Saddleback Valley Trails
Vol 4 No. 10 Editor: Pat Weeks October 1997
South Orange County California Genealogical Society
P. O. Box 4513, Mission Viejo, CA 92690
SOCCGS Events
Monthly meetings are scheduled for the third Saturday of each month and are held from 10:00 AM to Noon at 27978 Marguerite Parkway in Mission Viejo, CA, situated between Medical Center Drive and Hillcrest Drive. Visitors are always welcome.
Membership is open to anyone wishing to join. Membership fees are $20 per year, January 1 through December 31.
18 October 1997This month's speaker is Joan Rambo who will discuss "Using Overlooked Resources in the Family History Center". Nominations for the 1998 Board of Directors will also be held at this meeting.
15 November 1997 "A View From Beyond the Beltway" is this month's titled presentation to be given by Everett Ireland. Everett will discuss tips on researching in Washington D.C. We will also be holding our annual election of officers for the year 1998.
20 December 1997 Our annual holiday party and installation of officers for the upcoming year will take place at our December meeting.
Other Local Events
11 October 1997 The So. CA Gen Society Library at 417 Irving Dr., Burbank presents Bill Dollarhide, whose topic is British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775 and American Migration Routes. 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For further information hone (818)843-7247
12 October 1997 The Orange County Jewish Genealogical Society is hosting a Family History Fair at Clubhouse 1, Leisure World, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. This is a wonderful opportunity for any of you to attend the meeting and request a translation of any documents that you may have. The group will have experts there to translate documents, letters, etc written in Hebrew, German, Yiddish or Russian. If you are not a member of this society or live outside Leisure World, contact Dorothy Kohanski so you will have admittance at the gate.
18 October 1997 The Immigrant Gen. Society's fall seminar will meet from 8:30 to 4:00 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 134 N. Kenwood, Glendale. The guest speaker is Mr. Horst Reschke, who will cover many topics on German research.
1 November 1997 The British Isles Gen. Research Association announces its 15th anniversary seminar with Paul Smart who has been associated with the Family History Library in SLC for 26 years. Mr. Smart will discuss: Special collections in England and Wales; Finding your ancestors in Ireland; Reference Tools; and what to do after the usual sources have been consulted. Sign-in begins at 8:00 a.m. and speaker will talk from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. To be held at Handlery Hotel, 950 Hotel Circle North, San Diego,
(Mission Valley area) Fee, if made before Oct 1 is $35 for members and $40 for non-members. If after Oct 1, members are $40 and non-members are $45. This includes lunch as well. Contact Diana Sampsel
MEMBERSHIP
We welcome the following new member to SOCCGS:Nell Fullerton
Guests at our September meeting were Patricia and Richard Yockey, Kathleen Horton, Gerald Nippert, Selma Grant, Norma Roberts, Betty Klamfoth and Beth Kloman.
GENEALOGY CLASSES
The Mission Viejo Family History Center is again offering ten week classes beginning October 7th. For further information and to register to attend, call the FHC at 364-2742
LIBRARY UPDATE
Opening day for the new library is scheduled for October 25, 1997. Many members are presently working very hard to prepare for this big event. If you have any books or supplies and/or would like to donate some time, call Betty McKenzie or Janet Franks.
Betty has requested that if any books are to be donated it would be very helpful if you first write out the pertinent information needed to catalog the book on a sheet of paper. Betty needs this information:
1. Category, such as Family History, Research Aids, Countries, Military, Passenger Lists, Patriotic Society, Census, History, Gen Society publications, etc.
2. Title
3. Author or compiler
4. Publication year, publisher, location
5. Number of pages, index if there is one, soft cover book or hard cover.
6. Donor, if known
THANK YOU
Thank you to the 10 SOCCGS members who met at Pat Stafford's house and helped Betty in extracting information, as needed for the cataloging of our books. Those there to help were Pat McCoy, Pat Stafford, Diane Miller, Lowell Smith, Paula Roberts, Eleanor McInnis, Jeanne Barrett, Ruth Sheean, Lawrie Mitchell, and Pat Weeks. It was elbows and, well, you know, but we got all of the books completed. Next step will be to physically move all of those books from Pat Stafford's and Betty's houses to the new library. Betty expects that we will have access to the building about October 15th.
A man in Montana recently paid a research outfit $1,000 to have his family tree traced - and in a few days another $500 to forget what it found (Source unknown)
John Mulligan has supplied us with a list of French Canadian research aids that are available at our Mission Viejo Family History Center. These are:
Canadian Participants in the American Revolution, 6 fiche, cat#6046783
Recensements Du Quebec, 16 fiche, cat #6046792
Our French Canadian Ancestors, a history of individual families, 20 fiche, cat #6104823 through #6104866 and 4 fiche
#61110823; Vol 20, #6125122.
