SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

December 2, 2008

105th Meeting 

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, January 6, 2009. So, everyone please mark their calendar.

3.           Again I would like to remind everyone that our meeting for February 3, 2009, will be held in room 300 on the third floor of the main building, instead of this room which we usually meet. Our normal room will be occupied by the management of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, who has priority over the use of these rooms. I will post a sign out front for those who have forgotten. At least this is the way it stands now, everything may change, it has before.

4.           This is the time for the election of officers for next year. Nominations are now open for Chairman, Assistant Chairman, and Secretary/Treasurer. Please don’t volunteer all at once! The present Officers were installed for 2009.

5.           Is there any other Old Business or New Business that we should take care of before moving on?

6.           The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 10:30 A. M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The speaker for the January meeting is yet to be determined. I will have more details at our January meeting.

7.           As I have reported before, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society contractual agreement with La Cañada College to have their library housed in the library at La Cañada Negotiations are still slowly progressing. The outlook is still very positive, and they hope for some final decision about the first of next year.

8.           For those of you who missed the San Mateo County Genealogical Society Annual Fall Seminar on November 15, 2008, you missed an extremely informative and interesting meeting. There were 103 who attended and there were the only three in our group who attended. Bob Shoemaker, Russ Brabec, and myself. For those who didn’t s how, you missed a great experience. The talk, which was given by The featured speaker was Paula Stuart-Warren, who is a nationally known Certified Genealogist and Genealogy Lecturer. Paula is a columnist for Ancestry.com, is a winner of the Distinguished Service Award from the Minnesota Genealogical Society, and the Award of Merit from the Federation of Genealogy Societies. She coauthored the best-selling book “Guide to the Family History Library: How to Access the World’s largest Genealogical resources”.

Summarizing the entire program, which consisted of Four Lectures. The first Lecture was titled “The Three R’s: Reeding, Riting, & Research in School Records”. Paula discussed how one could obtain census records, military records, courthouse records, and cemetery records. These are common resources that genealogists use in tracing their ancestors. Paula informed us that there are many school records one may be able to locate at all levels of education, and for both public and private institutions.

The second Lecture was titled Tho’ They Were Poor, They May Have Been Rich in Records”. Many researchers encounter brick walls because their ancestors were not land owners, were renters staying one step ahead of the bill collector, or didn’t have a will. Our poor relatives are traceable, and because they were poor and needed assistance, may have left unexpected helpful records. Paula has listed several sources that one would not ordinarily expect, such as Agricultural census, bankruptcy records, cemetery records, children homes, church records, land records, mental hospitals, etc.

The third Lecture was titled “The WPA Era: What It Created for Genealogists”. During the depression of the 1930’s and 1940’s, the United States government created many programs to put individuals to work. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), served workers well for several years. Many records, inventories, and indexes that were compiled by the workers of this program during this era are extremely useful tools today. Today, many dedicated genealogists and historians have created indexes to WPA creations and posted them online.

The fourth and final Lecture was titled “Where Are Those Records They Told Me To Check?”. You just read an article in a genealogical publication that discussed a type of record you have not yet used. Or maybe you just listened to a lecturer whose presentation convinced you to finally become acquainted with certain records. You are all set to begin, but you don’t know where to find those records. The topic that was covered in this lecture was for finding records in the United States. However, the techniques will be helpful in locating records in other countries.

I am handing out copies of the Lecture that was given by Paula Stuart Warren, but I only have three of them. That is all that I could steal, so handle them gingerly. There is a wealth of information and places to go to obtain genealogical data, so it is a very helpful document to aid one in pursuit of his roots.

9.           Now that your have regretted not attending the San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s Fall Seminar, you can make up for it by attending the Spring Seminar that will be presented next year on Saturday, April 4, 2009. Unfortunately, there was a mistake in the flyer that was handed out which shows April 5. (Pass out flyers). The title of the Seminar is “The Women In Our Lives”. It will be presented at the 1^st Presbyterian Church in San Mateo, form 9:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. The Keynote Speaker will be Cath Madden Frindle. I will let you know when more information becomes available.

10.      It seems that almost every site on the internet wants money for finding any genealogical information about anybody. Unfortunately, it looks like greed has taken over our hobby and they are out there to take full advantage of it. About 10 to 15 years ago, the idea was to share our information with others, so that we could build up our genealogical records with a minimum of cost to everyone. Almost everywhere you look now, it will refer you to a website that will cost you money before you get to look at anything. Many cases will give you a little teaser, by giving you the name of the individual you are looking for, but it will cost you if you want details. Last month, I was searching for one of my relatives on the internet, and almost everywhere I thought I might have a chance for some information, they wanted money. Prices ranged from $5.00 per month on your credit card to $300.00 per year for ancestry.com. There are several places still out there where they do not charge a fee, but the list is getting smaller. The Family History Center is still one of the best. You just have to drive down there to look. It is beginning to look like the same thing that happened to the Postal Services throughout the world, when greed took over them, and they start turning out stamps by the millions to a point that hardly anyone could afford to collect stamps anymore. The Postal Services have physically ruined a great hobby by such practices. Stamp Collectors have stopped collecting new issues and dealers have gone out of business.

11.      I would like to read this interesting article that appeared in “Linn’s Stamp News”, which shows what one can do in tracing genealogical records when finding an ancestor using postage stamps as the basis for one’s curiosity. The title of the article is “Mystery solved of sender, addressee of 1812 suicide letter”.

12.      There is one last article that I would like to read, if we have time. The article is more economic rather than genealogical, but I think it is of such importance that you should know about it. The title of the article is “Post-Election Rally? Use it to prepare for one of the worst financial panics of all time!” It is an extremely long article, so I will read only part of it. The gentleman writing this article has been predicting these events for more than 10 years, but no one would believe him.

13.      In closing, I have the following piece of very important information. The title is “The Secrets of the Indians”

14.      One more last remark before completely closing, entitled “A Meeting With St. Peter”

15.      I have placed all of my meeting discussions onto the SIR’s Website in case you would like to refer to some of them. In the Genealogy Group on the Website, scroll down until you see the title “Monthly Genealogy Meetings”. Under this title you will see the dates of our past meetings. Click on any one of these dates and you will see the discussions that we talked about at each of these meetings. I have changed the format at this point a little, and have placed all the Monthly Genealogy Meetings for 2007 into a single folder titled “2007 Genealogy Meetings”. The monthly meetings for 2008 will be shown individually until the end of the year, and they also will be placed in a 2008 folder. This will save a great deal of space and make it much easier to look up the meetings.