17 Thursday Feb 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
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It’s Christmas afternoon, and my Barbie family is snugly wrapped in their new, hand knit sweaters. Plastic was never put to such good use! Barbie, Skipper and Skooter–and their adorable little shoes–were among my most cherished possessions.
[Thanks to Amy Coffin at We Tree Genealogy Blog for the prod to record my childhood memories with the 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History weekly prompts. This week we share memories of our favorite toy.]
16 Wednesday Feb 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
I wonder what reflections my ancestors saw in the melt water puddles of late winter.
15 Tuesday Feb 2011
I minorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminorminormino
dodson PROMISE dodsondodsondodsondodsondodsondodsondodsondodsondodsondodson
saylessayles TO STOP saylessaylessaylessaylessaylessaylessaylessaylessaylessaylessayl
stricklandstrickland GOOGLING stricklandstricklandstricklandstricklandstricklandstrick
cattledrovercattledrover MY ANCESTORS cattledrovercattledrovercattledrovercattledr
teacherteacherteacherteacher UNTIL I ORGANIZE teacherteacherteacherteachertea
farmerfarmerfarmerfarmerfarmerfarmer RESEARCH I HAVE farmerfarmerfarmerfar
Google, you have me crying UNCLE! I can’t stand the information overload, or rather the product of my search overload. I give up!!! Time to start thinking like the cloud–how do I store data so that I can retrieve it when, where and how I like.
I have purchased a big box of manila folders, a set of heavy duty alphabet tabs; cleaned out a file drawer in my work space; sharpened my pencils, assembled my pens. A sheaf of computer paper stands at the ready, to be inserted for web print outs or to record my thoughts. Each folder will be labeled with a category hierarchy and filed by broadest category: CENSUS> 1860> Dodson> James and Sarah.
All paper accumulated must be filed–NOW. All paper generated must be filed–as generated. All computer file lists must get copied, pasted and printed–and filed NOW–so I remember how I organized and stored things on the blinkin’ computer. All doodles explaining events and relationships–saved and filed. All correspondence saved, printed and filed.
Filing resembles writing. Just the act of creating relationships puts down more neural pathways in my brain, creating greater retention and synthesis of diverse ideas and media. I only wish I had taken the advice of more experienced family historians sooner–start with a organizational system and use it!! Oh, well. Better late than never, right?
And until that table is cleared, the floor folder-free, the odd drawer emptied out, NO MORE GOOGLING ANCESTORS!!!! 
14 Monday Feb 2011
Posted in Minor, Photographs and Memories, Random Thoughts, Surnames
From the Postcard Collection of Donald C. Minor
Ethel from Morgantown, West Virginia sent this H. Wessler postcard to seven year old Donald C. Minor of Carmichaels, Pennsylvania in 1910. Her message read:
Ethel’s identity has yet to be determined, although she is sure to be a relative!
11 Friday Feb 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
SUNDAY–MONDAY–TUESDAY–WEDNESDAY–THURSDAY–FRIDAY–
SATURDAY morning.
The one time in the week when my brothers and I were allowed–no–encouraged to watch television. Cats were outsmarted by quick thinking rodents, evil-doers were thwarted by moose and squirrels, and the world was made safer by flying mice. I would sit enthralled for hours, snug in my footed, knit pajamas.
One morning I plunked into my chair, tucked my legs under me, and assumed the position requisite to singing the next cartoon’s theme song. As I belted out “HERE he comes to save the day!”, I started to my feet! ”I can read that!”
“Mommy! I can READ THAT! It said Mighty Mouse!!!! “
What a memory. What a mouse.
[Thanks to Amy Coffin at We Tree Genealogy Blog for the prod to record my childhood memories with the 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History weekly prompts. This week we consider our favorite radio and television programs.]
06 Sunday Feb 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
I am tweaking my site.
Trying new blog themes in WordPress and losing my widgets, and headers, and my sanity.
And I am left with the question, “Why, oh, why, did you fiddle with a perfectly good theme?”
