Lemon Grove' Genealogy Surprise Event

The Lemon Grove Genealogy Group, had a interesting meeting the other day. I was away attending a family event and
Ruth Himan offered to step in and replace me. Replace me, she did. Here is what happened in her words.

1. 9 people tonight ----- Virginia did take attendance and reported to the front desk.

2. We received 7 membership applications and all applicants added pedigrees for the Chula Vista Society.
Several of the new members including Arlene Watters and Patricia Ayer spent a great deal of time copying their extensive well researched family pedigree chart for the Chula Vista Genealogy Binders. Other new members like Cathy Collins struggled to place names of her relatives.

3. Very large pre-printed blank pedigree charts were admired by some of the other attendees.

4. Virginia Taylor distributed outdated Chula Vista Newsletters. The newsletters were discussed as being (although from 2009) still having very good information, interesting stories and pertinent content.

5. We discussed some genealogy slang because we had a couple of genealogy happy dances.

6. First Happy Dance came when we were shown about a dozen photos, and copies of special dipolmas of Patty Smith's parents and grandparents.
Patty Smith hit the jackpot with connecting with a cousin in Florida. This is the daughter of her mother's sister.
Patty Smith showed us pictures of her great grandmother that got her interested in genealogy. Then she showed us handsome handsome men ---her great grandfathe and an uncle. There was an adorable picture of a sweet chubby girl about three --- the shortest of about six children standing in a line (side view) but look like the adoable little girl in jacket and bonnet slipped away and was looking straight on to the camera. Cute cute cute ---- It was a picture of Patty Smith at a very younger age.
Patty also shared with us her letter and cream and sugar set she received from her grandmother over 30 years ago. Patty's Aunt cried when she found Patty had the set. The aunt had remembered how her mother had said she very much wanted Patty to have the set.

7. Then Karen B. shared another delightful story of finding an entire family that she could not document as when and how they arrived in America. The Scottish family left Liverpool and then were tossed about in a storm left to drift in the ocean for quite awhile before being rescued by other ships. Yet with many delays, changing ships having to land out of port and being transferred by life boats the family finally landed in America. The account of the ships tubulant voyage is recorded in an article Karen found in a New York Newspaper. Yet soon after landing the family is separated and she finds a small 5 year old boy recorded on a census as being an inmate! Further investigation indicates the boy was placed in an orphanage. Years later the boy is reunited with his mother when the mother remarries. Besides the normal misspellings, confused names, and issues of researching a family, the mother's name changes, children's separate living arrangements made the search very difficult but very rewarding when she finally accounted for the mother and all the children.
The ships manifast indicated the family traveled 2nd class and separate from the first class. The steerage indicated 28 people but no names. Karen marveled that had her family traveled steerage she would have never found the family.

8. John was puzzled over some small triangle shaped stones he is finding in his yard.

9. Another genealogy slang word we introduced tonight was "cousin bait". We began exploring avenues to meeting cousins.We discussed cold calling, obituaries, Christmas Cards, and family group sheets.
I shared a completed family group sheet I had completed for my gg grandparents with my g grandfather being their sixth child. I was able to demonstrate how some of the other siblings contained a significant amount of information --which could indicate decsendents of my g-grandfather's sibling as having an interest in genealogy. A possible "cousin" to find.

10. Carol Burnett explained how she "e-mail met" her "cousin" Randy Seaver. Randy and Carol discovered they were cousins by Susi's RootsBounds Blog. We discussed blogging and websites were being credited with matching up more "cousins" than the on-line family trees.


So there was a great meeting, which made me feel good for everyone. We will have a speaker for the next event.