myHERITAGE HAPPENS

The "newest family member" who has made contact with me is T. She surprised me with a phone call last week! We are both very ecstatic to have found one another. T actually would be a second cousin to me. She spoke with her family about me. One of her aunts said she already knew of me and had me in her tree information! T told me this aunt would really like to speak with me! I understand she knows of family in Norway and she would be able to fill me in on the family tree information as well! T gave me her name and phone number, of course I would call her! (This paragraph is all about me-lol) Can you believe I haven't had the opportunity to do so yet? My spare time has been taken up with Drs. appointments, five of them since last Friday(all routine), and some pursuits with my other blog. I am really hoping to make this phone call on Friday or Saturday, and I can't wait! I am most anxious to hear if there really is some known family in Norway as I am hoping to go there ...

National Archives Pacific Region in San Francisco, California. May 22, 2009. Digital image. Held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009 Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Happy Blogiversary to me! Today marks one full year since I started this blog. To think I was worried I wouldn't have enough to write about for a few months let alone a year. I have to say that this year has been great fun being part of the Genea-Bloggers and the blogging world. Blogging has given me special moments to look at personal photos I may not have looked at for several more years. It gave me discipline to write about my ancestors, and during that writing time I found I focused on each individual as a person instead of thinking of them as a name and number in a census or on a chart. I have made several family connections and friends because of this blog. I have become more organized with my family history and research. In other words, to put it bluntly, genea-blogging and Genea-Bloggers ROCK! I am so very grateful to the seasoned bloggers who have helped me along the way. It was a pleasure to meet many of y...

Have you heard of this backup system, CloudBerry? Nadya, one of my readers, left me a message on my previous post letting me know that CloudBerry Explorer Pro Online Backup was in beta testing right now. I went over to the web site through the link that she left me and it says that "Beta will expire on August 15, 2009." I did click on the beta link to sign up anyway and it states that due to the high demand and beta not being able to handle so many people, the sign up for the beta testing was by invitation only, you would need a code to have signed up. So, I missed all of the beta testing. This program is designed to leverage Amazon S3 storage. I am not sure if Nadya has been a beta tester or not, or if any of you may have been? CloudBerry Lab was developed in 2008, they have a very interesting website at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/ I will be anxious to hear more of this new product! Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Do you have pictures burned to CD's for backup purposes? I do. I have several of them. At least I thought I had CD backups...but more on that as this post continues. I decided it was well past time to get my rear in gear and update my photo CD's, and what an informative adventure this has been! Years ago when I first burned my pictures to CD's, I did so to take them off my computer to give me free space. I apparently did not do it for back up purposes in the beginning because I do not have any of those photos on my computer, or anywhere else! At the time I must have thought my photos would be safe forever on CD's and I didn't have to worry that they weren't on my computer! What a fool I was! I did not have a back up to most of those early CD'S I made. How lucky am I not to have lost quality or pictures on those first ones I made? I did find some bad pictures, but I am not sure if they lost quality or if they were bad photos that I took to begin with. ...

Thank you to Thomas MacEntee for posting directions and information on the GeneaBloggers site about the contact button you see to the left. In the past week or two there have been a couple of people who wanted to contact me personally, but not in the comments area of my blog. These people did find an alternate way to make the connection, and thank goodness they did! One person found my email address worked for them and another person found me on Facebook. I am very happy these people contacted me! The problem I saw for these people is that they should not have had to go looking so hard to find a "safe" place to contact me to begin with. It seems Thomas was reading my mind when he posted this new to me information. I now have the "Contact" button on the left side of this blog, in a bright color, a shade of red, so hopefully it can not be missed. Many times people want private or personal contact which I do understand. I would strongly recommend those of you who ...

One of the most difficult pictures I was trying to get was when I lived in San Leandro with my ex-in laws. Initially I thought I knew where to find this house but I drove the area over and over and kept thinking it all didn't look quite right. I made a second attempt on another day when I happened to be in the area and again I felt very lost. I took some pictures of some homes that I thought may have been the correct house so I could go home and study them. When I looked at the digital shots I had taken at home, I knew I never found the proper home. On August 14, 2009, yes very recently, my husband and I happened to be driving close to the area and all of a sudden it hit me! I asked him to pull off the freeway, which he did. He is getting used to my last minute appeals! Something rang a bell to me, finally! We drove past this sign and I knew what the problem was! I hadn't been going far enough down the freeway before I exited. This sign confirmed it and told me that now I had t...

