I saw this first on Facebook with Sue Peterson posting her blog (Long Lost Relatives) and then I went to the blog Susan's entry had originated from by Leah Kleylein (Random Notes) that she had read. So I thought I would do that too and then Sheri Fenley (The Educated Genealogist) posted her blog too! So here is mine, my other life or, the random "Oh shiny's!" in my life.
When I am not working on my family history, I...:
I work full time - not doing my genealogy (I confess my mind is on my family history work during this period of the day. I am a podcast junky, listening to genealogy, knitting, spinning, health, well all sorts of podcasts!).
I have just taken on a part-time job (I went to the retirement meeting at work, had heart failure)
I play Angry Birds sometimes.
I play Frontierville. (Yeah, I know.)
I play Castleville. (I know, I know!)
TV. Many years ago, when my daughter was a pre-schooler, my day was filled with the TV always on so one day we turned it off (I seriously dumped the ABC line up of soaps! 18 years ago!), she got 2 hours a day of TV, we got a couple hours at night and over time I just stopped altogether. Then I started to work at this job 6 years ago and listening to my co-workers talk about shows and joining the Survivor pool for three seasons without knowing what the show was about I slowly started watching TV again!!
Currently I make sure I watch:
Biggest Loser
Parenthood
Ghost Hunter's
Ghost Hunter's International
Being Human
Antique's Road Show
Harry's Law - but I seem to miss it all of the time.
Aside from regular TV, movies, I love movies, period films most but I am hooked on the Transformers movies, do not ask me why, it is out of my usual genre appreciation.
Costuming!! If I could get my lazy butt in gear, Costuming would be my second passion after genealogy. I follow blogs of amateur costumers, and the contests like Realm of Venus Showcase. I love costume diary's, there are so many bloggers out there. I am in the SCA, fringe member, and am changing my persona from 1500's Turkish to 1500's Italian, I think. I just want to be Safiya of A Thousand Dresses. I currently have working class Italian ren garb in the works but am mentally preparing to do a complete ensemble… someday.
(Shhhhh. Secret thing: Roleplay. I roleplay on AOL, building a story with other people typing back at you is a lot of fun.)
Spinning. I love to spin. I have three spinning wheels, enough fiber for twenty years worth of spinning time and guess what… THREE DUSTY spinning wheels!
Knitting. I am not great at it but I do enjoy it so I knit. I always have a project in my work bag, lunch was always my knitting hour but then I got onto something else. This past week I have been knitting at lunch again and reminded how much I really do enjoy it. It's just too bad it takes me 6 months to do one pair of socks. I have enough yarn for a few years of knitting projects based on my speed at getting things not finished.
There is so much more.. I have too many likes and I think that really hurts me in being truly "expert" at anything. My concentration is always so thinned out over too many areas. Jane of all trades, Master of none.
This post has been rolling around in my mind for a while now and then the recent upswing of discussion of the shift in the Genealogy world with the advent of the internet and social media makes this post rolling around in my brain timely. I now wish I had gotten right on it at first, I might have been the trailblazer! A few things happened within the last few months which made me think about my place in this wide world of the social media collective.
I am a hobbyist when it comes to Genealogy. I will never be a super Genealogist or super blogger. I will never be famous or a leader in our vast environment of all levels of family historians. I will have my good months of research and I will have my months of not so much progress. I will never be a professional. My blog will never carry up to the minute news or teach people how to be good Genealogists, I am adequate at it, but it will reach out to those that just might be stuck on a family name we share and it will be a beacon to reach out to those that share my ancestry. Those are the things I will never be. Now the things that I am. I share the same passion as the rest of the genealogical community. I am passionate and love every minute that I am involved in some form of my quest to know my roots. My mind is 24/7 on this quest. Ask my family, friends and co-workers, haha. The collective energy of the genealogy community keeps me inspired and tackling problems in my family tree. I love to learn, I love to share and I learn so much from those people who are the super stars in our growing world. I don't have to be a mover and shaker and I appreciate when the big names are nice to me and realize I am there and part of our collective community and I try very hard not to take it personal when they are not. I am a webinar junky, podcast junky and I am broadening my horizon's and have registered for NGS 2012. I am very nervous about that, I have a shyness that can be crippling and going someplace without a close friend to cling on is really pushing me out of my comfort zone. Just saying. I am very excited about it though and I will be the one there trying to make one with the wall. There is me in a paragraph.
