Genea-Musings: SNGF

Showing posts with label SNGF. Show all posts

Saturday, September 26, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Oldest Confirmed Record

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) What is "Your Oldest Confirmed Record?" What is one of the oldest documents you've personally found for any ancestor?

2) Share your oldest confirmed record: what it is, where it came from, and what it revealed.

3) Share your oldest confirmed record in your own blog post, or in a comment on this blog post, or write a Substack post, Facebook Note, or in some other social media system. Please leave a comment with a link on this post so others can find it.

I was unsure what "oldest confirmed record" means. Is it "a record only I have?" Is it "the first record I ever found?" Is it "a record that is old in years that I've found in a repository or online database?" Is it "an old church confirmation record?"

I asked Google Search AI and it told me:

An "oldest confirmed record" is the furthest back verified document, like a birth certificate or census entry, that proves a specific ancestor's existence in a family tree.

So let's go with that.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this topic.

Here's mine:

I have dozens (hundreds?) of church records, land records, and probate records, from the 1600s and perhaps even the 1500s. I did not take the time to find the "oldest" record in my family tree with 75,000 profiles. So I will go with an "old" one I recently found and still remember finding it:

My Treasure Chest Thursday post this week turned up a 1609 baptism in the Cockfield, Suffolk, England parish records for my 9th great-grandfather Thomas Gleson (1609-1686), son of Thomas Gleson.

Other researchers have identified the parents of Thomas Gleson as Thomas Gleson and Ann Amesby from their 1602 marriage record in Cockfield, Suffolk, England. Here is the record (snipped from a larger image).

A source citation?

Cockfield, Suffolk, England Parish Register, Thomas Gleson and Ann Armsby marriage record, 28 October 1602; imaged, Ancestry.com
(https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62751/images/62751_372055000018_1450-00033 : accessed 25 September 2026), "Suffolk, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812," > Cockfield, 1561-1760 > image 32 of 248.

424 years ago, my 10th great-grandparents married.

This is an Original Source wth Primary Information and Direct Evidence of the marriage of my 10th great-grandparents. It came from an English parish church record which was digitized by Ancestry.com and put into a searchable database (although I found it be searching the Cockfield register manually).

This record is evidence of the marriage of my 10th great-grandparents, and my baptism record of their son is evidence of his approximate birth date. I also have the marriage record for the son Thomas Gleson marrying Susanna Page in 1634 in Cockfield, and the birth of their son Joseph Gleason in 1640 in Cockfield. But I need the evidentiary records of the next 11 generations down to me to prove my descent from Thomas and Ann (Armesby) Gleson.

I have a lot of evidence because I've been working on it for almost 40 years, but I haven't documented every birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial through all those generations. Some records don't exist.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun.html

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

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Saturday, September 19, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Unfinished Genealogy Projects

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) What started but unfinished projects do you have? Define one or more of them, and how far along you are in the project.

2) Share one or more of your unfinished projects in your own blog post, or in a comment on this blog post, or write a Substack post, Facebook Note, or in some other social media system. Please leave a comment with a link on this post so others can find it.

Here's mine:

I have so many!! Here are some family tree unfinished projects:

Converting current place names to historical place names in my RootsMagic database. I started this in about 2020 and got through most of my Seaver/Richman ancestry, but not the Carringer/Auble ancestry. I'm pretty much stalled at about 50%.
Improving my source citations to Evidence Explained standard. I started this around 2010, and have tried since thenm, but the citations before are still sub-standard. I do convert citations to EE standard when I am working on the person if I have time. I'm trying to use EE standards for new data entries. I'm maybe 20% complete.
Transcribing probate records and land records for my ancestors, Seaver/Richman people and Carringer/Auble people. and entering the event, transcription and source citation to the RootsMagic profiles. I try to keep up with them in my Amanuensis Monday Posts compendium. I do one transcription each week, and try to keep RootsMagic up-to-date, but need to go back in time to add earlier (pre-2024?) transcriptions and sources. It's hard to quantify this one.
Updating the Find A Grave memorial data for Seaver/Richman and Carringer/Auble persons. By 2015, I had done Seaver people up to 2015, but have recently started working backwards from 2026 to add death and burial information and source citations to my RootsMagic file since 2015. I'm currently working in 2022. So 20%?
Mining the MyHeritage Record Matches for selected record collections. I occasionally do this on specific collections but there are so many matches and it's hard to sort out the new ones! I don't work with Smart Matches.
Checking GenealogyBank, Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, and Chronicling America for Seaver and Carringer obituaries. I do this twice a year, but really should do year-by-year back in time to cover everything.
Creating ABC Biographies for more distant ancestors (4th great-grandparents and before) to create more AI-assisted biographies and family stories. Starting...
Adding ABC Biographies and a Narrative Report to the Person Notes in RootsMagic for my ancestors. Perhaps 10% done?
Adding ABC Biographies to the Memories section of FamilySearch Family Tree for selected ancestors. Perhaps 5% done?