Loiselle, Catholic marriages for Quebec, film cat #543,685 - #543,858.
Acadian Church Records, Beaubassin, Port Royal, cat #6087648 - 6087652
200 Family Trees from France to Canada to USA, fiche, #6087771-74
Drouin Register of Marriages, FILM, CAT #362,679 AND 362,680
Lovell's Canadian Directory, 1871, film and fiche
Dictionnaire Gen. Des Familles du Quebec, by Jette, fiche
Dictionnaire des Famillies des Canadiennes, by Tanguay, fiche
I'll say it again, forget the spelling!!! Pat Stafford told us her plight of some years ago when she was stumped finding the family PICOU. The person extracting the information for print thought the name was PECAN. I am currently wrestling with printed records for the family DANIS. Many times they show up as DAVIS. And my poor gggrandpere, Lambert Ranger, was put on the 1830 census as Llomba Ronggey. So, forget the spelling, and get creative instead.
There is a new microfilm series available at the Laguna Niguel National Archives pertaining to Civil War (and some 1812) Veterans. This series consists of alphabetically arranged 3 by 4 cards of Union CW soldiers who received gravestones and markers, dying between 1861 and 1903. It provides rank, company and regiment, place of burial, including the cemetery's name and the community, county and state, grave number, if any, date of death, name of contractor who supplied the headstone. Most of the burials occurred in private cemeteries, probably in the county of the soldier's last residence. Some occurred in cemeteries at National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.< P>
The Descendants of the Mexican War Veterans are also compiling information on the veterans of the 1846-1848 war and will publish it. Write to DMWV National Headquarters, Graves Registry, P.O. Box 830482, Richardson TX, 75033-0482 for a form to complete (NVGBS Winepress, 23:2 p 4 via CSGA Newsletter, September 1997)
Grandfather: A man whose daughter once married someone who was vastly her inferior mentally, but consequently gave birth to unbelievably brilliant grandchildren.
Grandmother: A baby-sitter who doesn't hang around the refrigerator.
Father: Someone who has replaced the money in his wallet with snapshots.
Mother: The person who feeds the mouth that bites her.
Child: A lump bred up in the darkness.
Aunt: The only person who would have made a better mother than your mother.
Uncle: A relative who only seems to like you when he needs something done for him.
Son: The result of getting what you thought you wanted.
Daughter: A person who Dad likes because she reminds him of why he married his wife, and whose mother is afraid of because she reminds her of why her husband married her.
Cousin: The relative most likely to be responsible for your troubles.
Mother-in-law: A ready source of all knowledge, especially advice, history, and judgments.
Father-in-law: The fellow who is now happy to have paid for the wedding because now his wife has another man to harass.
Please note: Any resemblance to persons living or dead may be intentional.
(Past Finder, Aug 1997 via Gen. Soc of North Orange Co CA., Aug 1997)
Thought you might enjoy this. Now maybe you will have an idea of where the "but we've always done it this way" mentality comes from.
How Specifications Live Forever
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 ft, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So, who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus we have the answer to the original question. The US standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specifications and Bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's butt came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses. (Whittier Area Gen Soc., March 1997 via Gen Soc North Orange Co CA, July 1997)
By Cheri Lynn Monroe-Miller
I first became interested in genealogy around 1968 when my grandmother gave my brother his copy of the Warren/Monroe family tree. It was an inch thick book of charts copied by a great-aunt. The Warren line traces back to the Mayflower. Many people think this is no big deal, but to a seven year old it was "real neat".
It was not until my mother-in-law gave me a gift certificate to MicroCenter that I myself started really working on the tree. I bought Family Tree Maker and asked my dad for the book of charts. (He still has possession of it even thought the brother it was copied for is now 31). I have also included some of my husband's family, my sisters-in-law and my brother-in-law's families. While collecting information for my brother-in-law (my sister's husband) we discovered that we are related! His mother traces back to Richard Warren through an older sister of Nathaniel (one of Richard's sons) via the BARTLETT line.
Now, I will soon be adding to own tree as in September we will be having our first child. I have placed a temporary space for him/her already.
At the September meeting applications for the new MV library cards were passed out, with instructions to mail back to the city librarian. The address was then provided, but we thought it prudent to again provide it in case some didn't have a chance to write it all out. You should send applications to:
Beverly Meyer, City Librarian
Mission Viejo Library
c/o 25909 Pala, Suite 200
Mission Viejo, CA 92691
