Wordless Wednesday: Leaves of Halloween

Saturday Challenge: Halloween Personality

From GeneaMusings:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Go take the Hallowe'en Personality quiz at    http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourhalloweenpersonalityquiz/ 

2)  Post your answers on your own blog, as a comment on this blog, or on your Facebook page.

3)  Tell us if this is "right on" or not.  Have fun with it!

You See Halloween as Scary

You're a friendly person, but not the life of the party. You like making someone else's day - and you'll dress up if you think of a really fun costume.

No one quite understands you, but everyone also sort of worships you. And that's exactly how you like it.

Your inner child is full of wonder and very sweet.

Your fears are irrational and varied. It's hard to predict what you may be afraid of on any given day.

You're prone to be quite emotional and over dramatic. Deep down, you enjoy being scared out of your mind... even if you don't admit it.

You are picky and high maintenance. If you wear a Halloween costume, it's only when you really feel like it. And it has to be perfect. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I think it is pretty close. I don't enjoy being scared, not even deep down. I don't think I'm high maintenance either, although there's some that might say I am, but sorry big brothers you're stuck with me! LOL!

Saturday Challenge: How Did I get to School?

Another challenge question from Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: 

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  How did you get to your school(s) through high school?

That could be a quick and simple answer: the school bus.

Like the majority of the students in my rural school district, the bus stopped in front of my house in the morning and I got on. It stopped in front of the house in the afternoon and I got off. Rarely were there any designated bus stops in our district where a group of students congregated for the bus. In the rural areas houses are too far apart for that to happen. There was a fleet of somewhere around 20 school buses in our district. Additionally, students in the village, within roughly a mile of the school buildings, would walk to and from school. There weren’t a lot of “town kids”; they would probably fill up one to two more buses if they were loaded onto the bus.

Sometimes there were problems with the buses, but that wasn’t often and there would, of course, be a solution found. If a driver was sick, we would often be driven by the head of the bus garage or the mechanic. I think there might have been a small handful of substitutes available to drive as well.

I remember once in sixth grade, a group of the buses left before we got out of class to board them. We simply jumped on another bus and rode over to the high school to catch up to our buses. No problem, as they stayed there for 10-15 minutes to load the high school students. Except, somehow, the first few buses had already left there as well! One of them that had left was mine. I walked down the row of buses to the one that was now second in line and asked Mr. Nast if I could ride his bus home. His route criss-crossed with mine and actually went by our house.

Not counting appointments where I was picked up from school and such, I probably “missed” the bus about twice in my entire school career. The first time I actually had planned on not taking the bus home, however, my teacher didn’t know that. We were at a class in Syracuse for yearbook and she got us back to the school late. Pulling the suburban wagon up across the driveway, she blocked the exit so that most of the busses were forced to wait while we jumped out and got to our own buses. “Did I stop everyone’s bus? She asked. “Well, mine’s gone, but that’s okay.” I replied. “No. Actually yours is across the road,” a classmate joked. Looking over, the teacher laughed. Across the road sat a mini-motorhome camper. Knowing my family camped a lot, she realized that must be the “bus” my friend referred to.

 

Is this a bus? Someone said it was...

Another time I missed the bus was when a teacher kept us late during the last class of the day because of something one of my classmates had taken from another and would not return. I don’t remember who was involved, or what the item was. I just remember being annoyed as I rushed to my locker, grabbed my coat and books and dashed down the stairs and out the side door. My bus would normally be parked just a few feet beyond this door. Instead, that day I dashed out just in time to see the last of the line of buses making the turn onto Main Street. Sighing, I went to the pay phone near the main office to call for a ride. The phone was out of order and the secretary to the principal was in no mood to let me borrow her phone for a quick call home. Directly behind her was a window through which I could see the main driveway and here I saw my solution. “Never mind!” I called as I dashed out and headed for the back of the school. I actually arrived home before my bus even went by the house thanks to a timely fuel delivery made by my older brother to the school!

