Monday, March 11, 2024

My Adorable Grandparents


For several months I've been working on a large family history project. I've been scanning photos, slides, and negatives of various sizes that I inherited from my parents and my maternal grandparents. I've also been scanning photos and negatives from my own collection. 

I finished scanning all of my parents' and grandparents' slides and have lately been focused on scanning photos and negatives.

Some of the images I've scanned from my parents' and maternal grandparents' collections have been new-to-me images. In other words, I don't remember seeing them before. So that has been fun!

Today I'm sharing a new-to-me image of my maternal grandparents, Debs Warren Webster and his second wife, Willis Quillin Webster. I remember Willis very well. She married my grandfather when my mom was a little girl. Debs' first wife, Sarah Vasques Madeira (my mom's mother), passed away when my mom was almost four years old.

This adorable photo of my maternal grandparents was scanned from a medium format negative. It looks like Debs and Willis were on a trip.

The negative envelope did not provide a location for my grandparents trip, but there's a hint on the chalkboard on the building in this photo. The word Crannell is written on the chalkboard. And Crannell is also on the side of the building behind my grandfather, and it's in the sign above the chalkboard. I did a Google search for Crannell and it's a "former settlement in Humboldt County, California" and used to be a "company town for sawmill workers of the Little River Redwood Company."1

I'm not sure what kind of building this was, but I think it may have been a store. On the side of the building behind my grandfather, I think the word Store is under the word Crannell, but Store is partially hidden by my grandfather. What do you think?

Check out that old phone booth near the entrance of the building and check out my grandparents car! So awesome! I'm not an expert in vintage cars, so I did a Google image search for the car and it looks like it was a Renault Dauphine.

I just love this photo of my grandparents! It looks like it could have been an advertisement in a travel brochure.

I'll share more photos from my scanning project in future posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2024 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved



1 Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), "Crannell, California," rev. 18:33, 29 November 2023.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Going Down Memory Lane ~ My Storyworth Book


On Mother's Day 2022 my children and their spouses gave me a one-year gift subscription to Storyworth. Storyworth is a service that provides a way for people to write stories from their lives each week and then have these stories printed in a book.

Each week Storyworth sent an email to me with a question about my life. I could either answer that question or choose another question to answer. Storyworth included a list of question options on their website. For more question ideas I also turned to FamilySearch's Blog Post, 52 Questions in 52 Weeks: Writing about Your Life Has Never Been Easier. The way I did it was that before the questions were sent to me each week, I chose or even wrote a question that I wanted to answer that week.

My gift subscription includes a free black and white bound book with my weekly questions and answers about my life. A full-color option is also available, which is the route I'm choosing. The full-color option is not free, though, but will be discounted using the gift subscription.

My free gift subscription officially ended on June 6, 2023, but I had a 3-month grace period to finish up, which ended on September 6, 2023. I am in the final process of reviewing my book and will order it soon.

During the weekly question period of my gift subscription, I spent a lot of time going through mementos, my diaries and journals, my parents' diaries and journals, photos, letters, cards, etc. to answer my weekly questions. This was a labor of love and although it took a lot of time and effort, it was actually a lot of fun to look through my mementos, diaries, etc. It was also fun reminiscing with my brothers about our lives when we were growing up. I definitely went down memory lane during the time I was writing my life stories. And that phrase is how I closed each week's story: "Thanks for going down memory lane with me!"

I wanted to make my life stories fun and interesting, so I included lots of photos, diary entries, etc. My Storyworth book ended up being two volumes. I will need to pay full price for the second volume, but that's okay.

I hope that my descendants enjoy learning about me and my life from the pages of my Storyworth two-volume book.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana Last

© 2023 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

Friday, May 19, 2023

A Favorite RootsTech 2023 Class Session

One of my favorite RootsTech 2023 class sessions was "How to Milk a Source for All It's Worth" by Amy Johnson Crow. It was an excellent class. I highly recommend this class whether you are a beginning, intermediate, or advanced family history researcher. 

The description for this class is as follows: "If you’re finding a record, pulling out a fact, and then moving on to your next search, you’re probably leaving valuable clues behind. See how to get everything you can out of each source that you use."

In her class, Amy Johnson Crow pointed out that a source can help us with our immediate research and it has the potential to help us with ideas for other sources to research.

Using examples, Amy demonstrated how to get all the information we can from a source.

To view Amy's excellent class, click on the following link ~ How to Milk a Source for All It's Worth

RootsTech.org has provided great year-round learning opportunities on their website. In addition to Amy Johnson Crow's wonderful class, RootsTech has class sessions from multiple speakers, subjects, and RootsTech years available on the Video Library tab of their website. Here's the link to the RootsTech Video Library ~ RootsTech Video Library 

You can also search the full video library using search filters such as Speaker, Year, and Content Type. To search the On-Demand Video Library, click the following link ~ RootsTech On-Demand Video Library

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2023 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

Thursday, April 13, 2023

My 11th Blogiversary

Oops! I missed my blogiversary again. Ugh! My eleventh blogiversary was actually on April 5th. Wow! It's hard to believe it's already been eleven years since I began this blog.

THANK YOU

Thank you to my wonderful readers for taking the time to read my posts and for leaving comments over the years. I appreciate your support very much!

BLOGGING YEAR IN REVIEW

Here are my posts from the last year (since my last blogiversary).

