Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:* Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc. Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!

* Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post or a Google+ Stream post.

Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings has a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and this one is an easy one for me, so here goes.

 

Many of you know I am also a quilter, and I have had my quilting blog since Thanksgiving day of 2008.  I enjoy all aspects of quilting, and I do many different quilting methods.  I took my first quilting class with a friend, that was in the summer of 1995, and the rest is history.  In 1997 my friend opened a quilt stop and she asked me to teach quilting, I knew how to paper piece, a technique she didn't know.  I have been teaching ever since.  Right now the only class I am teaching is a quilting software class.  The software is called Electric Quilt or EQ for short.  I have taught a variety of classes.

 

My other new interest is scrapbooking.  I this about two years ago to document my parents' lives, and share stories that I know about my ancestors and to save my genealogy in an interesting format.  It has almost taken over my quilting time.  I like the hands on experience of using paper and punches.  My latest project has been a wedding album for my daughter and her husband.  It isn't finished yet but my daughter saw it at Christmas and she really liked it.  You can see some of the album pages here.  That is only the beginning of the album, there is a lot more. 

 

Another picture from the Wedding Album

I am also active at church, go every Sunday and have a calling.  I am a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It was one of my smartest decisions I ever made in my life.  I joined the church at age 29 and severed a welfare mission to Santa Cruz Bolivia. 

 

My main job now that I am retired, I was a nurse for 46 years, is to be a wife.

 

Well there you go a little bit more about me.

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings is hosting another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  I liked this one and had some time and decided to play along.

Tonight's Game is Ancestral Name Roulette:

First you take the year of your parental grandfather's birth, divide it by 100.  This is the roulette number.  My parental grandfather was born in 1891, divided by 100 = 18.91 or 19. 

On my genealogy program the person on the name list with number 19 is Emma Hartmann my great aunt.  She is not to be confused with my Aunt Em that I have written about on this blog. 

The third step is to tell you three facts about this person.  I look at her name and I think I know nothing about this Great Aunt. 

As I looked at my files I realized I do know a couple of things about her.

I found her on the 1900 US Census.  This census is very special to me, as it was the first one I ever looked up and actually found someone on it I knew.  I had looked for my father found him, it was a thrilling moment, as only those first moments can be.

So back to great aunt Emma:

1. She was 14 in 1900 Census,
2. She was born in July of 1885. 
3. She was the oldest girl of six children but the third child. 
4. She lived in Ward 1, Borough of Queens, New York. 
5. Five kids lived at home with a widowed father.
6. Her occupation is listed as Paper Boxes. 

I had never heard of Wards until I read this census. 

I did a Google search and this is what I found:

From FORGOTTEN NEW YORK

New York City used to have political designations called wards, which were the smallest political units in NYC. Each ward elected an alderman and an assistant alderman to the City Council.

According to The Encyclopedia Of New York City (1995, Yale University Press) the system goes all the way back to 1686, when Governor Thomas Dongan divided the city, then entirely in Manhattan, into six wards. In 1791, wards were given numerical designations.

The First Ward was the tip of Manhattan, and districts were given consecutive numbers the further north you went in Manhattan. New wards were added as the city expanded northward,and increasing

population of the older wards required subdivision.

The "ward boss", the local provider of patronage and vote gatherer, was a most important element in the power of Tammany Hall, the pre-eminent political machine in the latter half of the 19th

Century. Ward politics diminished in stature beginning with the 20th Century, and wards were formally abolished in 1938.

Brooklyn was also composed of wards. When it became a city in 1837, it was divided into nine wards, and by the time of consolidation with New York City in 1898 it had 32 wards.

1900 Manhattan Wards

Picture from the link below 1890 Map

http://www.vintage-views.com/1890s-color-map-new-york-city-brooklyn-queens-jersey.html

So this turned out to be fun and informative.  Thanks Randy, maybe I should play more often.  

A New Fun Toy

How is this toy related to Genealogy...Well a picture is worth a thousand words.

Randy made the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.   Jenny made her sample, which I immediately imitated when I saw it today.

I just throw in some pictures, some of them aren't even fixed on photo shop.  I just wanted to try it and do it fast.  I like it.  It is a free down load from Shape Collage and it is easy peasy.  I will play with this again.