52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Restaurants Week 16

What was your favorite local restaurant as a child? Where was it located, and what was your favorite meal? Did you know the staff personally? What is your favorite restaurant now?

We didn't go out to eat alot when I was a kid. My Dad usually worked 7 days a week on 2nd shift, but once in a while he did get a day off. We didn't always go to the same restaurant, but there was a little restaurant in Otter Lake, Michigan that we would go to sometimes. It was by the railroad tracks. I don't remember the name of it. It was an old building.

The meals there were fantastic big servings. My Mom usually had Deep Fried Shrimp and French Fries, Dad had various meals and us 2 girls was always Hamburger and French Fries. That was what us girls ordered almost all the time. Dad would always say "Don't you kids ever get tired of Hamburger and French Fries?" Us girls would respond with "No!!!"

You could order any kind of potatoes with your meal and you always got salad. We usually picked coleslaw. But whatever meal you got it usually involved getting a doggie bag to take home.

We didn't know the staff personally but they were always very friendly.

I wonder if that restaurant is still there? That was back in 1960's I think.

Today we rarely go out to eat with the economy the way it is. But we do like Country Buffet, unfortunately they closed the one we used to stop at in Muskeon when we would go to Sam's Club or some of the other stores in that area. Now when we are on the road traveling it's usually a quick stop at Burger King. That's a rare occasion now, but used to be almost every Friday evening and Sunday afternoon when we were doing craft shows around our great state of Michigan.

Can't wait to read about some of your great restaurant stories.

One Lovely Blog Award

Today I received a message from Hillary over at Telling Their Tale: The Stories of My Ancestors letting me know she was awarding my blog with the "One Lovely Blog Award."

When I started my blog I was not expecting to receive any awards. I was doing it to write about my family which includes my husband's family. We are a bunch of nuts but family is important to us. And then I decided to not only write about our families but just thoughts I had, and things I wanted to accomplish. I find writing things down somewhere helps me to make some progress on what I need and want to do.
I am very honored to accept this award! Thanks Hillary!!! Please be sure to stop by Hillary's blog!!

Here is a list of some of the blogs that I follow that I would like to nominate for this Award:

Ancestral Wormhole

Blood and Frogs Jewish genealogy and more

From Olsen to Petterborg

Boston 1775

Climbing My Family Tree

The New Genealogist

Vermont Genealogy

Jim's Girl Family History Blog

A Patient Genealogist

Stories from Many Moons Ago

Escape to the Silent Cities

Bogs and Brooklyn

Family Pursuit

Family Lines

Janet the researcher

I follow many blogs so it was a hard choice for me to make because there are so many that really deserve this award. So as I was reading blogs today and found one that I wanted to receive the Award I linked it to my post.

Some may have some tips or research sites in them that may help you out. Most I just enjoy reading and some I can relate what I'm doing to get myself organized better.

So if you haven't stopped by their blogs yet please do.

Thanks for stopping by and you all have a great day or night whichever the case may be.

Sorting Saturday

I have been busy sorting things on my hard drive and in my Legacy Family Tree Program. I did get most of my pictures in Legacy sorted by Surnames. Some I left with the family I had them with at least for now.

I added Folders in the surname folders for Birth Records, Death Records, Census Records, Marriage Records. Now I plan to look in my original folders I have for Birth Records, Death Records, Census Records, Marriage Records, etc. and copy them to the corresponding folder for that surname. It will make it a lot easier to locate the record to link them up I think (or at least I hope).

I still need to do the linking of pictures. But I think I might try organizing them by numbering the ones for each person that I have more than a few photos so they will be in order.

I did get on Ancestory.com site and looked up a few things.

I definitely have a lot of work ahead of me, but I think it will be well worth it in the long run, especially when it comes to linking them to the individuals.

I think though when I am searching on the internet for birth, death, marriage etc. I will still save it first in my folders I have on hard drive and then copy them to my Legacy folders. I know it may sound strange but I'm so afraid of losing stuff. Miss Forgetful here.

The other day I copied all my favorites to my hard drive. But then I added some new ones and I think I forgot to add them to my hard drive file. Wish I could figure out how to have it go directly to my computer file. I tried copy and paste the link but when I went to my computer file it wasn't able to paste. That's why I put them in my favorites. The send to didn't come up in menu when I was trying to do it either. Sometimes computer is not my friend!!!

