2020 Blogging Last Thing on Many Researchers' Minds:
Since before the U.S. Government Shutdown and Stay at Home orders in mid March We had and continue to have a deadly Pandemic with the Covid-19 "Corona" Virus and though it caused me to stay at home much of this year, sadly I elected not to blog. Partly because social media was hugely distracting with all the political strife over who would be the 26th President of the United States following the astounding past four years, this years deadly Pandemic, and hopefully heal so much of what America needs to survive and thrive as a world leader during such trying times demanding tremendous personal and community resilience from the Atlantic to the Pacific span of the country and well beyond our own borders to long standing allies suffering similarly in their own cherished beautiful sovereign lands.
Did I personally get any research done - not hardly any that I recall unless it was related to ancestors living during the last pandemic in 1917-1919...it is hard to believe I was working on the world's last Pandemic Records for the U.S. Food Administration on a NARA work project just a few years ago and now we are sack dab in the middle of the next contagious world afflicting deadly virus just over 100 years later!
Yes the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted two whole years apparently and none of us can imagine going through a repeat of this year's craziness the overturned so much of day to day living no matter where you were, what your class level, what you thought you knew, who you supported, etc . It is a shock that two NIELSEN great grandparents both died within three weeks of one another's passing both of that very deadly Spanish Flu in Denmark in the final year of that dreadful global disease.
It was just as much as a shock that our paternal grandfather Richard Jelle, who later married one of their eldest grand daughters Dorothy, was to become the victim of TB while serving in WWI in the Philippines with another brother who I found the document at NARA showing they embarked from Angle Isle San Francisco out on the same ship the U.S. A. T. Sherman. (Document and ship Images below) Richard was raised in part by an aunt from Norway because TB took his mother when he was just an infant revealing another reason siblings are so very much worth researching in any family as they are a huge part of why/how we even made it here and likely how/why some of our descendants will make it to the future on earth as well.
2020 Had some positive sides to the down time like when MyHeritage offered Photo Enhancement and Colorization for Free to ALL Members through September - here are but a few of the best examples of my delights with using both those features for turning barely legible faces into crystal clear heirloom and book worthy delightful visual improvements!:
