Genealogy Writing

I've recently joined in a genealogy writing workshop with my local genealogical society. I've clearly not written for a while, and even the things I thought I wrote about have gone by the wayside. My mother and I took a trip to Virginia last fall to work on all of our lines who came through there (i.e. almost all our lines). Unfortunately, I didn't write at the time, here nor on my travel blog. Ugh. 

But there is hope! The writer's group has gotten me started on a path to writing more regularly. The first item up is a series of biographies I hope to write about "the oldest generation's" memories of their "oldest generation." In other words, I want to gather the memories that the current oldest living generation in my family has about the oldest generation that was living in their lifetime. It will be a bit of a challenge, since many of my parents' grandparents died when they were quite young, and many of the eldest cousins have already passed. 

My first subject is Flora Margarethe Augusta Zogg, my great-grandmother and my dad's maternal grandmother. I haven't yet finished the piece, but I have started gathering memories. I've decided to weave known facts from my research into the text along with the first-person accounts from my father, aunts, and any cousins who I hear from. Here's a little teaser of how I've begun:

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Flora Margarethe Augusta Zogg Terry

My great grandmother Flora was born in Carterville, Missouri in 1883 or 1884. Her parents were Mathias Zogg, an immigrant miner and farmer from Switzerland, and Anna Margarethe Knust, a young immigrant from Germany. I’ve often wondered at Flora’s full name. It seemed like such a mouthful. To look at a baby and name them Flora Margarethe (pronounced like Margaretta) Augusta Zogg… that seemed to indicate the grand expectations her parents had of her. I imagine her first name came from her grandfather Florian. Her middle name Margarethe was her mother’s middle name. I have yet to discover the origins of Augusta.

She was baptized in the German Evangelical Lutheran Church on June 6, 1886, with her godparents listed as Peter and Maria Weirich.

Flora’s parents were married shortly before Flora’s birth and went through a divorce when Flora was a young child. From court records, it seems that Anna left Mathias, leaving her young daughter in the care of his extended family. Flora left Missouri as a child and moved to Orchard, Texas with her grandparents Florian and Anna [Gabathuler] Zogg and aunt and uncle, Josiah Quinn and Ursula [Zogg] Quinn. By 1900, her grandparents had passed away and 16-year-old Flora was living with the Quinns.

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Now... I've been in conversation with my writing group about how to handle footnotes on a blog. I'll have to look into whether Blogger has an add-on that can do this. I know there are some for WordPress, but I'm not interested in moving my blog. However, this particular section of text includes a couple of footnotes—one in reference to the differing birth years for Flora and one in reference to her godparents.

1 Although her death certificate reads November 25, 1884, her baptismal record reads November 13, 1883. Census records from 1900 indicate 1884, as does her headstone.

2 Sadly, Flora’s godfather Peter died only two months later as a result of a mining accident.

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I'll get it all figured out eventually and hopefully in the meantime be writing on a more regular basis.