Wordless Wednesday: Owasco Outlet

Wordless Wednesday: Seeking Mark Twain

Saturday Challenge: Playing 20 Questions

Gotta love the Catamount!

From Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings wrote 20 More Questions About Your Ancestors and Maybe A Few About You this week and Linda Stufflebean thought it would be a great SNGF challenge.  I agree!

2)  Copy the questions from Ellen's post or from my post below, and insert your own replies.  Be sure to comment on Ellen's blog so she knows you wrote about it.

3)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Ellen for her post and to to Linda Sufflebean for suggesting this topic.  If you have an idea for an SNGF topic, please let me know.  

Q1:   Why do you love doing genealogy/family history?
A1:  It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with interesting people as the pieces.

Q2:  How far have you traveled to research an ancestor?

A2:  Salt Lake City and Fort Wayne for libraries. The northeastern corner of Indiana for on-site research.

Q3:  What do you think your favorite ancestor would think of our lives today?

A3:  I don’t have a particular favorite. I think any of our ancestors would be amazed at the technology of today and think that our lifestyle is too fast-paced.

Q4:  What do you think that your ancestor would like/dislike?

A4:  They would like the easier life brought on by health care, heated/air conditioned homes, easier transportation etc. However, they would dislike all the craziness of the world today.

Q5:  What was the most unusual cause of death that you’ve found?

A5:  Of my direct line, a 3-great-grandfather, Daniel Titus was killed by crossing the tracks too close to the train and being hit. More distantly, a 9-great uncle, Joshua Tefft, was executed for treason during King Philip’s War. But perhaps the weirdest was a 6-cousin, 4 times-removed, Mary (Arnold) Brown. Although I believe she actually died of tuberculosis, the rumor of the time was that a vampire, her daughter, Mercy Brown killed her!

Q6:  Which ancestor had the most unusual occupation?

A6:  I can’t think of any that had that unusual of an occupation. Most men were farmers or did jobs related such as blacksmithing, millwork etc. There were some store keepers and at least one tailor. A great-aunt was a milliner.

Q7:  Have you ever gone to where your ancestor lived and it felt like home even if you’ve never been there before?

A7:  Of course. The house I grew up in had been my father’s home as a child as well. Once while traveling in Dutchess County, I visited a Quaker Meeting House where there was nobody around, but I felt a welcoming presence there. Later I found out that some of my Titus ancestors were instrumental in building this church.

Q8:  Do you have a distant ancestor  (several generations back) that looks like someone in the family?

A8:  I don’t have many pictures of distant ancestors, but there are definite family resemblances amongst closer relatives.

Q9:  What is the oldest ancestral photo that you have?

A9:  I have a few pictures of my g-grandfather’s sisters when they were teenagers/young adults. They were born in the 1860s. I have a couple that are siblings of their parents apparently, but we haven’t quite identified yet.

Q10:  Did you have an ancestor that had an arranged marriage?

A10:  None that I know of.

Q11:  If you could live in the time period of one of your ancestors what year would it be? Where would it be?

A11:  I don’t think I could handle going back in time. I need my modern conveniences and health care!

Q12:  Which ancestor was married the most times?

A12:   ?? I have multiple people married twice, but can’t think of a direct ancestor that was married more than that. Great-Aunt Adelle was married three times.

Q13:  If you’ve tested your DNA what was the biggest ethnicity surprise?

A13:  My results were about what I expected. Perhaps a little higher percentage of Dutch and not as much French or German as I might have expected as I have not so distant ancestors from those areas.

Q14:  Did you have a female ancestor that was different or unusual from other females from that time period?

A14:  Would being granted a divorce—in 1643 count? If anybody has read the book Rebel Puritan by Jo Ann Butler, you’ve met one of my 10-great-grandmothers, Herodias Long.

Q15:  Did your ancestor go through a hardship that you don’t know how they managed?

