Hello again - Giant Update Post of Doom

I fell out of using this blog for a while, but I'm back. Lots to share. The last year has been pretty crazy, but I'm still here, despite everything.

Got a new job last year in late January, and was officially hired on that June, so I've been gainfully employed now for more than a year and a half. Met a lot of great people, learned a lot about Unions and Pensions (which is what I work on), and starting to consider where I will try to move inside the company.

It's meant a lot more reading on the ride to and from work, as well as on breaks, which makes me very happy. I've missed the enjoyment of new books, but between one of my co-workers' suggestions for reading, and Goodreads, I've been finding all sorts of great books, both on Kindle and in paper form.

And because of my reading, I've started a new blog here on blogger. The blog is called A Slash Reader's Diary, and it deals specifically with reviews of stories that have a male/male pairing as the central focus, as that is one of my favorite genres. I've found it's hard to find books that are in the genres I like that also have that focus, so I wanted to provide a place where others could find the great books I've found.

I lost one of my kitties about a year and a few months ago. I still miss Sebastian a lot, but after a few months (right around this time last year), I got another black kitty whom I have named Nicky. He's not sure what to make of everything, but he's having great fun tormenting my poor Morgan, who doesn't know what to do with this kid who keeps getting in her face and doesn't kowtow to her every demand the way Sebastian did. He's more cuddly than Sebastian or even Morgan, as he loves to jump right up into my arms and snuggle for a few minutes. It's been a learning process for both of us, but we're definitely doing well.

Shortly after arriving last year, at the old apartment

Yesterday, settled in his favorite viewing spot at the new apartment

Morgan's having more issues than a new brother, though. Shortly after his arrival last year, I noticed her weight was dropping too much, so I took her to the vet. She has hypothyroid problems. For a time there, I was pretty sure I was going to lose her, but we got her on meds which seem to be helping a lot. So she gets her ears rubbed twice a day, and the kitties get wet food daily, something that was only a once or twice weekly treat before.

And, as you can see from the pictures with Nicky, I have moved. I moved in late July and early August, and it's been stressful and wonderful in turns. Some great things, some bad things, but I'm slowly getting settled. Nicky wasn't too sure about all the strangers coming to visit, but hopefully he'll start to relax around strangers, as I don't plan to stop having people over to my own place, now that I've started the habit. I think it's mostly leftover stress when they were trying to find him a home at the rescue agency. Takes him a little to warm up, but once he does, he loves you.

Had a few successes with connecting to distant family over the past year.

One of the Welsh branches of my tree contacted me, and showed me that they've set up an online version of the family tree. I need to add our family information to it, but it was great to see one of my guesses confirmed (That Gabriel Howel's wife was Gwen Evan), and to discover that they'd found one more generation before them.

The other discovery was an email from a distant relation I'd never heard of before. A few years ago, in a fit of desperation, I posted on GenForum about my great-great grandparent from a small town in Czudek in what is now southern Poland. The family were Jewish, and in the late 1800s through the 1940s, it was a very bad place to be a Jew. Unsurprisingly, I know very little about this family. Originally, only what I got from my grandfather, then from his papers, which gave me a bit more. So I wrote a note on the Forum hoping that someone who knew them or of one of their other descendants (at the time, I knew only two daughters, though I was fairly sure there were more children).

Then a few weeks ago, I got an email from someone who said she was their granddaughter. I know enough to be wary of that sort of claim, but the information she gave worked with what I had in a way that made it pretty clear to me that she was, indeed who she claimed to be. So now my great-grandmother's family is finally intact on my family tree. She had three brothers and two sisters, one of whom disappeared at the end of World War I, and one of whom was taken by the Nazis. All the others escaped to the US or Israel, and lived full lives in their new homes. Given that I'd always assumed that I had several on this branch who likely died because of the Nazis, I was glad to learn our losses were so few. And now I have a few new names to try and track down. Who knows what I might find now.

I think I'll stop there and do the other two things (NaNoWriMo and a new recipe) in a different post, but that's pretty much my life for the past two years.

Busy and genealogy-filled week this week.

Went up to my Aunt's cabin on the coast on the West side of the Olympics with my aunt, my mom, my sister, and my niece. I was a bit nervous to be without the Net for two days, but I was surprised how little I missed it. I missed people I talk to, but that was about it.

Sis brought her computer so we could go through family photos, and I found a few extra branches to our family tree--two which I knew about, but one which I did not, and still need to find the exact connection to my tree, but, still very exciting to have more names. Sorted out a few things, still working on others, but it was a very productive and nice visit.

I spent some of today and a little of last week looking through images of the paperwork about my father's father's family in Germany. I'm pretty sure I have towns now. Next step is to look into a few addresses I have (one in Germany, possibly two in London), and look on JewishGen for more information about those specific towns.