Here are some of my writing projects:

Updating the 500+ genealogical sketches done for 52 Ancestors to include new records and source citations. Perhaps 10% done?
Adding and updating every week the AI-assisted biographies and stories collection, including the family group compendiums and the YouTube collection list. Almost 100% but I have to do it weekly.
Revising my ABC Biographies through the 3rd great-grandparents to combine the husband and wife's information into a couple biography with source citations. Perhaps 10% done.
Creating PDF files composed of my AI-assisted Biographies and Family Stories for a specific couple (e.g., Norman and Sarah (Read) Seaver) or family line (e.g., my Seaver line ancestors) as a book project. Working on the first one.
Compiling and publishing another MyHeritage MyStories book for "The Watchful House" series of AI-assisted stories. About 90% done. Thanksgiving is my deadline.

I know I have more projects that need finishing, but the above are "top of mind" at the moment. I don't do all of them every day -- I'm lucky to do some of them once a week and many are once-a-month tasks.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your.html

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Serendipity!

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Serendipity! What happened when you went looking for an ancestor or a genealogical record and were pleasantly surprised to find someone else or something else you didn't expect while you were doing that search?

2) Please share an instance when you had a serendipitous experience.

3) Share your serenditous experience in a your own blog post, or in a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment with a link on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Marian B. Wood for suggesting this topic.

Here's mine:

I've had so many serendipity experiences over the years and now I can't remember the details of most of them. So I will recount my latest experience from this past week.

While I was writing my blog post about the life of my 3rd great-grandmother Elizabeth (Dill) Smith (1791-1869) in 1845 in Medfield, Massachusetts, I reviewed my research for her and her husband Alpheus B. Smith (1802-1840). I checked all my notes for them, which are in my RootsMagic profiles and genealogical sketches, and realized that I had searched, many years ago, for probate records for Alpheus Smith. I had found the affidavit noting that Lucy Butterfield had bought Elizabeth's dower thirds (one-third of the personal estate, about one acre of land including the house and barn) from her in the FamilySearch Catalog, and I knew that the other 15 acres were sold to pay the debts of the Alpheus Smith estate.

However, I found that I had not searched the land records at all for Elizabeth. I searched for "Elizabeth H. Smith" on FamilySearch Full-Text Search and up popped not only the deed for Lucy Butterfield buying Elizabeth's dower rights, but also a deed (on the same image) for Lucy Butterfield buying the other 15 acres from the estate administered by Hinsdale Fisher.

I will transcribe the deeds in coming Amanuensis Monday posts so that I have a proper transcription and also a proper source citation. I also need to update the genealogical sketch and ABC Biography for Elizabeth (Dill) Smith.

I'm not sure this is all Serendipity but if it hadn't been on the same page in the Deed Book I'm not sure I would have found it. When I searched for "Alpheus Smith" in Full-Text Search, this second deed did not appear in the results for some reason (Smith records are very common, perhaps I failed to search more than 100 deed matches?).

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-serendipity.html

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- How Do You Use Artificial Intelligence Tools?

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) How do you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help you understand the lives, history, and geography associated with your family and your ancestors, that aid your genealogy and family history research?

2) Please share the ways (at least one way!) that you use AI tools in your genealogy and family history research.

3) Share the ways you use AI in your genealogy and family history work in own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment with a link on this post so others can find it.

Here's mine:

The most obvious way that I use AI is to create engaging biographies and family stories based on a genealogical sketch that provide historical and social context to the lives of my ancestors. Every day I post an article that is AI-generated and edited by myself for content and accuracy. Usually, I use the free Anthropic Claude for the biographies, memoirs and family stories.

I use the Google Search AI feature to find limited information like "what restaurants were open in San Diego in 1918." These are usually questions and answers that add to my family stories.

I use the free OpenAI ChatGPT5 and Google Gemini 3 to provide answers to complex questions like "Describe the feeding and use of pigs and hogs in the 19th century," or "Describe the shoe and bootmaking process in 1880," or "What was the enlistment and boot camp process for the U.S. Navy in 1944," or ""Describe 20 Free or Low-Cost Genealogy Education Opportunities."

In the past, I've used the free AI tools to create images, poems and song lyrics about my own life and the lives of my ancestors, and then used the song lyrics to create an actual song with music using the (free but limited) Suno AI tool. I also use a Canva presentation to use the Suno-created song in a YouTube video.

I use the free (but limited) Google Gemini Notebook to create Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, Infographics and Slide Shows for most of my AI-assisted biographies and stories. I use the Infographics and Video Overviews to illustrate and tell each family story. Then I add the video overview to my free YouTube channel.

I use the free MyHeritage Scribe AI tool to transcribe, translate (if not in English) and analyze a letter or document, or to analyze a photograph.

I use the free FamilySearch Full-Text Search to find records (especially land and probate records) for an ancestor and then use the record transcription (edited as required) to add content to my genealogical sketch for the ancestor, update my RootsMagic database with an event, description and source citation, and write a blog post.

Occasionally, I use Steve Little's Genealogy Research Assistant AI tool to analyze my research about a specific ancestor, including discussion about satisfying the Genealogy Proof Standard and to provide suggestions for future research.

All of my Artificial Intelloigence posts related to genealogy and family history are on the Randy's AI and Genealogy page.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how-do-you.html

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Describe One of Your Own, or an Ancestor's, Life Turning Point

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Every historical person has major events, milestones and "turning points" in their life, from birth through death and even beyond. These events, milestones and turning points can be the basis for family stories of the historical person.

2) Please share one of those events in your own life, or the life of one of your ancestors.

2) Share your information about your major event, milestone or turning point in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Here's mine:

I usually ask my AI assistant to help me define milestones and turning points in an ancestor's life because the LLM is always more perceptive than I am. For instance, I asked ChatGPT5 about the major events and milestones in Isaac Seaver's life today in Major Events and Milestones In the Life of Isaac Seaver (1823-1901) of Massachusetts. I asked for turning points in Devier J. Smith's life in Using Artificial Intelligence Tools To Find Possible Family Stories.

I'm going to resist asking Claude for my own milestones and turning points and share about my own turning point in my genealogy and family history work in the recent past.

After 36 years of doing genealogy research, collecting hundreds of tens of thousands of records (who's counting?), adding over 75,000 historical persons to my family tree, and writing over 17,000 blog posts and over 500 genealogical sketches for my ancestors, I decided to start writing family stories about my own life and about the lives of my closest ancestors (well, from 3rd great-grandparents forward in time). But, and it's a BIG but, I don't have stories about the day-to-day lives of my ancestors -- I have only records of events about their lives and a few family stories about my parents and grandparents, plus my own life experiences. How best can I tell their stories so that my descendants and relatives can understand and appreciate them?

One of my turning points over 82 years happened in early 2024: As I was experimenting with artificial intelligence LLMs, I found that they could write a much better genealogical sketch, biography, memoir, family story, poem, song lyrics, and dialogue from rough notes, timelines, and the genealogical sketches. Then I found in 2025 the infographics to illustrate my blog posts, the audio overviews to describe the ancestor, the video overviews to describe them with images, and slide show presentations to summarize their lives.

I've often said that my AI writings is like having a ghostwriter and asking it to "take my genealogical sketch and write an engaging biography or family story." And it does so without fail, subject to my review and editing, I can combine the biography with the infographic, poem/song, stories, audio and video overviews, etc. into an ABC Biography (my term, described in Using Artificial Intelligence In the Ancestor Biography Creation (ABC) Process - Updated.

As a result, I have written, with the help of the LLMs, over 800 blog posts using AI about my own life and the lives of those closest ancestors (plus my wife's closest ancestors and my Revolutionary War ancestors - about 100 historical persons) in the past two-plus years, all based on my ancestor genealogical sketches and my own memories. All of my own writings with AI are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. It's been a lot of fun, and I've learned a lot about the times and places that they might have experienced.

I've also written a book about my own life experiences using StoryWorth in 2024 to tell about 40 of my own stories in my technical writing style (just the facts, no emotion, boring). I published that book in late 2024 and provided copies of the book as a Christmas gift to my two daughters and their children. I'm not sure anybody read them! I used the same text, edited the stories a bit, and published them in a MyHeritage MyStories book in early 2025. I have a second MyStories book in work using my "The Watchful House" series of stories (see my Randy's AI and Genealogy page).

So what's next for me in this adventure in using a ghostwriter to write biographies and family stories? The obvious answer is to "write a book" about an ancestral family or a string of families (e.g., "My Seaver Family Story From 1608 to the Present"). Or several, or many, books. The challenge for me is to find the time to put the book(s) together. And then determine how to distribute them.