Well I better go get busy sorting. Hope you all have a really great day!!! The sun is out here in Fountain. Later tonight we have some nasty weather continuing thru tomorrow.

Spring is here and so is the spring weather

Well Spring is here finally!!! So is the thunder and lightning. Yesterday we had Thunder Snow and Lightning. Put a damper on my organizing.

Whenever it thunder and lightnings out we unplug the router, the computers and the printer. Can't afford to take a chance of getting struck by lightning. Even with surge protectors I read lightning can still get through.

So yesterday I got no sorting done. Did get my posts out I wanted to do. But I did get more photos in album so at least I didn't waste time and did get something accomplished.

Did watch the Academy of Country Music Awards last night. They were great. I especially loved Darius Rucker's performance "Music from the Heart" with a group of talented musicians with developmental disabilities. Tears were flowing from everywhere. Thank you Darius and all the ones that performed with him. You Guys ROCKED!!!!!

Sometime this morning after 5 we lost power because all the clocks were flashing and had to reset them after my eyes woke up some so I could see. Had to reset TV to converter cause I just a white screen. No Satellite, Dish or Cable TV here. We get our local CBS 9&10, Fox 32, and 3 PBS stations which 2 are the same and one has Create on it. Can't pick up ABC or NBC stations.

Won't be long and we can quit having to have the woodstove going.

Spring break is over for Poor Walt. But he said only 5 weeks left and summer break begins.

Well I think I might just go work on trying to reorganize my Legacy Family Tree.

Thanks you all for reading!!!!

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Spring

SPRING AT PLEASANT LAKE IN LAPEER, MICHIGAN

We lived in a private subdivison on Pleasant Lake a private lake. It was not far from where my Step-Dad was born and raised in Elba.

The road to get down into the subdivision was a dirt road. You know how dirt roads get when all the snow melts and you get the spring rain. Some sections of the road would be really bumpy and other sections would be soupy with ruts. Well the guys at the lake had bought a big road grader one year. They called it Big Bertha. There was usually Shorty Reid, Joe Elston and Dallas Haynes that would run the road grader on their weekend off from working. (Usually this would happen once a month and usually a few beers to go along with it). They would get it smoothed out and it would be nice for a while. Thanks Guys!!!

Mom would be out working in her flower beds. She had Lily of the Valley planted along one fence line. They always smelled so nice. The back of the house faced the road and the front of the house faced the lake. On the side of the house between us and the German Family (Hastedt's) next door she had flowers all along the fence between us. Some Roses were in there, and right up next to the house by the bathroom window she had a white lilac bush. That always smelled good when it bloomed. Then at the corner of the house on the front side she had a Peony bush. She was always checking it for blooms. Going down to lake on the German Neighbor side she had terrace she had put in with rocks between each terrace and she phlox and I don't remember what all but it sure was pretty. On the other side of the front of the house was the entrance coming out from the basement and terraces below it. The top of the entrance to the basement was a cement slab with gravel like stones like in it. (We would sunbathe on it and sometime picnic there). Along that fence line was wild grapes we never ate them but we would have to chop down dead stuff and clear runners that might have took hold in the ground.

Dad would put the dock in when the water warmed up some. Then us girls would rake the bottom of the lake on both sides to the property lines to get weeds out. There must have been a hundred or more steps to get down to the lake. They were not deep steps narrow between each so we usually would skip every other one. Then Dad would put our aluminum rowboat in the lake next to the dock and throw the anchor up on the bank. We weren't allowed to take the boat out in the water but sometimes we would sit in it and fish.

Dad had put a seawall in on the bottom terrace and that's where us girls would sometime stand and fish. Sometimes we'd fish from the dock, but most of the time it would be from the seawall. Dad had taught us girls how to bait our hooks and we would go out and collect worms and nitecrawlers. When mom was working in her flower beds sometimes she find some and put them in a container for us. Thanks Mom!!!! 

If we wanted to fish we had to get our own bait and hook our own worm on the end of our cane poles. That's what Dad had bought for my sister and I. We had to take fish off the hook but mom would clean them and fry them babies up. Never caught real big fish from the seawall but they were good eating.

I don't ever remember Dad fishing with us just showing us the ropes.

