images but I’m leaning to think that the woman in the tintype is Josephine Thorward. I have a picture of Josephine’s mother also and I don’t think that is her. I will have to pull out the other photos I believe to be Josephine and compare them.

As for the boys, I know for a fact that they are not Dora’s brothers Frank and Lewis. I can spot Lewis in a line up with my eyes closed! Dora didn’t have any sons, she just had one daughter. That leaves the possibility of it being her husband, Leslie Plume, and one of his brothers. He had four of them that I know about. They were all quite a bit older than him, the closest in age being 16 years older than him. Those boys do seem to have an age gap between them. Looks like I will have to research how to distinguish time periods! 🙂

todorafromles

Here’s the last picture for this bible, in case you were wondering how I surmised it was Dora’s bible. I didn’t just guess because of the name card and obituaries, I promise! Gosh, I’ve always felt attached to this couple in my family tree and it makes me smile seeing this little note. Despite that attachment, the dates of death and place of burial for them are still a mystery to me. I’m going to be working extra hard to figure out that this time around. Back to business! The bible is in almost perfect condition. One of the ribbons is even still marking a page. There is no damage that I can see and no markings either. This is definitely one of my favorite heirlooms!

I can’t wait to show you all the next bible!

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging prompt at GeneaBloggers.com

Genealogy Do-Over: BSO ALERT!

Posted on by Kathleen

genealogydoover

This series of posts is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

Hello everyone, I have had my first big temptation in the Bright Shiny Object category.

slides

The above picture is a small portion of the slides I inherited from Great-Grandma Llewellyn’s collection. I spent a long afternoon sorting them by batches and date. Now I am going through and scanning them to my computer. The reason I let myself get distracted by this, is I want to preserve these slides the best I can. To do that I’ve created a little wishlist for myself to slowly start buying the supplies I’m going to use to try and preserve these slides for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, the scanner I was using for this is pretty outdated. I was scanning along the other day and I’m pretty sure the light dimmed on me and stopped scanning as well. This scanner is probably almost 10 years old, so it’s not like it wasn’t on a replacement list anyway.

The slides are important to get scanned. They are a mixture of 35mm slides and 127 Superslides. The dates range from 1963 to 1971 from what I can tell so far. These slides represent my father’s childhood. The pictures vanished after his parents divorced. They all remember the pictures being taken, but had no idea where they ended up. I can’t say the exact percentage, but I can definitely tell these slides represent both my Great Grandma’s life and my Grandfather’s life. I would have to look deeper but it might even be as simple as the 35mm ones are Grandpas and the 127 Superslides are my Great-Grandparents.

greatgrandpa2

I was going through the slides using a slide viewer and my cell phone. Snapping pictures and posting them to Facebook for my family to see. I was even joking around that I was going to publish a book and it would just be Great-Grandpa standing and sitting next to things. I would title it, “Grandpa Standing and Sitting Next to Things.”

greatgrandpa

Then just when my family thought I was done spamming their day, I announced the follow up to my bestseller. This one would be titled, “Things Sitting on Grandpa.” Ha! It was all in good fun, but I think I might actually order a photo book of these photos when I’m done. I think it would be cool to take to the annual family reunion.

Previous Posts in this Series:

Wedding Wednesday: Miss Redford is a Bride

Posted on by Kathleen

Newspaper, Marriage Announcement; Moore-Redford, Llewellyn's Boxes, 1986; privately held by Kathleen Moore, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Lexington Park, Maryland. 2005. This collection was taken from Llewellyn Thorward-Moore's house after her death. They resided with her son until 2005, when they passed to Kathleen Moore.
Newspaper, Marriage Announcement; Moore-Redford, Llewellyn’s Boxes, 1986; privately held by Kathleen Moore, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Lexington Park, Maryland. 2005. This collection was taken from Llewellyn Thorward-Moore’s house after her death. They resided with her son until 2005, when they passed to Kathleen Moore.
Here is a wedding announcement from an unknown newspaper. The newspaper is most likely the Caldwell Progress (theprogressnj.com). Most of the newspaper clippings that Llewellyn saved were from The Progress. This is the last bit of wedding memorabilia that I have for my grandparents wedding.

Brief Update

Posted on by Kathleen

healthHello Everyone! I’m unsure if I’ll be able to put up a post tomorrow like usual. During the early morning hours of Friday I was at the hospital for a medical situation. I am feeling better now and hopefully everything is good now. Unfortunately, it’s taken the wind out of my sails quite a bit.

I have plenty to talk about once I get some of my energy back! I also got the message that my comments were acting up, I turned off one of my anti-spam plugins and I hope that has fixed the problem!

I hope everyone out there is healthy and happy. 🙂

Treasure Chest Thursday: Thank You Note

Posted on by Kathleen

This Treasure Chest Thursday post is a thank you note between my grandma, Florence Redford-Moore and her husband’s grandma, Jennie Love-Thorward.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a Daily Blogging Prompt given by GeneaBloggers.com

Wedding Wednesday: You’re Invited

Posted on by Kathleen

You're Invited
Marriage Invitation for Florence Jean Redford and William Thorward Moore, Llewellyn’s Boxes, 1986; privately held by Kathleen Moore, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Lexington Park, Maryland. 2005. This collection was taken from Llewellyn Thorward-Moore’s house after her death. They resided with her son until 2005, when they passed to Kathleen Moore.
The marriage invitation for my Grandparents. Last week you saw the picture, and this week you get to see the invitation. Maybe I should have done that the other way around. Oops!

Wedding Wednesday: My Grandparents

Posted on by Kathleen
William Moore, Florence Redford wedding photo
William Moore, Florence Redford wedding photo

As I go through my Genealogy Do-Over, I’m also going through all those photos on my hard drives. Everything is getting organized this time! That means you’ll see one family group pretty regularly before I move onto another family group. I’m still working on Grandma and Grandpa’s information. It’s a blessing and a curse that Great-Grandma recorded so much about Grandpa’s early years. There is a lot to go through!

Wedding Wednesday is a Geneabloggers Daily Blogging Prompt. Check out other prompts and entries at GeneaBloggers.com.