Green Valley Cemetery

Tucked at the North side of Cameron Park, California where Bass Lake Road meets Green Valley Road, is the fairly new Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery. Their phone number is (530) 677-7171 and the official address is 3004 Alexandrite Drive Rescue, CA 95672

 

We're starting to have family brought here. 

Ronald E. Winkler was born August 4, 1938 in San Francisco, CA. DOD October 18, 2019 in Okanogan County, WA. His semi-permanent address now is in section B 1 (right on the edge of the Veteran's section), row PP, grave #5. 

 

His online memorial can be viewed here. 

This young lady is seated at the head of the grave. No marker yet at the time of this visit.

The view from the flagpole area shown below.

Converting old Audio/Visual Files

Hey, I know it's been AGES since I've posted anything, but I'm trying to blow the dust off my brain-bones and get back into things... I have a bunch of audio files saved by my little Sony Personal Digital Recorder that I can't listen to anymore because I don't have Windows 98 (or was it XP?) So.... I looked up any possibilities for converting the old DVF file formats into something more useable and... I found a possible solution!

http://www.wav-mp3.com/dvf/dvf-to-mp3.htm is something to download onto my computer, but since it's so late at night, I can't wrap my mind around software language, so I'm not doing it right now. I'm going to try an online converter, first.... https://online-converters.com/converter/switch-audio-file-converter/

It's great to do research and gather treasures, but it sure is frustrating when a format goes obsolete... I'll let you know how this goes!

Thank you Mr. Paglia!

Some understanding finally!!!

So if you've been around a while you've seen my confusion over some Los Angeles families. Any time you find a grave with multiple surnames represented, you just have to figure it out, because living with someone can be temporary, but to be buried with someone, well that's a lot of intimacy.

I'm speaking of Calvary Catholic Cemetery , which set me off in an important direction. We have the names Fragassi, Nicassio and Paglia all together. My profound confusion is best outlined in this post, but I'll begin with how the problem began to be solved. First, I had to make darn sure of the people themselves, because there are a lot of name variants with our immigrants. Mary Fragassi was also called Angelina, and the headstone has her name spelled Marietta, which is much fancier. A man I don't know found this post and commented that Frank Fragassi was Mary's second (?) husband, hence the Nicassio name of her children, and married name combined.

I found this, which helped settle identity. Bonus that there's a photo.

I stumbled upon an Ancestry tree with some of these names in it and gave the user a shout. "Hello! I'm not certain if I've tried to contact you before, but I've done some visiting of virtual graves and found a family connection between ours... I was hoping you might have some additional knowledge or know someone?"  I didn't know if it was even an active account, so I was surprised to get a reply within a day!

...My maternal side of the family is Nicassio. Actually went Connetto di Bari and found my grandmother's birth certificate. Besides that, my grandmother remarried in her sixties to a Frank Fragassi. After her death, he moved back to Bari where he died in his late 90's.

And so it began. Mary's maiden name was DiStaso, and that might explain the Distashe misspelled young men living with Frank in 1940, who he claimed as his sons. Perhaps there were cousins all over the place? I'm still figuring it out.

Multislacking

Yeah, I said it. Multislacking. I'm not actively researching at the moment (slacking) because I'm trying to get a handle on the stuff I already have! I have done years of research and photo-taking and photo scanning and interviewing John Wayne style... shooting from the hip and barely taking names... Well, after a while, it's tiring being so insane. Trust me.

So I'm going back and retro-actively becoming a bad-booty registrar. I've got my groove from museum managers and archivists, and it feels good! If you have outta control family artifacts and information, drop me a line. This is one of my inspirations: Registration Methods for the Small Museum

So I feel like I'm multi-slacking because there is a lot to do at the same time. I want to feel good about my system, so I'm trying to do it all right. I'm not sitting and watching TV, I'm not going to get mani-pedi's, or doing much house work besides the necessities. I'm actually kind of focused on getting this done so that going FORWARD, it will take care of itself. If I had it all done and current, and then I engaged a new research avenue, I would simply log each source I went to - whether online or in person- and catalog every bit that I get from those sources.

So, in my book, if I went to see my cousin Anne at her home, I would talk with her, scan documents and photos, maybe even photograph some heirlooms. I would detail my SOURCE SHEET first, then catalog the notes or recording of our conversation, catalog each scanned image, and catalog each digital photo so that they all come up under the same source code.

If I got a box from my mom and didn't have the time to go through it all immediately, I'd give it a source code and keep it all together so that when I did get a chance to look through it, I'd have a built in place for it all. I don't even have to do it all at once. I can group family and individual photos first, but keeping them in the same batch, have it all together.

If I have a loan of items, I will know exactly where it all came from due to the catalog number itself. After the catalog number I can put whatever tickler words I want to.

201601 - Ancestry.com - Everything gleaned from the megasite this year
201602 - Facebook.com - Family photos I've downloaded, notes from family postings
201603 - Maggie McDonald - Photos and documents from the Krauser line in WA DC (no, mom, this is a fictitious person, I haven't struck any gold there yet)
201604 - Phil Lowe - Interview and scanned documents and photos (again, fictitious)

201604.01 sound recording of conversation
201604.02 death certificate- Josephine
201604.03 birth certificate- Jacqueline
201604.04 crocheted tablecloth by Josephine
201604.05 detail of tablecloth

etc. etc.

What do you think?

Another way for ANYONE to contribute to the World

Yes, anyone with a computer can do this. I'm talking about indexing and transcribing... Seriously addictive and one can't help feeling a kind of pride in making vital and historical information available to the world for FREE. I've done about 100 records so far and I've just gotten started. I still feel a driving need to do my own homework, but when I can't sleep and I don't have the brains or patience for coherent research, transcribing is great!

Just go to https://www.familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing and take a test drive... you won't regret it!