Those were the good ole days!!!

Sorting Saturday is here: What a Job I have!!!!!!

Well the other day I by accidental coughing while trying to put things in Dropbox managed to put my whole Legacy program in Dropbox. Not at all what I wanted to do. I had to delete it out of there because it put me way over my 2GB limit and I can't afford to pay anything for extra storage. Along with the fact that my Legacy Family Tree program no longer worked that was on my hard drive. I was devastated. Well I got it all fixed back up on my hard drive and made a copy of it on a new 16 GB flash stick. It used 12.7GB on my flash stick.

I have been reading DearMyrtle's blog on organizing and Linda McCauley blog on organizing her system. Also looking at Thomas MacEntee's backing up your data.

I sure do have alot of sorting to do.

When I first set my Legacy Family Tree up I just starting putting in my info I had on family members and downloaded GEDCOM's then I started adding pictures. Unfortunately I had not put them in any specific order and was having Legacy get them from my C drive's Pictures. At that time I had an old desktop. Believe you me I am not a computer geek. I don't understand alot of the technical terms and how to use alot of features. Give me a good detailed set of instructions with pictures that show me what to do explained out in plain English and I'm good to go.

Then I bought a used IBM Thinkpad Laptop. I finally got it to hookup to internet (of which it now doesn't and doesn't have enough room on it because all the microsoft windows programs and IBM Thinkpad programs gobbled it up and I apparently removed the wrong program). I was using it to do my genealogy and alot more. But I had my Legacy program on a flash stick which I installed on the flashstick and my desktop shortcut for Legacy would take me right to my flash stick. So I got the brilliant idea of putting all my pictures of family that I had scanned or was on our camera disc in my Legacy program. So I first went one way doing it but then another way. Got everything linking up finally. But I didn't have much in there and I found myself copying the same image to another person that was say on the same Census Page Image. So now I had the same image in maybe 7 or 8 different members of my families photos in my Legacy program. Then I have Marriage records, birth records, death records which are mostly in book form pages which sometimes have 2 or 3 members of the same family on the same page.

So I thought instead of having the picture in that person's photo file I would make a folder for Birth Records, Death Records, Marriage Records, etc. and then I subfoldered them by State. The Census Records I have US Census>1850>State for instance. I literally have tons of images that I downloaded and put in folders in this fashion. But I still have a lot that I haven't gotten linked back up properly.

After studying the way the aforementioned people's way of doing things, (Which is kinda the way I started doing things at one point, but then couldn't remember who belonged to what family), I have been mulling over how is the best way for me. I'm still trying to figure that out.

I can't afford to make hardcopies of all the images and put in binders per family surname (which I really like Myrt's idea but space and funds limit me) but I mainly have photos of family not original documents anyway.

All of my searching on the internet has to be from free sites. So that limits me on alot on obtaining copies of originals.

Ok here is my one thought, I will use my Pember family as an example remember most is in photo format (jpg):
Legacy Program
    Photos
      Clampitt
      Haas
      Pember
          Birth Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Census Records
          Death Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Family Bible
          Land Records, Deeds etc
          Marriage Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Newspaper Records  
          Pember Adelbert E                   This is possibly James M's brother
          Pember Arnold M 1907-1989
          Pember Christine L 1928-       This is Arnold M's Daughter
          Pember James M 1878-1928   This is Arnold M's Father
          Pember James R                       This is possibly Adelbert E's son
    Sewell
          Birth Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Census Records
          Death Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Family Bible
          Land Records, Deeds etc
          Marriage Records (if more than 1 member of family on same page)
          Newspaper Records
          Sewell Joseph
          Sewell Ira J
          Sewell Alfred
          Sewell Isley
          Sewell Lucinda J 1901-1982 ( I have 2 original copies of her birth certificate one with her soc sec no on )  
    

If I keep all birth records, census records, etc for each surname in folder pertaining to record type for that surname instead of putting them in the individual persons folder I only need to look in that folder to see if I have something in there that pertains to person I am looking for.

