52 weeks to better genealogy - week 9

This week's challenge (from Geneabloggers and Amy Coffin at We Tree) is to read five genealogy blogs every day for a week, preferably some of them new or outside one's normal field of expertise. Just reading, just a week - sounds do-able, right? Here's my semi-random list.

- Southwest Arkie - one of the newest blogs on Geneabloggers
- Two Nerdy History Girls - love this one, want to read more often
- footnoteMaven - one of my Twitter "friends"
- Tonia's Roots - also a Twitter "friend," and has a different style of blogging
- AnceStories - just found, through Twitter search.

Sunday's reads: Southwest Arkie posted her 5 geneablogs to read, mostly about graveyards. She has a great list of blogs and websites on the side of her page, including Genea-Musings. Good stuff, but I could go on overload pretty quickly! My "Maness" in Arkansas is not one of her listed surnames.

TNHG got a preview of costumes for a show about Dolley Madison (she was mentioned in Sunday School class this morning; did you know she was a Quaker?). Hard to imagine her in that oversized bonnet in her early years. Went back and commented about the displays of her clothes here at the Greensboro Museum.

Footnote Maven is celebrating her 3rd blogversary today. She was also selected one of the top 40 geneablogs in Family Tree magazine!

Tonia won a platinum medal in Geneabloggers' Winter Games, for citing her sources. She bullet-posted her accomplishments through the week.

Ancestories was kinda scary - something called ScanFest was going on. At least, I thought it was going on, live, but it was a replay of a chat that happened a couple of hours before. I think people are chatting as they scan photos, the last Sunday of the month, but there was no explanation, just the chat box.

Geneabloggers Winter Games 2010

It was not the best week to join two "olympics" challenges - a week with extra hours and night meetings at my "dayjob." I met some of the challenges last weekend, however. I really wanted to participate in the Write, Write, Write! category, but I decided that just one advance blog post wasn't enough to count. I also tried to put all my surnames in a Wordle picture, but it came up sideways in my blog, so I deleted it.

I did earn one medal, Gold - in Genealogical Acts of Kindness! I sent photos to Trent Briles to add to his Mt. Pleasant cemetery project (I didn't post to Find A Grave because I overlooked that part). I'm still indexing the 18th-century minutes (church records) for the Moate Meeting in Ireland. And I added more genealogy blogs to my "follow" list. The latest one is "Southwest Arkie."

Things I would still like to do in the near future:
- Join the Randolph County Genealogical Society (had hoped to check that off last week!).
- Enter the new information from my research trip to Ireland, with citations, into Reunion.
- Back up my data, after I've entered the new records.
- Create subpages for this blog, listing family trees or at least surnames.
- Read and comment on other genealogy blogs.
- Create a timeline for the English family line (started this a few months ago).

Thanks to Geneabloggers for these great ideas, and a fun Winter Games!

Tombstone Tuesday - Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, N.C.

A couple of years ago, I stopped by Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Hillsville (Trinity mailing area), N.C. I hadn't been there since about 1990, when my mom pointed out a few ancestors and I had written down their information.

This latest trip was an impulse visit, just to show a friend where some of my ancestors are buried, so the only information I brought was in my head. I found tombstones for the Routh and Kindley families, but something nagged at me. I thought there had been more. I saw several small rectangular stones the size of my hand, which might be unmarked graves, in the middle of the cemetery. When I got home, I dug around and found pictures I had taken on my first trip. Sure enough, some of my family's graves were missing.

Last fall, Trent Briles posted a transcription of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery online. What a lot of hard work! He expressed some frustration about the missing stones, and the fact that the church would not let him see their records. I don't know who the other stones were, but two of them were as pictured here, ca. 1990.

Philmon P. (Plummer) Copple, born 14 August 1824, died 24 January 190(7?).
Barbara M. (Miller) Copple, born 22 December 1823, died 20 July 1904.

According to the 1880 census, Philmon was a farmer, and they lived in Tabernacle Township (Hillsville area).
Their daughter Adaline, who married Jacob Shadrach Kindley in 1871, was my ancestor.

Snow and books

Was it two weeks ago - when the first big snow came, and they were telling everybody to stay home, and off the roads? I was fine with that. It was the weekend, I had milk, bread and toilet paper, and I was ready to hibernate.

But then I got a call from my sister, who knew the magic words: "Would you like to go to a book sale?" We're not talking about a big box store, we're talking about one of those annual church sales (a synagogue in this case) where you scrounge through tons of books to find treasures. With wine and snacks. Oh, and they would pick me up and I wouldn't even have to drive.

I said, "I'll meet you outside."

Although the crowd was light, Beth David Synagogue in Greensboro had planned this all year and they were going through with their sale. The selection was great, although I finally had to stop looking after almost filling a box. They had everything by major category, and I was thrilled to find a vintage book table. And, thank the Lord, we crazy bibliophiles (yes, it runs in the family) made it home safely, although it took nearly an hour to go 20 miles and we passed several cars abandoned in ditches.

I got a heavy volume of Shakespeare; no date, but it looks late 19th-century, with the gilded cover unusually sharp. A 1962 paperback of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Another decorative book with the gilt worn off, Don Quixote, undated but the owner wrote 1885. A few Modern Library editions (they had many) - Classical Myths, Oscar Wilde, Jane Eyre and The African Queen.
Some modern ones for me to read: Burning Bright, by Tracy Chevalier; Tears of the Giraffe, by Alexander McCall Smith; and all three of the Griffin and Sabine series.

Yep, 'looks like I went a little wild. But when they totaled everything up at less than $40, I didn't feel guilty at all. What a great deal!
It's just that ... where am I going to put all these books?

Geneabloggers - Let the Games begin!

This blog has grown, in a wonderful way, into a travel-genealogy-books (aah, those words just make me happy) niche. I thought it might change the tone too much if I tried to promote my Creative Memories business here, even though pictures and history naturally overlap into preservation and scrapbooking. So, Travels with Books has been sorely neglected the last few weeks because I divided myself into a new blog for my business (Save the Pictures), a Facebook page and a new Twitter identity. All that has been a bit overwhelming - feels like I have multiple social personality disorder!

To give this blog a boost, on a lovely snowy Saturday, I've signed up for Geneabloggers' Winter Olympics. They have six competition categories: 1. Cite your sources, 2. Back up your data, 3. Organize your research, 4. Expand your knowledge, 5. Write write write! and 6. Genealogical Acts of Kindness.

Already overwhelmed, I don't think I'll tackle 1, 2, 3, and maybe not 4 at this time. I cite sources as I enter facts into Reunion, and I haven't added much to that file since I backed it up last year. And although I'd love to put more photos into albums, I have to order some things so this is not the week to do it. I'm going to try events 5 and 6, which include things I hope to do anyway, like blogging and indexing.

Opening ceremonies are Monday. You still have time to sign up! You can start with your own flag, like this one: it represents the English family, who came from England and Ireland to the U.S.