Because. My blog has changed in the year I have been writing. My purpose in writing has changed, my research questions have changed, I have changed. The resulting mental mess just has to get cleaned up, and other themes seemed to offer a more appropriate format. Computers are such time-sucking devices. If only my vacuum worked this well. *sigh*
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. My brain is about to burst, and I KNOW that I am so close to a redesign that I can live with. Not just yet.
02 Wednesday Feb 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
Week 5: Favorite Food. What was your favorite food from childhood? If it was homemade, who made it? What was in this dish, and why was it your favorite? What is your favorite dish now?
Hands down, my favorite childhood food is my favorite adult comfort food–Brunswick Stew. Mmm, mmm! My mother made this delicious chicken stew on cold winter days, and it played a central role in that season’s high holidays. If we entertained on Christmas or New Year’s this was the special entrée. In spite of growing up Virginian, I went my entire childhood believing this dish to be my mother’s signature, super-secret recipe. As an adult I learned that Southerners claim it as their own and that my mother, a transplanted Yankee from Greene County, Pennsylvania, challenged that claim. My conjecture? At our country’s birth, Greene County was the hinterlands of Virginia’s frontier, with Pennsylvania and Virginia squabbling over possession. In fact Mason and Dixon’s line runs through those rolling hills. Seems to me that Brunswick Stew is just like that line, a place where North meets South, and Yankee meets Southern in recipes passed down generation after generation.
Once upon a time I tried to duplicate my mother’s stew recipe; of course, it never tasted quite right. Rather than admit failure and deprive myself of this pleasure, I tried a North Carolina recipe discovered in a Christmas-gifted cookbook. This receipt produced a darn good facsimile of my childhood memory, and I made my own Brunswick Stew, on cold wintry nights, at the end of a trying week, or for company-filled holidays. Gradually I got up the nerve to ask my mother for tips and tricks, which I added to my own process. Now when I stew up my chicken, the thick, savory dinner is a true Mason-Dixon dish.
Mason-Dixon Brunswick Stew feed as many or as few as you want, just adjust quantities. This variation feeds a gang of six, with seconds, and you still have some leftover for lunch.
Ingredients:
Soak your chicken in salted water for 15 minutes, pat dry.
Rub the chicken with olive oil and herb paste. Roast chicken at 350* until the drumstick wiggles when grabbed, juices run clear or your meat thermometer registers 170*–roughly an hour and a half. Baste every so often to keep the chicken from drying out.
Take chicken out of oven and cool, then take the meat off the bone and set aside. Reserve the pan drippings for your stew.
Prepare your chicken stock by placing the chicken carcass in a stock pot and cover with water. Add a couple of stalks of celery, bay leaves and herbs if you want. Simmer for 30 minutes. Take ALL the bones out, along with the bay leaves and celery.
Add the pan drippings to your chicken broth, then add the roasted chicken, the tomatoes, onions, and lima beans. Cook for about an hour.
Add the corn and cook for another 1/2 hour.
Thicken the stew with the mashed potatoes until the consistency suits you.
Throughout the stewing, taste and season–pinch by pinch–with salt, pepper, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme until you like the effect. (Some recipes call for adding Worcestershire sauce instead of your own mix of herbs.)
I love pepper and thyme, so my stew is heavy on those herbs. I don’t like a lot of tomatoes, so I use just one can. I do love lima beans and sometimes add more, as I do with the mashed pototoes. Every cook produces her own signature taste. So–there you have it! Served with hot cornbread dripping butter and honey, with a side of ‘slaw, this Mason-Dixon Stew is guaranteed to fill bellies and comfort souls!
28 Friday Jan 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
One month ago, I sat still long enough to listen to my self. I wanted my family research and blog writing to feel focused and invigorating, not so scattered and exhausting. I organized my thoughts by participating in the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy Challenge:
Think about the goals you want to accomplish next year and write them down. What research steps do you want to take? What records would you like to find? Think about the brick walls you’d like knocked down. What things haven’t you done yet and why not?
I created 10 resolutions, guidelines, hopes, dreams–promises to my self.
PROMISES, PROMISES–REVISITED
How am I doing with all that? Well, the answer is complicated.
