I Never Run-Out Of Ideas To Blog. Journal Prompts? I Could Swamp Myself With Ideas.

I was just thinking about when I do write in my blog it's never on the computer. I write all these little notes. Sometimes it's while I'm waiting for something or someone, or riding in the car, and heaven forbid, I wake-up and write something down (that's really insane information) and I dig in my purse, or desk, or glove compartment for a pen and just start writing. Really, it's so much easier to just open my computer and start writing. I don't need notes, but I want to remember and the 3X5 card system is a major habit. I'm never outta' stuff to write down. It IS just stuff, but it's my journal and not necessarily for the whole world to read. I've never felt the need to entertain, try and make money with a blog, write something profound, or even give advise. I do write-out a few recipes here and there, and also mention my ancestors... but all of the information on THIS blog is focused on my family. It does paint a picture of me and hopefully my dear family won't think that I'm too looney. I will save everyone that reads my blog the ramblings while sleep-writing and texting--Oh I've got a problem and have been known to write on Facebook while COMPLETELY asleep. It's so embarrassing.

Genealogy

One of my favorite papers to write notes for my blog happens to be Temple Ordinance Cards that are blank. Why? Well, I do lots of genealogy work and because my printouts are only 50 at a time, some room is left on each of the pink, blue, and yellow printouts that become cards. I never want to throw the blanks away, so while checking each entry--I will finally come to a blank. One side of the card has lines on it and the other-side is for taking notes for me, right? I always look on both sides in case I'm missing an entry.

I do check each one and do a lot of re-checking of all of my submissions. I'm so glad that I've done this because so far I've found at least three major mistakes. Two of the mistakes this time were probably done by myself and actually my mistakes make me much more patient with the mistakes other people make with my own family, like recently someone has put my dear grandmother with her ex-borther-in-law that ran a Missouri saloon? Okay, I can't undo that because I didn't submit the names. But, I've made sure the genealogy work for my grandparents is correct and my grandmother probably just lifted her eyebrows just a little when that sealing was performed.

One mistake was from Family Search itself. It's data entry done by volunteers and probably by a poor tired "indexer person" that sees names all day long... when two people have the same names and about the same birthdays, I suppose a volunteer after a long day, would likely place these people together. I wished they had looked to make sure they were in the same country. Again, since I didn't submit the name, I called Salt Lake City Family History Center and the Sister that helped me was so polite and so sorry. She listened intently as I explained what had happened. She said she hoped the mistake would be corrected very soon and me too, because my cousin was about to teach a class in St. George about genealogy and ordinance work and he wanted to use our "Wellman" line. Oops!

Happily, I can report that "poof" the child born across the sea and no relation to our family, disappeared from our line. I do have to look her up again and unreserved her, so that her family can find the child, wife, aunt, or mother and have her in her own family where she belongs.

Oddly enough, the mistakes I've made actually put me in touch with my cousin again. We do need each other and from above I can't say if it was meant to be, but I'm elated that we're working together because my dear cousin just sent me a whole big bucket of names to add to my family including ones that have surnames that I've never heard of before.

 ***caption to the picture above***The best thing I've read about the Mayflower is that am a descendent from about 12 of the people came to this country on the Mayflower. The facts are as of 1971, people in the United States that also are descendents... were already 35 million other people. The statistic was in the newspaper over 40 years ago, I bet there's a lot more people, now! Pretty humbling information, sheesh!...I'm not so hot.

I  learned that this summer my cousin is planning a trip out east to scour cemeteries for our family. The information at each resting place is valuable beyond measure. He doesn't know it yet, but Steve and I are planning a back-east trip too. I'm not only doing some Wellman, but looking up a bunch of family (my husband's included) information at newspapers, county deeds and wills, and of course, cemeteries. Sounds fun, huh? Only if you're a genealogy sleuth.