Grandparents Headstone. August 14, 2009. Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. Digital Image. Held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009 Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Lois Helman was born in Yale, Payne, Oklahoma, and her final resting place is in Yale, Payne, Oklahoma. She was born "Lois Marie McGuire" on her grandparents farm. Had she been alive today, August 6 would have been her 97th birthday. My grandmother passed away in Kingsland, Llano, Texas. Lois was married twice. The first time her married name was Fleming and the second time her married name was Helman. Throughout her life, as is the case as many other women, Lois has been known by several last names. This photo was taken by someone else and has been scanned to my computer. I have not been where she is buried... she is my grandmother and is missed very much. Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Have you checked out the Fujitsu scanners ... one of the scanners can scan 200 pages into a computer in ONE minute! Amazing ... Here is another new smaller, incredible scanner, it does both sides in one scan, the Scan Snap S1500 ...This scanner can scan 20 pages in a minute and will scan several different sizes at one time. This scanner is great for pictures too! Check out what it can do with business cards! I have looked these scanners up online and surprisingly they really aren't that expensive! Can you imagine how quickly we could be going through our scanning sessions at this rate? Miriam's Scanfest would have way more socialization as everyone would be done scanning in no time, but who isn't into socializing? Check out this Designing Spaces video.. . I want one! http://video.o2mediainc.com/videolib/2009/QRM/21707/index.html I do not have any affiliation with Fujitsu or their scanners. A friend shared this information with me and I found it to be way cool and...

Over the past few months some of my friends on Facebook have made comments, either in front of or to my husband, that they know what I am doing all of the time, because I post often on Facebook. How many of you are on Facebook for social networking? How about Twitter? Do you use Twitter for social networking also? I use them for this purpose, but many of my friends use them for fun and games only. If they aren't involved in genealogy, they don't understand what is behind me and Facebook. This blog, Heritage Happens, is to share my genealogy, research, and the making of current family history. Through this blog I have been fortunate to make contact with several new cousins from several different lines. I have used Facebook to keep in touch with many other bloggers, family members, friends and to promote some of my blog posts from one or the other blog. If you are unaware, I also have the blog, The Graveyard Rabbits of South Alameda County. I have used Twitter to advertise my blo...

It has been a week since I visited Mountain View Cemetery. If you read my post following that visit, you will remember that I found upon returning home from the cemetery, that my camera was missing. We couldn't find the camera anywhere. I even called the store I went to after the cemetery to see if it was there (maybe fell out of my purse) to no avail. I also checked the many places friends suggested I check. By late yesterday afternoon, I gave up home and decided it must have fallen out of the truck somewhere along the way after the cemetery visit. Friday morning I woke to the nicest surprise. My husband came up behind me and held the camera in front of my face. Wow! I was jazzed! Where did he find it? It took me a few times asking before I finally received the answer. You would never guess, at least I wouldn't have. Those of us who visit cemeteries know we tend to take many things with us on our visits. On my visit last Saturday to this cemetery I took a bucket, towel and too...

World Vital Records has a great promotion going on. Initially, they gave three days free of access to their site. Then if you added to Facebook that you had joined for the free access, you were given another three free days, which expired yesterday. I received an email last night that the free access, with no credit card required was extended again, until August eighteenth! I personally couldn't be happier! I do not have a subscription to World Vital Records and I have not been able to spend time exploring the site. World Vitals Records explains that they have had such a good response to the free access, they decided to extend the offer. They claim you can search 1.2 BILLION names for free! They are offering 50% discounts on both the World subscription and also the U.S. Membership. I do not have any affiliation what so ever with World Vital Records, but I thought this was such an awesome offer, I just had to share it with you in case you were unaware. This is how I like to get subs...

