Tag Archives: Yegerlehner

2016 – A Year in Review

Working at the library

A week ago, I honestly didn’t think I was going to write a year in review blog. Yesterday, I pulled up the post I wrote for 2015 and decided it would probably be a good idea after all. Looking back gave me some much needed reflection. What are my goals for 2016? I feel somewhat scattered as there are several projects that I want to undertake, but I am unfocused and a little unmotivated at present. I work best when I write stuff down in lists, but I seldom take the time to do so unless I have an imminent deadline and prioritizing is essential.

I had four main goals for 2015, and I accomplished 50-75% of them. The two 100% successful goals were publishing the second volume of World War II letters, Lots of Love, Daddy, and working on my skills as a genealogy lecturer. The book was finished in late September. At over 400 pages, it is almost twice as long as the first volume Dear Mother, Love Daddy. The project was a lot of work and I am going to step away from the letters for a little while. The second goal, to improve my skills as a genealogy lecturer, is also going well. I have spoken to three northern California genealogy societies this year as well as continued to give free lecturers at my local library. For 2017, I have already accepted speaking engagements for two northern California societies, for the main branch of the Sacramento library’s genealogy department, and for SCGS’s Jamboree (a national genealogy conference in Southern California).

The Second Volume of Letters

Goal number three was to publish an article in a national or state level periodical. Technically, I published an article in the Utah Genealogical Association’s magazine Crossroads in late 2015, but I wasn’t aware of it until 2016. Additionally, I wrote a guest blog (online) for the NextGen genealogy network. However, neither of these truly fulfill my intention of writing for a national or state level periodical. My goal was to write a family history or lineage so I give this goal a 50/50 completion rating.

Goal number four was to lay the groundwork for my BCG portfolio, anticipating that I would go on the clock sometime in 2017. I did do some work towards this. Finally seeing completed portfolio’s at the BCG table at Jamboree made some of the elements, like the KDP, finally click for me. I had to throw out the family I was going to use as I didn’t need to “prove” any of the relationships. I pretty much had direct evidence for everything. I have a new family chosen that fits the parameters of the KDP, but I haven’t had the time to focus on any research since last summer. Ultimately though, at this point, I am not ready to jump in and go on the clock so I don’t feel like I accomplished this goal.

What I accomplished in 2016…

Published Lots of Love, Daddy
Attended SCGS’s Jamboree
Submitted speaking proposals to SCGS’s Jamboree and was accepted to speak in 2017
Gave first paid lecture to the Roots Cellar Sacramento Genealogy Society, followed by lectures to the Solano County Genealogical Society and the Placer County Genealogical Society
Gave three additional lectures at the Franklin Branch of the Sacramento library
Continued to volunteer once a month at the library, dispensing genealogy advice and assistance
Finished transcribing and posting over 1,300 letters written during WWII (the end of a 3½ year project!)
Began organizing, transcribing, and posting the 1960s letters from the Yegerlehner family archive
Scanned hundreds of Yegerlehner family slides, including some photographs from Roscoe’s & Gladys’ 1964 world tour
Recruited two maternal family members to DNA test. Sadly, I had several people turn me down on both sides of the family. 😦
Inspired by the three sibling DNA chromosome mapping technique that has been very popular this year, I began chromosome mapping the DNA of two sibling pairs (my brother & myself, as well as my two children)
Wrote four brief family lineages which are posted on this blog under the “lineages” tab (this makes some nice cousin bait!) and I wrote some of my research down!
Completed my application for the Mayflower Society based on the lineage of my ancestor Myles Standish and was approved
Began migrating some of the WWII letters and some family documents to archival safe Hollinger boxes and folders
Attended the Sacramento African American Family History Seminar with keynote speaker Kenyatta Berry
Organized the Kerschner/Scofield collection of letters with the intent to start transcribing them in 2017
Continued to post daily on the blog (4th year in a row) with over 2,078 posts since November 2012
Wrote the new framework for an update of my 1998 book The Descendants of Jacob Troxell 1787-1885 of Fayette County, Indiana
Laid some basic framework for my BCG portfolio, viewed several portfolios at Jamboree, and rethought my KDP and other elements…

First page from the original Troxell book

Goals for 2017 – Speaking and Writing

Write a new addition of Jacob Troxell of Fayette County, fully sourced and using a reasonable exhaustive search. The new volume will be similar in scope to the silver Mayflower books. All descendants from generations 1-3 will be fully discussed, and the fourth generation will be named. Eventually I plan to write a second volume starting with the fourth generation. There is only one living person from the fourth generation (that I am aware of) and he is in his nineties.
Continue to transcribe and organize my incredibly huge family archive. I feel very blessed by this collection but I am continually overwhelmed by all the information I have to process and preserve.
Broaden the scope of my speaking opportunities as well as develop more presentations

Odds and Ends…other stuff I might like to do

Submit additional Mayflower lineage(s)
Write a finding aid and complete inventory for the WWII letters
Work on the third volume of WWII letters
Scan more slides
Map more DNA chromosomes and find more maternal relatives to test
Have fun and make more amazing genealogy related discoveries!