Aside from the online presence, I feel memberships in Societies are very important and a presence in them more so. In the last year I have made good on my resolution to get myself out more and involved. I have always wanted to do this but again shyness in big crowds makes not going places alone very easy. Well, I can say that I have pushed myself out and into these meetings, DAR and the Rochester Genealogical Society, and have enjoyed myself very much and really do like the physical community that is waiting for those who come out and join. I am also a member of the NC Genealogical Society since much of my ancestry is there and it is my way to help support that community. Tennessee is pending, I have sent in my form and that is another state with much of my ancestry.
And now on to Projects 2012 - -
I have one personal genealogical project that has to do with me. Once I am done being mad about it, I will work on it.
DAR - I was pinned and swore my oath to the DAR in December after two years of being a member and not being involved. I found it to be a wonderful personal moment in my life. Wasted time, I so enjoy the meetings. I have a handful of possible Patriots to add, Reverend Robert Stockton, Edward Weatherly, Samuel Walker, Thomas Blakey and a couple more, oh and John Duncan, the big mystery man in my family tree. So 2012 will be a year I set a goal of 2 supplemental applications made.
Cattern Walker Cowden brick wall. I have always felt she was the mother of my James C Cowden and 99 percent of the trees on Ancestry have Nancy Crewse as his mother. My Ancestry tree did too because it is a tree that I import a lot of junk info into as clues so I don't forget about them. My personal RM5 tree on my pc has my actual information sourced and cited. If I can somehow prove Cattern was alive when James C Cowden was born and is his mother, that will open up Samuel Walker as a supplementary application.
Bannister Hensley - the mystery man.
Transcribing - I have a pile of deeds that need to be transcribed for three different families..
Scanning - I have a lot of scanning to do. Photo's to scan and share of my Grandmothers side of the family. There are a lot of unidentified photo's and hopefully, someday, if I find cousins from Dundee, Scotland from my Fender clan, maybe they will be able to help me figure out the faces!
Blog more -- yeah, I say that every year...
And this is just the short list….
Currently I am working on a few possible Revolutionary War ancestors but I am a VERY distractible which makes me laugh because every report card of mine in grade school said I had a hard time staying on task. I am a wanderer and so over time, especially the last ten years, I do cut myself some slack and follow my focus. I am more productive that way in a round about sort of way. It does frustrate me because a dozen different times I have told myself one family at a time, thorough, get everything, move on but….. Then the drift comes along again. It annoys me because I am a doer, I like to get things finished, I am a list maker and once I write it down on a list, I am obsessed until I can cross it off. As you can imagine with what I have said just in this paragraph, this can cause a lot of conflict and frustration in myself. As I age, this just seems to worsen. Ah well.
So I am back on this Stockton thing! Again. And I have made some very good progress. My Elizabeth Stockton who married Hugh Lawson Baldwin is the daughter of Robert Stockton Jr, son of Reverend Robert Stockton of Barren County, Kentucky, who was a Chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Now to prove that Elizabeth is the granddaughter of the Reverend. Robert Jr. died in 1815 at the age of 43 and so far I am not finding a lot of documentation on him so connecting Elizabeth to the Reverend is a series of hops over Robert Jr. Reverend Robert Stockton's will mentions Robert Jr as being deceased but does not mention his grandchildren. There is a lawsuit over a slave girl named Eliza after the death of Catherine Blakey Stockton (Reverend Robert Stockton's wife) which mentions Elizabeth as a granddaughter. I have ordered that from the Kentucky State Archives and I am waiting for that. I did however order the marriage bond for the first marriage of Elizabeth to William C Wilson and there are three names to link Elizabeth to the Reverend Robert Stockton. I do wonder why he was not involved in this transaction.
The document is written by Nancy Blakey Stockton, who is the widow of Robert Stockton Jr. , giving permission for William C Wilson to place bond for Elizabeth's hand in marriage with her signature. There are two signatures as witness, one is Catherine B. Stockton and Joseph B Stockton. Joseph is clearly defined in Reverend Robert Stockton's will as his son so Elizabeth's mother, grandmother and uncle all have their hand in approving this marriage. With that will I think that is sound evidence that this is my ancestry line and will be making my supplementary application for Reverend Robert Stockton in the DAR.
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