Month: March 2015

Genealogy

De Sails on De Plane Fall Mainly in Spain

Shelly

Marriage License

I’m never quite sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that most of the surnames in my family are uncommon. It means that somehow, anyone out there with the same surname is a fairly close relative. I don’t have to wonder if John Smith is the John Smith who married my great-great aunt. When I find a marriage license for Margaret Basquill and Sterrett Pooser, I have a high degree of confidence that these are my people.

On the other hand, spelling. Spelling is more of an art than a science. Even fairly recently, people didn’t seem to be too attached to a particular spelling for their name. For example, my great-great aunt Margaret. Her middle name was DeSales, but for some reason, on her marriage license, it’s spelled DeSails. Now, given the uniformity of the handwriting, we can guess that a clerk filled out the form, not Margaret or Sterrett. Still, presumably one or both of them were present and could have given the correct spelling?

Anyway, weren’t they adorable? Margaret died when I was six or seven, and she was pretty much bed-ridden before that, so I don’t remember her well. I get the impression that she had a great sense of humor, was adventurous and unfussy, and was close to her sister Nell (my great grandmother).

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Sterrett Pooser, Margaret (Basquill) Pooser, Dot Coleman, Frank Coleman, 1920s
“Pablo Beach FLA”

Uncategorized

Spring Cleaning

Shelly

Happy Spring Equinox!

I finally decided that part of the reason I don’t blog much, after losing my old blog and moving back here, is that the mobile app for Blogger is a pain in my ass. It doesn’t understand HTML, so you cannot use it to post images that are hosted elsewhere (like Flickr or Instagram). Instead, if you want to post images, you have to upload them directly to Blogger. For a lot of reasons, I don’t like doing that, and it’s really made me disinclined to blog.

But there is a solution! I moved back to WordPress. Only this time, I am not self-hosting, because that was a whole other pain in my ass. I think this will hit the sweet spot between getting the flexibility I want and not having to deal with the hacking crap that comes with self hosting, which I do NOT want.

The only thing that gives me sadcakes is that I didn’t jump on the .com domain name I wanted fast enough. It was available, but it’s been snatched up. I got the .net domain name, though: http://redpaperboat.net.

I’m still arranging the furniture there, but it’s functional.