Book Giveaway!

Book Update – Book Giveaway!

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The book will officially be published on March 3rd so I am counting down the days until it’s release.

What I’m doing:
Now that the proof has arrived I have to go over it to make sure the manuscript printed correctly. I’ve already noticed that some of my page numbers are not the right font. I’ve noticed a couple errors on the cover and have submitted those to my cover artist.

What you can do:
Enter the giveaway contest! Here are the rules:
1. Go to the Dear Mother, Love Daddy Event page (on Facebook see link below) and check off that you are “attending.”
2. Leave a comment on the Event page. You can say hi, or you can tell me why you think you should get a free, autographed copy of the book.
3. Share the Event page on your Facebook page! (This is the most important step!)

On March 3rd, I will chose three random people to win an autographed copy of the book. I will announce the winners throughout the day on March 3rd! Disclosure: It will take a few weeks for your copy to arrive so be patient!

Wordless Wednesday – Family Reunion

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Yegerlehner family reunion at Roscoe and Gladys’ “new house” in Kentland, Indiana, 1961.

Photographs are from the private collection of Deborah Sweeney

Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/10/22/wordless-wednesday-family-reunion-2/

The Book: Progress report – August 23

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This week went rather slowly, and I feel like I did not accomplish much at all. My eldest child had her first full week of school so we are working on getting back into our daily routine. Plus three nights this week were occupied with activities outside the house. That really cuts into my book time.

I received the sample book from CreateSpace at the end of last week. It is really great to feel the texture of the cover and pages, and to see what they actually look like. These types of things are hard to visualize on a computer screen. I chose white paper instead of cream, and I like it. I can just imagine my grandparents’ words on the clean, crisp white pages.

I did progress some on the first edit. I am now halfway through the fourth chapter of letters: September 1942. There are three more to go (October, November, and December). I do foresee the next few weeks being slow as well. My youngest starts swim lessons in the late afternoon for the next two weeks. A book launch of Thanksgiving seems unlikely at this point as I am in the middle of my busy season at work. The next two months I will also need to spend considerable time working on a proof argument for my ProGen study group. I had thought of using my ancestor Nathaniel Hobart. I have spent the last few ProGen assignments focused on him, but I have pretty strong direct evidence of who he was, where he lived, etc. I think I will be doing myself a disservice if I try to write a proof argument about him. I need to pick an ancestor whose evidence is less direct. Sigh….

Another positive note is that my “editor” returned my first two chapters to me yesterday. At some point this weekend, I will spend some time going over her notes. Of course, the real priority for this weekend is the premier of the eighth season of Doctor Who and the book is just going to have to wait!

To do list:
Continue first edit
Write mini bios

My CreateSpace sample book

The Book: Progress Report – August 16

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This week in book land I feel like have accomplished a lot but I know I still have a small mountain to climb.

After reading some more of the tutorials on the book publishing site, I realized I needed to re-format my page size. I had been using a page size of 8 ½ x 11 (in Word), but the actual book pages are going to be 6 x 9. Once I adjusted the page size, my page count jumped from just over 400 pages to almost 800. Yikes! And I hadn’t even finished adding the letters for December or any of the appendixes. At that point, I decreased the font size from 13 point to 12 and the book still was over 700 pages. I went back to the CreateSpace website to try and find any information on suggested font sizes. Most books don’t inform the reader about font type or style so it was really hard for me to judge what size fonts are in a typical book. I finally found a “book template” on CreateSpace which used an 11 point font. I went back through my manuscript again and changed everything to 11 point. The book is now just over 600 pages, and will probably have a finished length of around 650.

I finished adding all the letters to the manuscript this week. Yay! I am now in the process of my “first edit.” I am going back through all the letters, checking typos, adding more footnotes, and deciding illustrations (photographs and documents). I am reformatting the letters back to their original indents and removing the page notations, for example “[page 1],” that I had on the blog. I feel that while they may have worked on the blog, in the book they didn’t. The letters flow better. My current plan is to go through this first edit stage and then print off a copy of the whole manuscript. From this copy I will do another round of editing as well as begin to build my index. Although I will have an opportunity to purchase a “proof” copy of the book before it goes on sale, I want to make sure that the book is ready before I upload it. I see a lot of editing in my future.

