Monday Genea-pourri

After searching for two hours to find a topic for today's afternoon blog post, I decided on this:

1)  We had Linda's brother Paul, and his wife Debra, down from the Bay Area from Wednesday until Saturday for a visit, and it went well.  We went out to dinner three times and to the beach for lunch, and up to see our daughter's family in Huntington Beach on Friday.  We shared lots of family stories and made a few more family history memories.

Brother Paul just got his 23andMe DNA tests back, and wondered how to understand them.  So we looked at Linda's test results, and saw a number of known cousins on the Match list, but Paul wasn't on the list.  He should have been, and I didn't know why he wasn't.  Today, Paul is on the list, and shares 48.2% of his DNA with his sister.  I guess they just added his results over the weekend.  Whew - had me worried for awhile!!

While we looked at the DNA matches, Paul wondered about some of the cousins, not knowing exactly who they were.  I opened RootsMagic and my Ancestry tree, and showed him. He was amazed at how easy it was to find persons, to see relationships, to add information, and to get Hints.  I invited him to share my Ancestry Member Tree.

2)  Sunday was a day of genealogy rest.  After church, I watched the second half of the Chargers game, took a nap, worked on the Amanuensis post, and watched the 5th World Series game.

While working on the Amanuensis post, I wondered why John Plimpton was not found in a search of the Massachusetts Wills and Probates database on Ancestry.  It turned out that his records are in the database, but are not indexed.  I found 9 pages of Suffolk County [Mass.] probate records for him on FamilySearch, and they are all on Ancestry.com in the collection, but none of them are indexed.  That's because Ancestry didn't index every record in the collection.  The indexing in Probate Court Clerk volumes is spotty at best on Ancestry - researcher beware!  You can use the collection, but it is best if you use the Probate Index and Probate Docket books first.

3)  I attended this morning's Mondays With Myrt Hangout and was able to contribute a bit on the Federal Land Records, Massachusetts land records, and the scrapbook/autograph book conversations.  I wore my Genea-Santa hat as my Hallowe'en costume.

4)  This afternoon I had a "Genealogy - Be An Ancestor Detective" presentation at the Serra Mesa library in San Diego at 1:30 p.m., sponsored by OASIS (A senior adult education center).  This is a Beginning "how-to" and encouragement talk - about one third of the attendees had done some collecting and a few had done some research online.  There were 24 at this free talk and discussion, and there were plenty of good questions about DNA, immigration, probate records, and more.   After the event, one lady came up and showed me a large (like 24 x 18) book with blueprinted family group sheets, maps, and a pedigree chart from the 1930s.  The blueprint printing was hard to read.

That's what I've been up to for the past six days - what about you?

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