Katie G
@katiegors.bsky.social
Software developer by day. Baker, knitter, and hobbyist Franklin expedition genealogist by night. alongblank.com. 🇨🇦
One thing I didn't expect from being on an academic paper is the amount of fake conference/journal spam email I'd get. I've been invited to be a keynote speaker for both a totally real mathematics conference in China, and a totally real food science conference in France!
OK my upcoming agenda: - Give a talk for University of Waterloo donors on genealogy tomorrow - Finish a blog post about probate files and post my collection - Get back to several people who reached out ages ago - Finish my blog post on Peglar - New genealogy! I haven't done new genealogy in ages
I‘ve been going through my Franklin expedition probate archive again because I want to post that within the next couple of weeks, and there’s a discrepancy in Philip Reddington‘s (Erebus) marriage record that interested me so I started poking around his family tree.
Is there any significance to the ordering of seaman's tickets? 🤔 I just noticed tickets 55075-55077 are all Franklin expedition guys from Brompton: Thomas Tadman, Philip Reddington, and William Orren
Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was born #OTD in Banbridge, Co. Down, 230 years ago! “I always thought it was incredulous that someone from Banbridge (Banbridge!) would want to go to the Arctic,” a local told me once. Crozier, of course, also co-led an Antarctic expedition in 1839-43. #NavalHistory
📢 Terror Camp LIVE! is back for Shackleton Autumn School 2026! This Friday October 16th, 3.30pm - 5pm, we’ll be in Ireland to kick off the conference weekend with an afternoon of back-to-back polar presentations ❄️
Any Hodgson heads following me? Was he married? This probate record says he had a widow named Mary who renounced (I think that's what it says?) his estate, but I can't find anything about him having a wife. I'm wondering if that's a mistake and it meant his mother who was named Mary.
Qeqertarsuaq, Disko Island, Greenland. Maybe the prettiest place I visited; I keep going back and forth between this and the blue trail hike in Ilulissat.
OK I have not done anything genealogy related in months (including responding to some peoples' emails ahhhhhh) but I WILL be productive this thanksgiving weekend! If I don't make at least three more blog posts by the end of the year, throw rocks at me.
📢 Attention Campers! If you’re working on a proposal for a poster, you have six days left to send us your ideas by the 5th of October. All we need right now is a description of your idea, and why it would be perfect for Terror Camp VI. We can’t wait to hear what you’ve come up with! 🤩 Submit here:
Terror Camp VI—Submit your Abstract!
Submitting an individual presentation, roundtable, or poster presentation? You're in the right spot! Please refer to our Call for Abstracts for any questions.
docs.google.com
Okay I am back and I am settled and I'll be posting more Greenland pics in the coming days! First up, the small community of Oqaatsut, which I visited briefly in a dinner excursion.
Ontario theatre/film layover in brief: I think I had more fun with shows at the Stratford Festival than in NYC this time around. Something Rotten remains a crowd pleasing delight. Guys and Dolls was a joy, though I think the romance didn’t have much chemistry.
NYC theatre layover in brief: Hadestown remains my love, though the pre-September cast wasn’t very notable to me outside of Ghee who was an excellent Hermes. I love that they let the musicians improvise a bit — the guitarist was giving it some extra juice.
Farewell, Ilulissat and your beautiful ice fjord! Now back to warmer places 🥶 (Spot the boat for scale)
First in my bloodline to vomit due to suspected chili food poisoning within the Arctic Circle
This is the first time my Youtube algorithm surfaced something I was actually involved in 😆 youtu.be/nrKRaMcwY4s I give it an 8/10. I think she's reading pretty closely off the initial reports, but she gets Peglar's rank wrong (petty officer, not officer).
Have archaeologists just solved the mystery of the Franklin Expedition?
YouTube video by The Archaeologist's Notebook
youtu.be
And 2 months have elapsed which means I get to request more scans from Stanford! This batch contains the letters of Charles Best's siblings Eliza (1814-1848) and William Andrew (1829-1901).
Katie G@katiegors.bsky.social · 4mo agoStanford scanned me another 2 folders of letters, so now I have folders for three siblings of Charles Best and one of misc relatives. I would like to thank his brother James Playfair Best for having easily legible handwriting. They only have 7 pages for him and I've been able to read them all.
FYI arctonauts is raising money for their domain renewal! ko-fi.com/arctonauts
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I booked a flight to Greenland! Nuuk, Ilulissat, and then possibly Qeqertarsuaq. With some buffer days in NYC (the flight to Nuuk is from Newark). And then as a bonus I gave myself a couple days in Ontario on the way back to go to the Stratford festival.
Katie G@katiegors.bsky.social · 4mo agoOK I told myself if I helped get people identified then I would go on a Northwest Passage trip, and then I realized it’d be over 25k just to share a room onboard one. So I am taking suggestions for “Expensive vacation with Arctic vibes that doesn’t cost my uni tuition.”
Announcing Terror Camp VI! After a much-needed break, we’re so excited to be back for our SIXTH YEAR of polar conferencing! Terror Camp VI will take place online, February 6th & 7th, 2027.
I cannot believe my favourite Broadway show ever had such a spectacular proshot 😭 Hadestown in cinemas is a 9.9/10, only losing a point because I wish there were more wide shots during Doubt Comes In. One of the best shot stage shows on film I've ever seen.
I'm asking for transcription help again! No stakes, this one is just for fun. From a ~1850s recipe for sponge cake. "You can try it with a ????? ?? ?? ????? as Mrs DeBloises girl says."
It turns out, annoyingly, that practise and repetition *does* actually help, and now I'm racing through reading these old handwritten letters.
I got an updated list of who all on the Franklin expedition has had a descendant DNA test done (or pending), and I've been told I can share it. I've updated my spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Stanford scanned me another 2 folders of letters, so now I have folders for three siblings of Charles Best and one of misc relatives. I would like to thank his brother James Playfair Best for having easily legible handwriting. They only have 7 pages for him and I've been able to read them all.
I take back all my complaining, I decided to take a peak at a non cross-written letter and immediately got a Franklin expedition mention so this was worth it! Susan Best to Helen Anderson (nee Best), both sisters of Charles Best. Undated, but likely around Christmas 1856 or 1857.
![Mama and I sat down solitary and alone to take our ‘dinner’ on Christmas Day. Mama thought a great deal about each absent member of her family on that day and said she knew they would all be thinking of ‘home’ and the family party indeed that day recalled many both sad and pleasing recollections to my mothers mind, mamma thinks if you were near her it would be a great comfort to her, as then she could go and see you, & you could come and see her. You will see by the papers that there is still a hope kept up by the [???] that Sir John Franklin’s Expedition is still in existence that up in the ‘[???]’ in the arctic Ocean a steamer is [lo] be sent in search of them in the spring. Mama fears to hope, lest her hopes be blighted…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2h2p65hj2r5vehyml7b3aipm/bafkreihjtnegiagtesvi5gh3d5akaer4h5ccpdzp4xyebt233lptzfqw7a)
Katie G@katiegors.bsky.social · 4mo agoFML I don't want to read this shit, why am I doing this to myself
