Plan to Remember

Photo by Midge Frazel, privately held, 2017
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Plan To Remember
(2017-2018)

For a year I have been working on a plan to manage my genealogy investigations in a new way. I am working only part-time now as I am "supposed" to be retired. I can hear my readers laughing.

In the last few years, I have learned so much about researching and citation that the Genealogy Do-Over and Genealogy Go-Over have really helped me review and manage the records that I found in past years plus keep up with my blog writing and personal writing. 

As I am a life long planner and journal writer, I needed to find a non-computer based system to help be remember where I stopped working and to plan from that point forward. Since I write mostly about my own family now, I am calling my work from this point on Plan To Remember. I am not waiting to start in 2018. The time is now.

To accomplish my writing goals, I needed a planner, a modified "bullet" style research journal with a log of my daily accomplishments and a notebook to write in. I decided on the Erin Condren Life Planner system of planners and notebooks. After a bumpy start, it is working for me. My research methods are improving and I find I can still remember what I was doing if I take a few days break.

Yes, this system is expensive and takes time to adapt to but I am trying to be patient with myself. I find that reading online how others plan is helping me decide what works for me, without self-stressing. Managing your work and life together is harder that it looks. There are a lot of distractions.

I am working with Pilot Frixion erasable pens. If I make a mistake, it is easy to erase my "messiness" and rework what I wrote. These pens are not permanent and are erased by friction and temperature, so I am thinking that typing in Scrivener will be the next step.

Erin Condren's system is attractive and allows for creativity. As I come from a family line of artists, I found out that I needed creativity to be part of my life. I think thematically as a part of project based learning. There is no one right way to do your genealogy but learning what is successful for others can help you decide what works for you.

Tom Broadfoot's Birthday Remembrance

100th Birthday Remembrance (1917-2017) 

My father, Thomas Harcomb Broadfoot

(21 July 1917 to 12 Sept 1998)

Devoted son and brother, uncle to my cousins, great athlete, first in his family to graduate from high school, hard worker, outstanding husband, father and grandfather. Fought bravely in World War II and succumbed to lung cancer peacefully in his easy chair at home. A life well lived. We put a flag out for you every Memorial Day, July 4th and Veteran's Day so that we never forget and always miss you. Happy Birthday.

Favorite photos of Tom, 2017

Finding Grandfather's High School Graduation

Masthead of The Westerly Sun newspaper courtesy of the Westerly Public Library, 11 July 2017
Cost of the paper on this day was one cent.

Finding Grandfather's High School Graduation:

A One Cent Solution

For many months now, I have been trying to find out where and when my maternal grandfather went to high school. Since, the area in which the family lived encompassed both the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut, I knew it might be a challenge and I was going to need the help of my genealogy friends who live and work in the Westerly (RI) and Pawcatuck (CT) geographic location. In the middle of this investigation, a family historian found my Ancestry.com public tree and a mention of her grandfather's name on one of my family photographs! 

The newspaper articles for my grandparent's wedding hinted that my grandfather went to a public high school. His father went to private high schools, one in Rhode Island and one in Connecticut, so I could not be sure that my great grandfather didn't want for his only living son, the same type of experience and that we might never find out.

My grandmother told me that she met her husband in Peters Brothers Ice Cream Shop in Westerly, Rhode Island where she worked after high school. He waited until she was off and walked her home. I didn't think of it at the time but it meant that they both lived in Rhode Island in 1912.

Grandfather Evans was seven years old than his wife. That's a lot of time at the age that they were. Grandmother told me that he had been working for his father for a number of years. They married in 1914, so my grandmother was two years out of high school. She worked, standing on her feet all of that time, "wearing ill fitting shoes".  Her feet always hurt and she lived to be 98 years old. 

Cousin and genealogist, Barbara Fallon, loves a mystery and since she is retired and volunteers in the Westerly Public Library, took on the mystery of my grandfather's high school and found his name in the Pawcatuck High School graduating class of 1905.  The Westerly Sun published the high school graduation article in the Sunday evening edition of June 11, 1905. She took screen shots of the article with her iPad and sent it to me in sections and asked the library to print out and save in .JPG format from the microfilm so I could see all that was mentioned.  I gained a lot of information from this one source and would not have found out any of this if it wasn't for her expert help. (More to follow...)