This week, I was back at my regular school site and I twisted the arm of one of my colleagues to be an editor for me. I gave her my first two chapters, the Introduction and Who Were Roscoe and Gladys?. Because she is not overly familiar with the ins and outs of my family, she is a great one for asking questions about things that don’t make sense in my narrative regarding my grandparents. Because I know the story so well, it is sometimes hard to remember that not everyone knows all the details. I’ve also started thinking about who I might want to include in my Acknowledgements page. Many people have encouraged me and supported me over the last (almost) two years.

Another major victory for myself this week…I FINALLY got Word to format two different page headers. The left page header has the book title Dear Mother, Love Daddy, while the right page header has the current chapter. I manged to do this while keeping the page numbering intact (at the page bottom) and having no page heading on the first page of the chapter. Of course, I have now probably cursed myself…..

This to do this week:

Continue first edit
Begin mini bios

Deborah Sweeney, © 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/08/16/the-book-progress-report-august-16/

The Book: Progress Report – August 9, 2014

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Since last week I feel like I have done a huge amount of work on the book. I had already been thinking of using CreateSpace, Amazon’s printing company, to publish the book. This is a print on demand service, with sales through Amazon. Eventually, I can format the book for the eBook format. I finished setting up my account last weekend, downloaded the instructional booklet, and started studying. My book is now registered and officially has an ISBN number assigned to it. Things are beginning to feel very real! At this point, it would be great if I could have everything ready for the end of Thanksgiving when the blog celebrates its second anniversary. However, I have to be realistic and look at my heavy work schedule for the next few months. Best case scenario, the book will be ready by Thanksgiving; if not, probably early in 2015.

I finally finished organizing the chapter of November letters, and am more than halfway through December’s chapter. After reading the preparing your manuscript guide from CreateSpace, I know that my pictures should already be in the manuscript when I upload it. I have added 12 photographs/documents at this point with many more to go. Any images I use have to be a minimum of 300 dpi. While most of the photographs I have already scanned are at a higher dpi, some of the documents I want to use were scanned at a lower resolution. I am not using any color images so everything also has to be in black/white or grayscale.

I ordered a sample book from CreateSpace so I can see and feel what the paper I plan on using is like. It currently has not arrived, but I am anxiously waiting! For size, I have chosen on a 6 x 9 paperbook. This is one of the standard publishing sizes so it gives me more options for advertising the book in outlets besides Amazon. I believe my book will be about the same size and shape as my large paperback editions of the Game of Thrones. I have a feeling that the book is going to be about as thick at this point, too. As of last night, the manuscript numbered 426 pages. I think it might hit 500 before I am done.

While doing some preparation of my title page and the reverse side, I did some research on CIP, or Catalogue-in-Publishing information. This data is found on the reverse side of a book’s title page. The data is generated by the Library of Congress and it helps libraries to catalogue their books. It also aids in purchasing so libraries have a general idea of what a book is about before they buy it for their collections. Unfortunately for me, this service is only available for books that are printed by publishing houses. Print on demand and self-publishers are considered too small to warrant inclusion at this time. I had hoped to classify my book under World War II Letters, or Indiana correspondence, which would have aided in my sales marketing.

I learned some new formatting tricks this week with Microsoft Word as well. I figured out how to put title headings on every page, but have the first page of the Chapters be different (without a header). I played around with different styles of page numbering so now my title pages and the beginning pages of the book aren’t numbered. The numbering starts at the beginning of the first chapter. If you have never done this before, let me tell you, it was very frustrating to figure out! And of course, rather easy once the trick is mastered.

Goals for this week:

Finish assembling December’s letters
Begin writing Biographies
Continue to add photographs
Work on re-writing and expanding the chapter titled Who Were Roscoe and Gladys?

Question for readers: Do you think I should spell out words that were abbreviated, specifically if they improve comprehension and readability? Bear in mind I already have a ton of footnotes, so I really don’t want to make the reader look around and lose concentration to find what the word means/is.

Deborah Sweeney, © 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/08/09/the-book-progress-report-august-9-2014/

Wordless Wednesday – Ready for a swim

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Mark and John Yegerlehner, mid to late 1930s. Their grandfather, John Henry Yegerlehner, sits in the background. The man next to John Henry is likely William O. Yegerlehner (Yegerline), John Henry’s nephew (and Roscoe’s first cousin).

Photograph from the private collection of Deborah Sweeney.

