52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Fame

My big brush with fame came early on in life. I, of course, don't remember any of it. Apparently, I was the "Youngest Runner in the 1983 Canyon Ranch Fitness Marathon." I was five years old. My mom was always a big jogger and probably convinced me that it would be fun. I really was not an athletic child and I didn't like physical activities, so I either didn't understand what I was getting myself into or someone helped me make my decision. It appears that the whole family participated in it though from the few pictures I have of the event, so maybe I just didn't want to be left out.

#535 about to make some history!

There was a segment on the local news about the event that included a bit on the youngest runner and the oldest runner. I was the youngest. I can't remember who won the prize for the oldest. My mom taped the news show, but unfortunately it has gone MIA somewhere along the way. I do remember watching it in my later childhood years because I remember being embarrassed by how stupid I was (I must have been in middle school because who else would think a 5 year old is stupid, but a preteen). My mom also embarrassed me (another sign of a preteen) by saying on television (gasp!) about how I "stopped to look at every bug and rock along the way. Hahahahah!" I think that's pretty funny now too, but not when I was watching it.

I sure do wish we still had the video of that news segment as it would be fun to show the kids now how their mom was a big celebrity at the age of five. The only real proof I have that it ever happened is the two photos of before and after and also because my mommy said so right here in my School Days Memory Book!

© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Bedroom

Week 19. Bedroom. Describe your childhood bedroom. What furniture did it contain? Were there curtains, wallpaper or paint? Was it messy or clean? Did you share a room with your siblings?

My childhood bedroom was the old master bedroom in the house that I grew up in. My dad built a new master bedroom onto the house and my brother and I drew straws over who got to have the old master bedroom. The room itself wasn't that much bigger, but it had a large bathroom with double sinks, a standing shower, and a separate bathtub. It was pretty nice for a kids' bathroom.

When I was in elementary school, my bed was a white, almost resin-like four poster bed with gold trim. I had the matching dresser. I loved it. My mom made me a comforter and a canopy for the bed. I felt so fancy sleeping in it! I had shelves on the wall full of dolls and stuffed animals. I had the old-school boombox for listening to the radio and tapes. And books. Books were always part of the picture! I don't remember that many of them actually belonging to me. I was that person that checked out the limit of 60 books at a time.

I was such a packrat! I had old letters sent from friends during class. Every. Single. One. Even if it just said "Hi." I kept gifts given to me, even little trinkets that really shouldn't have been saved. I had such a hard time getting rid of anything because I was and am a sentimental person. (Side Note: Luckily I am able to let go of things more easily now, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I finally donated all those stuffed animals. I had them stored in my grandpa's shed the entire time! Yikes! I kept one duck from when I was a baby and let my son pick one out; the rest of them went to Goodwill.)

Every weekend I had to do chores, which included cleaning my room. I was not a clean child. I had many, many, MANY stuffed animals that I couldn't bear to part with that never seemed to stay on the shelf, every My Little Pony there ever was (should have kept that collection!), cassette tapes all over the place, clothes never put away, and miscellaneous odds and ends all shoved into my closet. Most of the time my idea of cleaning was shoving it... into the closet, into drawers, under my bed.  I would spend all day in my room "doing my chores." It consisted of me reading until about 30 minutes before I was supposed to have it done and then frantically running around shoving things into places.

My parents like to tell a story about how one year they were cleaning out my closet (each one tells the story as if they were the only person in there slaving away at my awful closet) right before school was about to start and they found an sandwich in my closet... from the previous school year. I would go on to say that they were just exaggerating, but it was probably true! :)

© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011

Are All Genealogists Perfectionists... Or Is It Just Me?

Why is that every time I make some headway on my data entry, I find some new and improved way to do it? In my efforts to do my family tree "right," I've restarted my family tree file three times!

My first effort, I will admit, was plagued with errors. I was using Family Tree Maker 2008, then 2009, and I was just throwing information on my tree at an almost feverish pace. At the same time, I was reading books about how to do genealogy and realized that I wasn't carefully sourcing everything I was putting on my tree. It was right about this time that I went to my first Family History Expo and realized there are a bunch of genealogy software programs to choose from! I switched over to Legacy and have not regretted that decision since.

Having said that, I didn't know how to use my software to its full potential. Even though I read the manual, I didn't really know what I was doing. I must admit that I love entering information in all the little fields; there is something so satisfying to me to fill in a blank. However,  I can definitely get carried away. I had information all over the place with no citations and I knew that wasn't right. So I threw the whole file out and decided to start over.

This time I went through and started slowly adding everyone in with citations, etc. I was on a different paper filing system then and it was frustrating me how quickly I was going through index tabs (numbering system). I was so (overly, I think) meticulous in the beginning, but then slowly that changed. I have a hard time with difficult records to source. I have multiple obituaries that I scanned from my mother-in-law that have no dates or newspaper information on them. I don't know how those would be sourced. Do I go to the library and try to find it? Or do I put the information in as is and cite it as being her collection? These little questions would irritate me, so I put it off (procrastination is a symptom of perfectionism).

I started reading DearMYRTLE's organization series this year and I decided I like her filing system better than mine. So I went through and changed my hard copy filing system as well as my digital filing system to match. This caused disconnections to every record that I digitally attached to my family tree. For some reason, the thought of going back through and correcting all the errors made me want to put aside my genealogy fun for about a week. I couldn't move forward and cringed at moving back.

This brings me to the other night. I watched Geoff Rasmussen's (pretty amazing and very informative) webinar on archive called "Watch Geoff Live: Adding a Death Certificate" and loved his method of adding a record into his family tree. I got a glimpse of how neat and organized his sources looked and wanted mine to be that pretty too! He wouldn't even click on the "save" button for an event in his family tree without first adding the source! I am guilty of doing this more times than I want to admit. I figure I will add the source later. Most of the time I do, but sometimes I don't and I look at a piece of information and wonder where it came from.

So I played with the idea (AGAIN!) of starting a whole new one, but this time only adding in information based on records that I had in my hand. If I didn't have a piece of evidence, I didn't put it in my tree and the source must be added at that moment! Then I would get to make my master sources all neat and easier to navigate through. I would also get to see where I got too far ahead of myself (guilty) and make sure I had evidence that I needed to take me to the next generation. I tried to talk myself out of it. I thought I would just go back through my current tree and fix all the disconnected images and clean it up, but me being me... I found a way to do what I subconsciously wanted to do anyway.

I told myself I would just enter a couple of people with this new approach to see how it felt. So I tried. I entered vital records for myself and my immediate family... felt good. So I kept going. Next thing I know, I'm all excited because I have this new pretty tree and I'm cruising along. I'm already seeing records that I need to obtain to prove parentage, etc and thinking of other corresponding projects (migration maps on Google Earth) that I can do as I go along. I'm all atwitter with my new tree!!

So does this mean I am doomed to keep starting or restarting how I record my research?? In true perfectionist form, will the euphoria wear off and I will be faced again with an imperfect (to me) tree and start itching to create a new one? Or am I just finding my way as a beginning genealogist until I find the system that works best for me? I'm praying that it is the latter... and that my non-genealogist husband doesn't find out how many times I've redone my tree since he doesn't really understand why I want to do all this "work" anyway.

Okay, end of rant. Feel better already. :)

© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011

Tombstone Tuesday - Joseph G. Lucas (1899-1991)

Joseph G Lucas

My great-granduncle Joseph G. Lucas is buried in Lompoc Evergreen Cemetery.

Source: Lompoc Evergreen Cemetery (Lompoc, Santa Barbara, California), Joseph G. Lucas marker, Catholic Cemetery, Lot 314, Grave 8; Personally read and photographed, 15 Sep 2008. 

© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011

Wordless Wednesday - A Man and His Dog

George Rienerth and his dog

© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011