I Did It! I'm a College Graduate! - May 9, 2022

My AncestryDNA Ethnicity Inheritance Results - July 13, 2022

RootsTech 2023 Influencer - November 1, 2022

Fun With the New MyHeritage AI Time Machine - November 19, 2022

Enter to Win a Free In Person 3-Day Pass to RootsTech 2023 - January 9, 2023

RootsTech 2023 Keynote Speaker ~ Jordin Sparks  - January 20, 2023

And the Winner of the RootsTech 2023 3-day Pass is... - January 23, 2023









My RootsTech 2023 Recap ~ Saturday - March 15, 2023

Again, thank you for taking the time to read my posts!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2023 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

My RootsTech 2023 Recap ~ Saturday

Welcome to my RootsTech 2023 recap for Saturday, March 4, 2023. If you missed my RootsTech recaps for Thursday, March 2, 2023 and Friday, March 3, 2023, you can read them by clicking on these links: THURSDAY and FRIDAY. As I mentioned in my previous recap, I attended RootsTech 2023 virtually.

Saturday, March 4, 2023

My first class session on Saturday morning was "Expanding Your Family Tree with SideView and More AncestryDNA Innovations" presented by Crista Cowan. It was a great class! During her class she said, "So one of the things that I love about DNA is that when somebody shows up on your match list...I know that I'm related to those people. It's just a matter of figuring out how and then making that connection." She also said, "...I've learned that DNA is a little bit like learning a foreign language and the best way to learn it is by immersion." 

Crista shared that AncestryDNA is "the largest consumer DNA network in the world" with "23 million people who have taken the AncestryDNA test." She also explained, "Why is bigger better in this case? Because there is more opportunity for discovery." I am one of those 23 million people who have taken an AncestryDNA test. My mom did too before she passed away. I wish my dad had the opportunity to have taken an AncestryDNA test too, but he passed away in 2009 and AncestryDNA launched in 2012.

Crista spoke about two new features on AncestryDNA: SideView and DNA Compare. Using ethnicity inheritance estimates, SideView splits your DNA inheritance into two parts: Parent 1 and Parent 2. Then we have to decide who Parent 1 and Parent 2 is. For instance, here is my SideView on AncestryDNA.


It was pretty easy to determine my maternal and paternal sides because I already knew my dad was Swedish and Norwegian and my mom was from Brazil and had Portuguese ancestry.

DNA Compare can be accessed at the bottom of your Ethnicity Estimate. Crista explained that when you click on the "Compare my DNA" button, "it's going to bring up a list of your DNA matches and allow you to compare them with other people." Crista said, "it's automatically going to pull in your two closest matches." I tried this new feature, and it brought in my two closest matches which were my mom and one of my brothers. As you can see, you can add more people to your comparison. You can also change from comparing ethnicity estimates to DNA communities at the top of the page.




This class is available to watch on RootsTech.org at the following link: Expanding Your Family Tree with SideView and More AncestryDNA Innovations.

Next up for me was watching General Session 3 featuring Sean Astin as the keynote speaker. Yes! That Sean Astin who played Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings! Yay!


It was such a great keynote address. The amazing emcee, Kirby Heyborne, introduced Sean Astin as "the nicest man on the planet." It was so wonderful to listen to Sean Astin on the RootsTech main stage. Regarding four of Kirby Heyborne's favorite Sean Astin movies, Kirby asked Sean Astin to tell him "one word, what they meant to [him]...what [he] learned, who [he] became because of that." And this was Sean's answer: Mikey from Goonies - Hope; Rudy - Grit; Samwise Gamgee - Home; and Bob from Stranger Things - Decent.

Paraphrasing, Sean Astin also shared that six of his eight great-grandparents immigrated from Ireland. And that the immigrant experience lives in his family. Sean also shared that one of his daughters, Ali, "about six or seven years ago discovered genealogy." She has traveled to relatives to do family history research. Amazing! Sean said he had sent Ali a text asking her why she loves genealogy. She wrote, "It's the way to learn about the ancestors that live on through me. We are the key to our ancestors' eternal life and through my children in a way I'll live forever so it's important to honor them." Wow! That is amazing! She continued, "I think we all repeat certain generational patterns and learning from my ancestry is the biggest cheat sheet to solving life's greatest problems."

After Sean Astin left the stage, a surprise guest appeared on stage, but first there was a touching video of her learning about her ancestry. That surprise guest was singer and actress, Adassa. You may recognize her as the voice of Dolores in the movie, Encanto. She treated the audience to her amazing vocal talent.



To hear Adassa's amazing singing voice and Sean Astin's keynote address, you can watch the General Session 3 at RootsTech.org at the following link: General Session 3 with Sean Astin.

The next class session I watched was Judy Russell's "Follow the Money! Records of the Record Makers." It was an excellent class! Her class description is as follows: "Researching the lives of our ancestors takes us through a wide variety of census, land, tax, court, probate and related records. But conducting reasonably exhaustive research--the kind best designed to produce the results we need--means we not only have to find the records; we need to find the record-makers. By following the money trail to the doctors, lawyers, preachers, teachers, bankers, merchants and others in their communities who made and kept records may well lead us to details they recorded that no-one else did."

She recounted how the death information for her third great-grandfather was discovered in a diary of someone not related to her family. Regarding this discovery, she said, "There, in this diary, in this record kept by this record-maker is what I couldn't find anywhere else." That is amazing! So who are the record makers? She answered that question. They include doctors, nurses, midwives, lawyers, bankers, merchants, union leaders, business associations, schoolteachers, and more. She provided so much more information in her excellent class session. I highly recommend watching it at the following link: Follow the Money! Records of the Record Makers.

My last class session on Saturday was "Shared DNA Matches - the only DNA Tool You will Ever Need" presented by Diahan Southard." She shared the following statement: "You can find the ancestor that you are looking for using your DNA and one tool that's available at every DNA testing company." To watch this wonderful DNA class, click on the following link: Shared DNA Matches - the only DNA Tool You will Ever Need.

RootsTech 2023 was so informative and fun! I highly recommend watching and even rewatching the class sessions and the keynote addresses at RootsTech.org.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana

© 2023 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

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