A15:  All the time. Primitive conditions of the frontier, the early immigrants that crossed the ocean… how did any of them survive? We’ve all heard the tale of John Howland falling overboard mid-Atlantic during a storm on the Mayflower. He survived that or many of us wouldn’t be here!

Q16:  How often do you research? Are you a genealogy addict?

A16: As often as I can. It might be a record or two from the internet, some data entry to my genealogy program from papers I’ve accumulated or such, but I usually do something every day. Yes, I’d say I’m addicted.

Q17:  Do you have someone in your family that will take over the family history?

A17:  ?? Any volunteers? I’m hoping some of my younger nieces or nephews become interested enough to want to take over.

Q18:  Have you had a genealogy surprise? What was it?

A18:  Many. Most recently I found out about the inn that my Revolutionary War ancestor owned and that the house on the property is probably the original building!

Q19:  Are you a storyteller? What’s your favorite family story?

A19:  Many people would say too much. I love to ramble on and on about family stories and have to make myself stop when I realize that people’s eyes are glazing over. Of course, that could be hours after they actually have! My favorite story is the one I’m telling at the moment.

Q20:  What was your greatest genealogy discovery?

A20:  Any discovery that gains the interest of the people around me, especially my family.

New FamilySearch Records

New Free Historical Records on FamilySearch: Week of October 8, 2018

SALT LAKE CITY, UT—FamilySearch expands its free online archives this week with millions of new searchable names from France, Ireland, and Native American Census Rolls, 1885-1940. New indexed records are also available from Belgium, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United States (Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New York, and the Mexican War Pension Index). New indexed records are also on the BillionGraves Index and the Find a Grave Index. (Find and share this announcement online in the FamilySearch Newsroom.)
Research these free new records and images by clicking on the collection links below, or go to FamilySearch to search over 8 billion free names and record images.

Country	Collection		Indexed Records	Digital Images	Comments
Belgium		Belgium, East Flanders, Civil Registration, 1541-1914	11,018	54,878	Added indexed records and images to an existing collection
France		France, Calvados, Civil Registration, 1792-1942	1,692,790	0	New indexed records collection
Ireland		Ireland Civil Registration, 1845-1913	987,286	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
South Africa		South Africa, Transvaal, Civil Marriage, 1870-1930	241,425	0	New indexed records collection
Switzerland		Switzerland, Fribourg, Census, 1880	4,705	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
Ukraine		Ukraine, Kiev Confession Lists, 1799-1911	310,347	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
United States		Georgia, World War I statement of service summary card files, ca. 1920-1929	102,472	0	New indexed records collection
United States		Hawaii, Kauai County, Obituaries, 1982-2010	108,056	0	New indexed records collection
United States		Iowa, Birth Records, 1921-1942	441,684	0	New indexed records collection
United States		Iowa, Death Records, 1904-1951	228,954	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
United States		Mississippi, World War I Service Cards, 1917-1919	62,781	0	New indexed records collection
United States		Montana, Sanders County Records, 1866-2010	1,891	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
United States		New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791-1980	131,053	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
United States		United States Mexican War Pension Index, 1887-1926	27	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
United States		United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940	1,974,407	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection
Other		BillionGraves Index	319,320	319,320	Added indexed records and images to an existing collection
Other		Find A Grave Index	2,471,668	0	Added indexed records to an existing collection

Searchable historic records are made available on FamilySearch.org through the help of thousands of volunteers from around the world. These volunteers transcribe (index) information from digital copies of handwritten records to make them easily searchable online. More volunteers are needed (particularly those who can read foreign languages) to keep pace with the large number of digital images being published online at FamilySearch.org. Learn more about volunteering to help provide free access to the world's historic genealogical records online at FamilySearch.org/indexing.
FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organization in the world. FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch and its predecessors have been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources for free at FamilySearch.org or through more than 5,000 family history centers in 129 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Wordless Wednesday: An Amish Home