You see my problem arises when a female marries. Should I make another surname folder with Birth, Census, Death, Marriages, etc. under that surname to follow this female. Example: My Grandma is Lucinda J Sewell. She first married Frank Reid, they divorced but she had 3 or 4 kids by him, then she married Arnold M. Pember my Grandpa, they divorced she had 1 child my mother Christine L Pember by him, then she married LeRoy Gibbs whom died before her and she never remarried. She's an easy one since I am quite familiar with her but some of the other families I'm not that familiar with and I'm afraid I might miss them when I am documenting and looking for say a census.

I have alot of females with only a first name to go by and alot of unknown as mother. I have them as Mrs. So and So instead of just first name or unknown. But Legacy says I shouldn't put Mrs. in.

Guess I'll have to work on that as I come to them. Maybe someday I'll find a marriage record that gives the female's last name.

My conclusion at least for now is to go thru and do as I have outlined above. Going to be very time consuming but I think it will be the best way. But the best way I can figure to do this is to Move all the Census files, Birth Record Files, Marriage Record Files, etc out of Legacy and onto C: Hard Drive. Look at each record and put them into appropriate Census Record  folder or birth record etc for say my Pember Family as I look at each record, etc until I get them back to appropriate family. It may not be freeing up room in Legacy but maybe make it alot easier if I oops again to relink them, especially since I have alot of them already missing links.

Any suggestions, thoughts would be greatly appreciated. If you happen to see a picture someone has posted of me with hair sticking up in the air like I got electrocuted, pulling my hair out or bald think nothing of it. Or if you don't see my mug on facebook it's because I am staring aimlessly at the computer screen wondering where that just went and searching for it.

Oh maybe I should make a list of what I have decided to do, otherwise I might forget.

Oh by the way I am much more organized than my dear mother. She is not at all organized, she has had almost 83 years (well knock off a few years for when she was a toddler) to collect, and stuff wherever and whatever EVERY WHERE!!!! I spent almost all of December 2009 with her and emptied out drawers in just one room and some tops of furniture in another and reorganized somewhat. Putting all of cards (ones to send to people) in 1 drawer, put all her genealogy like things in 1 cabinet sorting out obituaries, news clippings etc. She has pictures in drawers everywhere and cards and letters from people some family everywhere. Got alot of them together in one or 2 places. I have no idea how many bags of junk mail I burned. Anyways I set her up with boxes for her to sort stuff into from 6 more big boxes of stuff I had taken out of drawers (pictures, recipes, junk mail, newspaper clippings, jewelry, you name it) that I found in them. They are still there still ungone thru and resorted into the smaller boxes that she needed to go thru herself. She spends hours, days and months looking for something because she just stuck it someplace instead of where it belongs.

I have tried since I was a kid to keep things somewhat organized now I need to get that somewhat, ORGANIZED!!!!

Happy Sorting Saturday Everybody.

Our Weekly Shopping Trips

My mom didn't drive when us kids were young so we had to wait until Dad got up to go to town and do the weekly shopping.

We always went shopping on Saturday Morning after Dad got up. He worked 2nd shift so he would get up about 10 AM, have 1 or 2 cups of coffee and we were off to town. We banked and did all our shopping in Davison, Michigan. Dad would stop at the Davison Bank and cash his check. (Usually once a month he would get us girls a silver dollar.) Then he would drive us to the A & P store. That's where mom did her grocery shopping. He would park in the A & P parking lot and walk over to the Davison Hotel (the local bar) and he would have a beer or two, visiting with his friends and sometimes some of his family would be there, while mom did her shopping.

Most of the time us 2 girls would go in with mom and then when she would be in the checkout line one or both of us would run and tell Dad mom was in checkout. He would finish up his beer and then come back to the car. Depending on how long it took her sometimes he would send us back and tell mom to come over to the Hotel. See we had to be back home by a certain time so Dad could get some lunch and mom had to pack his lunch for him to go to work. He worked most of the time 7 days a week 12 hrs a day.

Always the boy who bagged up the groceries would bring them out and put them in the car for mom. Back then you didn't have to lock everything up in the trunk and lock the doors on the car.

I remember one Saturday morning while mom was in the checkout line, the line was quite long and she was way back, a man was smoking a cigar. Mom passed out on the floor. My sister ran over to the hotel and got Dad. Boy we were scared. Dad got mom out to the car and then went back in to pay for the groceries. Back then you could smoke in the store. I don't remember seeing ash trays anywhere so they must have put them out on the floor. My Dad smoked but it was something about the cigar that bothered mom.