I decided to do some quick random research today by looking for everyone in my database who was born on today's date, October 2, and list all the facts I have so far about them. I found two people. The first was Ruth CARNAHAN. The other was a living person, so I will not post anything about him here. So, what do I know about Ruth? 1) She was the sister of my great-grandfather's brother-in-law. Ruth's older brother, Leo Clayton CARNAHAN, married Madeline Marion PEMBERTON, the younger sister of my great-grandfather, John Vital PEMBERTON. Ruth and Leo were the children of Joseph Lee CARNAHAN an ..read more

Well, it has been 8 months since my last blog post. I was getting good at this blogging thing in 2017 after a couple of years of little to no blogging. So much has happened since May 2017 when I did my last post and now. I feel like a life update is in order. To make a long story short, my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in December 2016. He was only 40 years old and I was only 35, so as you can imagine, this was devastating news. Especially when the doctor gave us a prognosis of 3-5 years. Really? I'm going to be a widow at 40? Like wtf? How is this my real life? In the meantime, he ..read more

I have been participating in Thomas MacEntee's Genealogy Do-Over since early February. I have been lagging behind, not making it much farther than Month 2, even though we are technically on Month 5. But I am okay with that because I have been making great strides with the research and organization I have done thus far. I have gotten all of the documents for my myself, my parents, and my siblings all organized into OneNote notebooks with source citations, document transcriptions, and analysis. I've also entered the documents into Evidentia and produced source analysis reports from there that I ..read more

Since I am focusing on my paternal grandparents (Benford Maurice Trahan and Merlene Golda Mertena) right now in my Genealogy Do-Over, here are pictures of them around 1980. I found these attached to my grandmother's memorial at Hixson Funeral Home's website. By this time, they had been married about 25 years and had raised four sons to young adulthood. I sure do miss them these days ..read more

Randy's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission is to blog about the homes we've lived in. I thought that might be a fun little trip down memory lane. My first home was a trailer located in Bahnsen Trailer Park at 2000 Center St. in Vinton, Louisiana. I know I have a picture of it somewhere, but it's not scanned. I can remember a pic of me as a toddler sitting on the steps outside on an old rotary dial phone (it might have been one of those play phones that all kids from the 1980s had). Here is a pic of my parents in September 1985 in the living room with the kitchen in the background. In May ..read more

About two weeks ago, Randy Seaver over at GeneaMusings posted a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post about counting the number of trees in your database. I wanted to participate, but I got busy doing some other things, so I'm finally catching up on it now. 1) How many different "trees" do you have in your genealogy management program (i.e., RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, reunion, etc.) or online tree (e.g. Ancestry Member Tree, MyHeritage tree)?   I use RootsMagic 7. I went to the Tools>Count Trees function and found that I only have 2 trees. I didn't think I would have too many, a ..read more

I have been focusing on my paternal grandparents, Benford and Merlene (Mertena) Trahan, in my Genealogy Do-Over. When I was adding my source documents to their section in my Trahan OneNote Notebook, I added a link to my grandmother's online obituary at Hixson Funeral Home's website. I realized that there were 34 photos attached to her online memorial. I did not notice this before. I downloaded all of them to my computer. This is one of my favorites. It is Benford and Merlene with their two oldest children, my dad, Michael David Trahan (on the left), and Dale Christopher Trahan (on the right ..read more

I have recently decided to start a one-name study on the Pemberton surname. As many of you know, this is my mother's maiden name. I have always felt a closeness to this side of the family (moreso than others), and have always been curious where the name originated, how many different branches there are in the U.S., etc. Of course, I'm not really sure that I have time for this one-name study, but I'm going to at least attempt it and see how it goes. I'm trying to focus on my Genealogy Do-Over, but I think I might dedicate certain days of the week to the Do-Over and certain days to the one-name ..read more

I posted several weeks ago about the need to clean up my office as one of the warm-up exercises for the 2017 Genealogy Do-Over. I am excited to announce that my aunt came to visit this weekend and single-handedly cleaned the office for me! I can now research peacefully without stress about all the boxes sitting to the side. I still need to go through the boxes, as they contain various documents and photos from my paternal grandparents. But at least for now they are stacked neatly in the office closet and I can review the contents when I am ready. The closet is also a safer place for the old ph ..read more

Well, considering it's technically Month 4 of the 2017 Genealogy Do-Over, and I am still working on Month 2 goals, I guess it is safe to say that the one thing I have learned from this is SLOOOOOOWWWWW DOOOOOWWWWNNN....and smell the roses. That's one of Thomas's main points of the do-over. He stresses that we often get ahead of ourselves. I am definitely guilty.  Looking back at Month One, I still have some warm-up exercises that I need to implement. For instance, my desk is still messy. No fear. My auntie will be here in a little over a week to help me get my office organized. I also ..read more