I'm leaning toward a PDF for a person or family, with photographs if I have them, including the genelaogical sketch, biography, memoir, stories, etc., and links to the videos and slide presentations on my YouTube channel. I can print a copy of the PDF for my own library, send a link to it to my descendants and relatives (and anyone else who is interested), post it to an online website (Scribd, or similar), and donate copies to the FamilySearch Digital Library, the Internet Archive, and any other repository that wants it.

So that's my personal turning point -- I'm in the middle of it right now and I hope that I can finish the work before the inevitable mortality turning point happens.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-describe_0198895903.html

Saturday, August 22, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- An Ancestor's School Records

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Do you have any records of your ancestors' schooling, such as report cards, yearbooks, or photos?

2) If so, please share one of them and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the article.

2) Share your information about your newspaper article in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.

Here's mine:

I have yearbook pages (photos, descriptions, etc.) of my parents, and my maternal grandparents, including a cumulative report card for my mother and grandfather. I shared my mother's cumulative report card recently in The Making of an Artist and Teacher – Betty Carringer's Art Classes in High School.

Here is my maternal grandfather's cumulative report card from San Diego High School between 1909 and 1914.

Lyle L. Carringer entered San Diego High School on 7 September 1909 at age 17, and graduated June 26, 1914 at age 22. He must have taken one year off -- I'm pretty sure that he worked part-time all through high school at Marston's Department Store and ended up being an accountant.

There are four years (I, II, III, IV) and two semesters i n each year (B and A). The other side of this card said he was studying "General Scientific." The other side of the card gave the grade numbers: 1 = Excellent; 2 = Good; 3 = Fair; 4 = Failure. 32 credits were required for graduation.

Perusing the report card, I see that he received good grades in English and Spanish, History, Chemistry, Physiography, Economics, Drawing (F.H.), Mech. Drawing, and Exp[osition?]. He received failure grades in Algebra and Geometry. He repeated several courses, including Algebra and Geometry. The report says he had 37 credits.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun.html

Saturday, August 15, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- An Unusual Newspaper Article About Your Ancestors

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Have you found an unusual, chilling, amazing, or fascinating newspaper article about your ancestors?

2) If so, please share the article and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the article. Provide a source citation too!

Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.

Here's mine:

Early in my research (in about 1990?), I went to the San Diego Public Library to see if there was newspaper articles about my Carringer families in the San Diego newspapers. Fortunately, there was an index on microfiche for the San Diego Union newspaper from 1868 to about 1980. Here is one of the articles that I found unusual, fascinating and amazing.

One of the articles I found was this one (image captured in recent years on GenealogyBank):

The transcription of the article is:

"Carringer Gardens, Model of Beauty,

Have Also Wealth of Entertainment

By Ada Perry

"Mr. and Mrs. Lyle L. Carringer, 2130 Fern st., are never bored with their garden. They have four fish pools in it filled with finny pets that are always on the move. Sometimes they move out on the grass but the Carringers chalk this up to playfulness and continue to enjoy the aquatic aspects of their home.

"The Carringer place is distinctly in the livable small garden or outdoor living room class. The pools are strategically located to invite folks outdoors for pleasure and relaxation. One pool, the smallest, is placed near the rear door of the house as a starting point. From there to a sunny larger pool planted to lilies and overhung with shrubs is a natural step.

"Other parts of the garden planted to flowers, cacti and succulents and several fruit trees are easily accessible from the second pool and then the Carringers and their friends naturally gravitate to a lath house furnished with chairs and tables.

"There are sources of amusement in the lath house. The remaining pools are located there. One is a rill in the heart of a pretty rockery and the other a shadowy oval presided over by a rice plant with curving stalks topped with laves like giant hands. Directly above the pool a tree fern rests apparently on the water. The invisible stand which holds it up represents some clever household ingenuity. It was formerly a piano stool.

"A grill is built at the end of the lath house on a rock structure. The grill space can be filled with a decorative potted plant when not in use although the Carringers have found it a consistent entertainer.

"Next to the grill in a glass house annex is a surprise feature. On shelves are aquariums filled with tropical fish, paradise, moons, guppies, and other fancy swimmers weaving about in grassy water jungles; blinking, gobbling and raising families in the most distracting style. The glass house is heated for them and each aquarium has individual radiators and thermometers for perfect comfort.

"Tropical aquariums are often kept indoors but the Carringers have theirs handy to the pools where fish life from goldfish to guppies can be observed. Certain of the tropicals are moved to the goldfish pools at favorable times for variety."