I thought I would share with you one of my favorite places and pastimes, after all this will be saved for generations, right? So here is the McAfee Coliseum. Home of the Oakland Athletics, or Oakland A's as I refer to them. Next, you will see the years that the A's won pennants. Of course, the following years were before my time! ;-) However, I do remember the next two pictures and all of the players! and I learned to love the Oakland A's back in the seventies. My grandfather was an Oakland A's fan and because of him I started listening to the games on the radio. I knew I was really hooked when I was suppose to be in bed sleeping (there was school the next day) and instead of sleeping I had the transistor radio (am I aging myself or what?) on under my pillow, listening to the game. It didn't matter if the game went thirteen innings or all night, I listened to the full game, every time. I knew every player on the team back then and the players you see in these stands...

Me. Second grade school photo. Taken in Oakland, California. Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Last Saturday I was so very excited! Earlier in the week I found out that my great grandparents were buried not across the country as I had expected, but in the county I live in! Saturday was the day I was going to go to the cemetery and see their graves and take pictures. The cemetery that my ggrandparents were buried in is Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. My husband decided to take the trip over there with me, which was a bit of a surprise. He has been to a few cemeteries with me for research, but he doesn't really care for it much. He also doesn't understand why people bring folding chairs and picnics to the grave sites. Well, I was thinking in the back of my head that I had never been to this cemetery before, and when we drove up to it, I was all full of surprise as the Chapel of the Chimes is right next to the cemetery and I had no idea where in Oakland it was. So I immediately learned that! I was disappointed there wasn't a plaque with the name of the ce...

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings posts a ritual Saturday night "fun, challenge, assignment, or such." I participated in one of these before, but it has been a long time. Tonight, I have the opportunity to play along for a second time! So here is post for this week: " Saturday Night - time for some Genealogy Fun! Do you have a pedigree chart that shows you as #1 and goes back five generations? If not, you should make one! Fire up your software program and create a report and save it (you'll see why in am minute!). Here is your SNGF assignment for the evening (if you choose to accept it - this is not stump the genealogist or even Mission Impossible): 1) List your 16 great-grandparents in pedigree chart order. List their birth and death years and places. 2) Figure out the dominant ethnicity or nationality of each of them. 3) Calculate your ancestral ethnicity or nationality by adding them up for the 16 - 6.25% for each (obviously, this is approximate). 4) If you don...

Joseph John Fleming farm. Yale, Oklahoma. Scanned copy. October 15, 2006. Original held by R. L. Fleming. Copy held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009 This is a photo of my great grandmother Laura (Hohimer) Fleming with her children, Isabel, James and Madge. This picture was taken sometime in 1911 at their home, the Fleming farm. Laura's husband, Joseph, was in Canada working as a laborer at this time. His family was on the way to visit him in this picture. Joseph, or Joe as he was commonly known, was living in the town of Watson in the district of Humboldt. This was located in the province of Saskatchewan. The 1911 Canadian Census Record states he immigrated from the United States (where he was born in 1875) in 1907. He was 35 years old at the time of this census, and was working as a laborer. We know then that he was working in Canada at least four years. Laura would be about 33 or 34 in this photo, depending the time of year it was taken. Laura was born ...

Coin. May 26, 2008. Digital Image. Privately held by Cheryl[ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE]California. 2009 Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

I have been tied up with a small venture, non genealogy related as of late. It has been rather time consuming up until yesterday. I miss blog posting and research, especially. It seems so very long since I have even looked at my family tree! In between watching my grandchildren today, I was able to catch Elyse Doerflinger's (from Elyse's Genealogy) first chat on GenealogyWise. She chatted about starting a blog. I thought she did a wonderful job, kudos to her! Again, we see Elyse making her move in this field. She has so much drive and love for genealogy. Very inspiring! Certainly we hope some of her enthusiasm locks other young people into this great hobby of ours! Nicely done Elyse! I know we will have new blogs starting up because of your foresight in educating them and showing them how much fun it is to blog. It was nice to "see" Amy Coffin, Thomas MacEntee, footnoteMavin, and DearMyrtle there also, all in support of Elyse! When the grandchildren finally decide...