I promise to make three genealogical fieldtrips. FIELDTRIP!!! YAY!
My field trips are not likely to be realized until the snow stops falling and I am alright with that.
I promise to attend the Writer’s Workshop in Jackson, Wyoming and visit my brother and his wife on the side.
Plans are in the works! Dates have been sibling and husband approved. Onward!
I promise to pass my Ancestor Approved Award forward, creating a list of 10 things I have learned while being my family’s Teller and awarding the AAA to 10 more genealogy blogs that have great content.
I have begun to read and follow other genealogy blogs; my RSS feed is up to 7. Unfortunately, even that limited reading comes at a cost in time that I find hard to justify daily. I DO feel much more connected to a larger community, and that provides impetus to keep trying to fulfill this promise.
I promise to roll in technology like my dogs roll in fresh grass, becoming proficient in PollDaddy, Snag It, WordPress, Footnote, and anything else that strikes me as being super cool and relevant to creating digital and print family stories.
A++++ for effort and accomplishment on this promise! for this is what I do instead of reading other folks’ blogs. I am particularly focused on Snag It, WordPress and Footnote.
I promise to make an editorial calendar for my blog!!!
OH, Yeah. Have I done this. But I don’t have time to do all that I planned out!!! So this promise has created an ENORMOUS problem for me. Time for a rephrase! I will stop the surname research and the posting to Surname Saturday. I got REALLY off target with this process. I don’t regret it all; the meandering led me to an incredible distant relative. I am not able to keep up the pace and do what I feel passionately drawn to, however. Whew….it feels good to get that off my mind. :) Now I can redo my editorial calendar.
I promise to keep annotating and cataloging the incredible mother lode of primary documents I am privileged to care for.
This task was suffering from my editorial calendar dilemma, but I have been plugging away at it. I have had to realize that annotating and cataloging is not satisfying unless it leads to understanding and sharing the stories that emerge. All of this takes more time than I could have ever imagined. So this promise is a work in progress.
I promise to finish my Civil War Course, David Blight lectures downloaded from Open Yale Courses.
Another casualty of my editorial calendar! This task is essential to understanding my Minor Papers and the story-weaving of Sayles, Dodsons, Stricklands and Minors–which is promise ten: I promise to sketch out the stories of how the Sayles and the Dodsons, the Stricklands and the Minors were intertwined by the events of the Civil War and its aftermath.
Promises, promises.
Checking in has made me focus on what is working–and what is not even close to working. Overall though the promises are focusing my attention and driving my energy into wonderful places. As Mr. Bacharach said,
Promises, promises, my kind of promises, can lead to joy and hope and love!
21 Friday Jan 2011
I am in many ways exasperated with the state of our national government with all the picky nonsense, the garrulous quarreling. LEAD already!
But there is no set of institutions better at creating databases than ours, and lately these civil servants have been digitizing the records and making the database searchable from your home! The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management–General Land Office website receives this week’s TOP HITS award!
I have the honor of being custodian and researcher for a batch of family documents, many of them related to land transactions in the 1840s-1860s. Armed with the family surname, Minor, and the county and state mentioned in the document–Moultrie, Illinois in this week’s search–I was able to draw up all of the land warrantees and patentees for the Federal distribution of public lands.
What an experience to confirm with government documents that my ancestors participated in the westward expansion of our country. In this case, Abia Minor, son of John Pearson Minor, is assigned the land originally warranted to War of 1812 veterans. By clicking on the far left hand paper icon I can access the original document. I can even order a certified copy of this document without leaving the page. Clicking the details tab on that page gives a second page that succinctly states the specifics of the land now to be in Abia Minor’s name. 
As I reread my satchel stash of transactions between father and son, this newfound government information will enrich my understanding of family dynamics and of government policy impact on those interactions.
17 Monday Jan 2011
Posted in Random Thoughts
If we press on with determination, moral courage and wise restraint and calm reasonableness, in a few years we will reach the goal. I have a great deal of faith in the future and the outcome. I am not despairing.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
1957
http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf
Watch the full episode. See more The Open Mind.
