Yellacat Ranch

A genealogical journal

Latest stories

Preserve First, Scan Second

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This blog post stopped me in my tracks. I’m doing a huge scanning project right now. Drawers and drawers and more drawers of old paper files. All my genealogical correspondence and papers from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. A lifetime of work, and omg I was active. And now I’m helping Mom clean out her storage units (yes, units, plural). She’s giving me boxes...

Royal Fakes

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One of my main academic interests is the way genealogical fakes are created and preserved. For many years I was active on Geni.com, working with other volunteer curators to round up and fakes, get them corralled, and so improve the quality of the medieval tree there. In the end it turned out to be a losing battle. Even so, most of my genealogical correspondence continues to be people asking my...

Re-Surnaming

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How would it be if we all had double surnames, one from our paternal line and one from our maternal line. Sort of like the Spanish do, but modified slightly so the maternal surname really is a surname that passes along the maternal line and not just the mother’s paternal surname. That’s the idea thrown out by Burgerkrieg. TheBurgerkrieg, “A ‘New’ (Sur)naming...

Holy Cross Lutheran Church

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Yesterday I wrote about living in Mantua, Utah. I mentioned joining Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Brigham City. That memory sent me off to do some research. I was curious about the church’s history, and also about dates. I found a little potted history (see below). Founded in 1959. We were there early in its history, then, but not among the first. Originally part of the Augustana Synod, the...

Mantua, Utah

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When I was little, we lived in Mantua, Utah. We moved down from Logan when Mom married my step-father Carroll Place in 1961, and lived there until we moved to Las Vegas in January 1965. I don’t think my parents sold the house there until 1969 or 1970; sometime after we moved to Grand Junction, anyway.  We were talking about Mantua a few weeks ago. Mom mentioned that we lived there...

Yellacat Ranch A genealogical journal