© Deborah Sweeney, 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/06/25/wordless-wednesday-ready-for-a-swim/

The Book: Progress Report – June 6, 2014

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This week the manuscript has expanded to 45 pages. There are currently 21,917 words and 142 footnotes. I am not sure I have ever written anything this long before. I am not counting the 89 page book that I wrote in 1998, although I probably should. The 1998 book was my first genealogy history book. Titled The Descendants of Jacob Troxell, 1797-1885, the book was a very basic genealogical report of Jacob’s descendants. I catalogued known descendants through the seventh generation with 857 individuals! Perhaps I should rephrase my initial statement. I have written a longer document. However, it was written early in my career as a genealogist, and although I used a modified register system, my sourcing was very limited. I used about thirteen different sources in my bibliography, and did not footnote or reference each fact. I have certainly learned a lot in the last 14 years. One thing I did know back then was how important it is to share your work. I donated two copies of my book to libraries in Indiana. You can even find my book listed on World Cat.

My biggest discovery this week is that I tracked down where great Uncle George died. Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis is one of the largest cemeteries in the country. This year marks their 150^th anniversary. They have a part time genealogist/historian on staff to handle requests. For a reasonably modest fee, one can order burial records for individuals buried at the cemetery. They also have a great online burial locator. Over the years, I have used it quite a lot. But until this year, I had never ordered an actual burial record. For those of you who followed along with the saga of William B. Schwartz, I decided that I needed to give this service a try. I knew William and his wife Mary Victoria were buried there so I started with them. The cemetery sent me a copy of William’s burial certificate which included his death location and cause of death. (He died from the rupture of an aortic aneurism). They don’t have this information for all their burials, only those prior to 1917. I ordered William’s death certificate from the state of Indiana at the same time. The burial certificate is more legible than the death certificate. I would not have been able to decipher much from the death certificate so I am glad I ordered both. After ordering William’s burial certificate, I decided to give Uncle George’s a try. I was crossing my fingers that Uncle George’s burial certificate would give the location of his death. The gamble paid off. He died in Oak Park, Illinois. I even found him on the Illinois State Archives Death Index (once I knew where to look). I am not exactly sure what he was doing in Oak Park, but I suspect he was probably visiting relatives when he died.

This week, I continued to add burial notes and footnotes to the manuscript. Hopefully, I will be done soon! I attempted to write a brief biography of one of the male descendants from the fifth generation who never married. His obituary is one that arrived in the mail this week. I found his high school yearbook, gleaned some great information and a photograph as well.

Yagerlehner, Glenn - Caldron (Central High School), 1929, p. 13 (detail)

Central High School (Fort Wayne), Class of 1929

© Deborah Sweeney, 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/06/06/the-book-progress-report-june-6-2014/

The Book: Progress Report – May 30, 2014

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I feel like I did a lot of work this week, and I didn’t get to work on things as much as I wanted to.

I read a great article from Vita Brevis (one of the blogs of AmericanAncestors.org and the New England Historical and Genealogical Society). Author Penny Stratton wrote about preparing your genealogical project for publication. Her two bits of advice this week were on the importance of writing a table of contents and coming up with a title. I already came up with a working title last week but had not written a table of contents. I also noticed this week that my father has a title of contents for his book which he uses as a checklist to track his progress. So I got to work and came up with a basic working table of contents for my book. I may have to change the subtitle of my book at some point since I do not intend to write about ALL of David’s descendants in this book. Perhaps I should just add a Volume 1 to the title….

The manuscript has now increased to 38 pages. I haven’t really begun writing any of the individual biographies yet. It is hard when I keep feeling like I can still find more information. It seems so final to write a person’s biography. At some point, I will just have to do it. Instead, this week, I began adding burial information to each individual’s biographical section, as well as writing the footnotes for those facts. I am a little tired of writing Find A Grave, database and images…. but it needs to be done. The gaps in my research are more apparent this way. Overall, I do know where most of the descendants are buried, but I am missing a few. So more research to add to my to-do list…. I have not quite finished this task but will hopefully be done next week.

I received the four obituaries that I ordered last week and ordered another set. I discovered that one of the female descendants had a marriage I was not aware of. She is also one of the descendants with missing burial information. Another obituary gave me a death location. Even though this person lived most of his life in Fort Wayne, and was buried there, he actually died at the home of one of his children in New Jersey. Who knew?!? Well, now I do. One of my death certificate requests came up as a bust. One of my great grandfather’s brothers lived most of his adult life in Indianapolis. He was also buried there but apparently he did not die in the state of Indiana. The Department of Health cannot find a record of his death. This just proves how important off-line research is. Not everything is available on-line, and if you want to really to discover the details of ancestors’ lives, libraries and archives are still our most valuable asset for research. So now, I have to figure out where Uncle George actually died.

I also need to write up a generic questionnaire to give to various family members to help them tell stories about their parents or grandparents: for everything from, where did your parents get married, did they have an obituary, where did they go to school, and what did they do for a living. Most people freeze when you just ask them…so just tell me about this person. Having actual questions can help narrow down and focus the memories.

© Deborah Sweeney, 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/05/30/the-book-progress-report-may-30-2014/