The source citation is:

"Carringer Gardens, Model of Beauty, Have Also Wealth of Entertainment," San Diego [Calif.] Union newspaper, Sunday, 24 March 1935, page 18, columns 5-6, Lyle L. Carringer garden article; GenealogyBank, Newspaper Archives (https://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 3 January 2022).

Lyle L. Carringer (1891-1976) and Emily Kemp (Auble) Carringer (1899-1977) are my maternal grandparents. They built the house at 2130 Fern Street in San Diego in 1920, and resided there for about 30 years. My mother grew up in that house and garden. Lyle loved to build things and was very creative. Emily was a horticultural expert and loved the gardens. My guess is that building and maintaining the gardens, the pools, the lath house and the glass house were evening and weekend projects for the whole family. I have very distant memories of playing in the lath house and glass house and recall the goldfish pools as a young boy. After 1946, my family lived in the building on the south side of the gardens. They sold the Fern Street house in 1950 and the new owner built a fence to wall off his property from two little boys.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-unusual.html

Saturday, August 8, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Extreme Weather or Natural Disaster Experiences

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Did extreme weather or a natural disaster ever affect you or your ancestor(s)? In what way(s)? How did you find this out? Describe one or more of the extreme weather experiences in your own life or in your ancestors lives.ry.

2) Share your information about you or your ancestor(s) extreme weather or natural disaster experiences in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Marian B. Wood for this SNGF idea.

Here's mine:

Living in San Diego all of my life, I have not experienced an "extreme weather condition" or a "natural disaster" like a hurricane, a tornado, a firestorm, a blizzard, a really hot heat spell, a really cold spell, a flood, or a destructive earthquake. Just luck through geography. [Knocking on wood!!!]

Most of my ancestry came through the northeast - New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ontario, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado. I'm sure that many of my ancestors experienced extreme cold, blizzards, floods, and hurricanes. They survived because they were prepared for the cold and rain. They were smart if they stayed out of the river valleys and stayed higher than the water level.

One of my ancestors experienced a tornado -- Rebecca (Spangler) Crringer (1832-1901). She and her family were residing in Washington County, Iowa in 1873 when a tornado hit nearby. Rebecca was at a friend's home and suffered injuries but survived. See Carringers in the News -- The Great Tornado of Washington County, Iowa in May 1873 in which "Mrs. Carringer" (I'm very sure this was Rebecca!) was listed as being injured.

I wrote a story about the experience using AI in Ask Claude AI: "Please Create a Dialogue Between Rebecca Carringer and Her Family About Surviving the Tornado" which included another story about Rebecca telling her grandson Lyle Carringer about the experience.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-extreme.html

Saturday, August 1, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Describe a Family Vacation

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Did your family go on vacation? Describe one or more of your vacations with your birth family or with your spouse and children.

2) Share your information about your vacation(s) in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system. Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.

Here's mine:

I described my birth family vacations to State bowling tournaments and to the cabin on Bass Lake near Yosemite when I was a child in other blog posts.

This story is about our first years of parenthood.

One of the best things we ever did as a family was to attend a weeklong Christian camp in the San Bernardino mountains, called Forest Home. Our church (Chula Vista Presbyterian Church) encouraged and organized going to this camp every year and quite a few of our church family friends went. We went every other year from 1975 to 1985, and gained spiritual and intellectual knowledge, and got to know our church friends well.

The toddlers and infants slept with their parents, and the other age groups (elementary school, junior high school, high school) had a separate camp with age-appropriate programs and counselors. There were nature hikes in the mountains, swimming in the lake, miniature golf, doing crafts, etc. For the adults, the schedule was breakfast, then Bible Study with a preacher, lunch, free time activity in the afternoon (we usually went to the lake), dinner, an Evening song service with the camp leader, and free time until bedtime. The camp leader and the pastors were well-known in the evaqngelical community. We loved hearing different preachers every day.

Our girls "graduated" from the morning nursery to the toddler care to the all-day and overnight Indian Village (for elementary school students), which had counselors. We had lunch with our little girls with a lunchroom full of small children. Twice during the week we got to see the girls when they were in the Indian Village -- they came to visit for the afternoon, and we usually went to the lake.

There were other travel vacations as our girls grew up -- several visits to Hawaii, many visits to San Francisco to see their maternal grandparents and uncle, driving up the West Coast to Seattle and Victoria in 1983 in our new Oldsmobile, travel softball trips all over Southern California, a cruise out of Miami to Jamaica, Cayman Islands, and Cozumel, and a week in a Puerta Vallarta resort.

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The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-describe.html

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