I also spent some time today looking into the Howells/Gabriel line. I might have found a bio of the man I currently have listed as the father (Even Lewis) of the matriarch (Catherine Jones) of that family, but the link was broken. All I can do is hope that the link will be fixed at some point.

I still have a long way to go on both searches, but I do feel like I'm making baby steps, at least.

Follow Friday Links:
* George Geder at Geder Genealogy talked about some of the things missing in Genealogy programs, in particular, blended family support and ethnicity. Pt 1, Pt 2, Part 3. He also posted a fun list of 10 Essentials for Genealogy & Family History Success. I might have to make my own list like that... But I loved his choices.

* Laura at It's All Relative posted her 12 Step Program for Genealogists.

* The Jewish Gen Blog added two more articles about Natural Disasters in our Families' lives. Part 3, Part 4.

* Lorine McGinnis Schulze at Olive Tree Genealogy wrote about getting past Brick Walls.

No events in my family tree events list this week.

Hope everyone else had a good week, and is looking forward to the weekend. :)

Genealogy Day

Well, it has been an interesting week, and an eventful day for me.

Started today by posting about an ancestor I knew little about, Gabriel Howells, over at Oh, Spusch. This is my mother's mother's mother's father, and all of the Welsh side is still more untidy than not. I've learned a few things in typing it up--mostly that it is very hard to resist the impulse to correct bad or boring writing. most of the paragraphs are two or three times longer than I would have otherwise done myself without major reason.

This part of the tree is all from Northern Wales, as far as I am aware. And the other two major things I learned about this branch are that apparently one of my Ancestors (Lewis or Lewys Edwart) was a Quaker, which I had not heard before, and that there are no women recorded in this family line before my great-great-great grandmother, Catherine Jones, Gabriel's mother.

So I set out today to try to remedy this in some way. And I may have succeeded. In looking for more information on Gabriel, I found information on his grandfather, Gabriel Hywel, and two possible children and a wife. The Family Search.org Beta site pulled up two separate records for two births to a Gabriel Howell and his wife Gwen, alternately Gwen, Gwen Howell, and Gwen Evan. All likely to be the same woman, and just variations of her name, as I have seen the same variation in things I have been sure of. The first was to an Evan Howel, and the second to a Howel Howel, who must be my g-g-g-g grandfather, because the date and location matches too well for it not to be. I need to look into it further, but I have no reason to believe the record wrong, given the date and location.

The other discovery this week is that I did more research on the paperwork I got from my dad's sister about their grandparents on their dad's side. This has always been the shortest part of my family tree because of the difficulty my grandfather had talking about his past, and the fact that none of the fathers in that line were particularly talkative about their pasts.

The paperwork is all in German (aside from the letters my grandfather wrote to get them), but they do include not only his own birth record, but also that of all his siblings, and their parents' marriage record, their birth dates and locations (I'm fairly certain of this now), and their parents (or at least three of them) names.

However, each time I glance through the papers, I can't resist, so when my friend was down on Wednesday, we decided to guess at what the name of the location was under my great-grandparents. We guessed at Galizien, which led me to this site about Galicia, an old Prussian state that covered some of the area to the East of Germany, south of Poland, and north of Austria. As I had heard through family lore that they were born in Prussia near or around where Poland is now, I'm pretty sure this is it. I'm still trying to figure out the names of the towns, though.
From what I can read on the sheets, the names look like Szdziszow or Rzdziszow; though the first letter doesn't look like the other capital Rs in the hand-written parts of the document; and Czuder or Czudei or something like that. I'm not sure that that one is a C, either, but It doesn't look like the G below it in Galizien.
So I'm one and a half steps closer to where they were born, at least. It's a big deal. Because it means I can actually possibly find them at JewishGen, because you have to have locations to look there.

No new follows for the day, but a few interesting links:
* An article on Surnames, focusing specifically on the development of English Surnames.
* Family Search.org has a site with area-specific genealogies in them called Community Trees, if you're focused on a specific area of research.
* And Genealogy's Star wrote a two part article on how proof gets incorporated into family trees which is a fascinating read, especially to someone who's trying to be more conscientious about those things these days. Part One - Part Two

And in my family tree this week:
8/23/1796 - Hans Heinrich Bordvick and Anna Magdallena Tiller were married in Norway
8/23/1919 - Margaret Hansen was born in Cleveland, Illinois
8/26/1818 - Christine Jensdatter died in Vejle, Denmark
8/27/1849 - Gabriel Howells was born in Towyn, Monmothshire, Wales (and I didn't even realize that when I typed it up, despite typing it up only yesterday, when the date should have meant something. ETA: Ah, apparently the manuscript had the wrong birth date on it, as the record I have from his death states his birth as 8/27, while the manuscript says 8/1.)

And I think I've rambled on enough, so I'll leave my recipe plans for another post.