SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

June 3, 2008

99th Meeting

1.     Roll Call.

2.     The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, July 1, 2008. This will be our 100^th Meeting. Since this meeting will be our 100^th anniversary, I think we should do something special to honor such an occasion. So, we will all be going out to lunch, as a quest of a benevolent benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous. I am real sorry that Stan Harris is not here to join us, since this was all started by him. Therefore, next month will be a short meeting.

The Luncheon will be held at Hokkaido Sea-Food Restaurant located at 2200 Bridgepointe Parkway, in the Bridgepointe Shopping Area, in San Mateo. It is just one block down the street from Home Depot on the right-hand side of the street as you are heading East. There is lots of parking, so you shouldn’t have any parking problems. The Restaurant is located in the same building as the Ice-Skating Rink. You enter the building on the corner on Bridgepointe Parkway, which is also the main entrance to the Ice Skating Rink. As you enter the Main Entrance, the Restaurant is on your left after entering. (Hand out Flyers on the Restaurant as well as a map).

The Restaurant has a buffet menu, and all you can eat. It has a selection of not only seafood, but many many other choices. You will not be disappointed. Drinks are included, but any alcoholic drink is at the expense of the individual. I need to take a count of how many will be coming so I can inform the restaurant of how many to expect.

3.     Is there any other Old Business or New Business that we should take care of?

4.     The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 7:30 P. M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Everyone is invited. Ron Arons will be our speaker, and the title of his talk is “Best Bet Internet Websites”. This presentation will discuss other websites that allow one to find many materials online, including historical documents, newspaper articles, living people, maps and photographs, foreign language translators and aids, and much more. Ron Arons is a nationally known genealogical speaker who lives in the Bay area. He has published numerous articles and has just finished writing a book on the Jews of Sing-Sing, a project for which he received a grant from the New York State Archives.

5.     Please note again that the scheduled meetings for the San Mateo County Genealogical Society have changed from the second Saturday and the second Wednesday of the month to the third Saturday and the third Wednesday. The Society does not meet in the months of August and December. So please adjust your schedule accordingly.

6.     As I have also reported before, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society is planning their fall Seminar on November 8, 2008. The featured speaker will be 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 “Your Guide to the Family History Library”. Her website is www.paulastuartwarren.blogspot.com for those who are interested. They have now finalized the topics on which the speakers will be speaking and they are: “Though they were poor, they have been rich in Records”, “The Three R’s, Reading, Writing, and Research in School Records”,  “The WPA Era, What it created for Genealogists”, and “Where are those Records they told me to Check?”. When more information becomes available, I will let you know.

7.     Last month I reported that there was a new Family History program on the internet which I thought that everyone would be interested in. It is called Geni. The internet connection is http://www.geni.com/treads. It is a similar feature to what Family Tree Maker use to have before they started charging money to enter their Website. I had discussed at the time that I had certain difficulties with the program as well as being a little difficult to learn how to use it. The first thing that I learned it will not take any pictures that are created in Microsoft Word. You must have pictures that are created with the jpg extension. It is a genealogy sharing program which has several protection characteristics. It is suppose to be a way that one can contact and find their ancestors. Since then, Russ Brabec informed me that he went to the site on May 6, 2008, and after loading 53 direct family ancestors into the program, Geni stated that it could not accept any more. So it looks like there are more problems with Geni. Still sounds like a good idea, but looks like it has a long way to go.

8.     To also bring you up to date, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society is now negotiating with Cañada College as to a possible location for their library, which houses a vast amount of material on genealogy. There is nothing finalized yet, but they are in serious negations.

9.     The National Archives and Records Administration has announced their Workshop Schedule for the National Archives Pacific Region at San Bruno, California. I have obtained a copy of it rather late this year, but there are several workshops remaining for the rest of the year, which are follows (Pass out Handouts):

10. I thought you would be interested in seeing what Genealogy Research can result sometimes. This is a true story about an actual experience during World War II. The title of this article is the “Genealogy of Captain Kangaroo”.

11. I thought it would be beneficial to some of us if we discussed for a few minutes the basics of storing and being able to find one’s files in one’s Genealogy program, such as Family Tree Maker. This may be elementary to some of us, but I think it is very important that we discuss it once in a while for the benefit of those who have not heard it before, and to renew the basics for our own satisfaction.

a.     First we must know where our data files are stored, and where our Genealogy Program stores them. This is important because we may have to find them some day if the program looses them for one reason or other. When you first install your program, the program will ask you where you want to store your data files. By default, it will install them in the same folder that the Genealogy Program is, which is the “Program Files” folder. The program will usually give you a choice as where you want to store the data files, if you do not want them stored in the same folder as the program files, which is usually a good idea. To choose a different folder, there is usually a Browse Button that one can push, which will enable one to choose the folder you want to store your data files into.

b.     However, first you must have a folder to store them in, if it is going to be different than the folder that the program will store the files into by default. You also must have a logical sequence as where this folder is so that it will be easy for you to find it when it is necessary. In order to created the folder you wish, you must get into the Filing Cabinet where all the folders and files are stored. To do this, click on the “Windows Explorer” icon on your Desk Top, which will bring you to the filing cabinet. If you do not have such an icon, click on the start button, and then on “Programs”, and this icon will be somewhere in the list that pops up.

c.      On the window that pops up, you will see the list of folders that are installed in your computer on the left-hand side. The “Local Disk (C)” folder is highlighted which opens everything in the C folder on the right-hand side. In the list on the left-hand side, 5 folders down, you will see the “Data Files” folder. This is where I keep all my data files that I create in my computer. This folder does not come with one’s computer as a default, so you have to create this folder yourself. The reason I do this is because all I have to do to save all my data is to just copy this one folder onto a CD or other backup device. All the other folders can be replaced by other means.

d.     Now click on the button on the left of Data Files which has a plus button in it, and it will open up the folders that are located in this Data Files folder. On the third row down, you will see the folder “FTWDATA”. This is the folder in which all the data that was created by my Family Tree Maker is stored. You will notice all the other folders which I have created data from other programs are also store in the “Data Files” folder.

e.      Now click on the button on the left of FTWDATA which has a plus button in it, and it will open up the files that are stored in this folder on the right-hand side. The Genealogy Files for the Henderson Family are located in “Henderson.FTW”, all 27,368 cousins. The file “Henderson.FBK” is the backup file, in case anything goes wrong with the main file “Henderson.FTW”. This is the file that the Genealogy program goes to when you press the “Restore” button in the main program. This is all this backup file is used for, but is a life saver when you need it.

f.       Therefore, when your program asks you what folder you want to store your data in, the path that you tell it is C:/Data Files/FTWDATA/. Note that each folder is separated by forward slash (/), and the complete list that is shown is called the “Path” in computer technology.

g.     Please note, you can only create folders in Windows Explorer. You can not create files. Files are created in another program and stored in the folders in Windows Explorer. You can create a folder in Windows Explorer by clicking on “File” in the top left hand corner in Windows Explorer, and then click on “New”. In the dialogue box that pops up, click on “New Folder”. A new folder will appear on the right-hand column at the bottom of the column with the words “New Folder” inside the box to the right of the folder. Just type in the name of the folder that you want to call it. It is important to have the folder on the left-hand column highlighted into which the new folder is to be created in the right-hand column.

12. I would like to read an extract from Doug Copp’s article on the Triangle of Life, which I think is very important piece of information that everyone should know about.

13. Today, I would like to read you a joke that has been around for some time now. Some of you may have heard it before, but I think you will enjoy hearing it again. The title of it is “Noah and the Flood”.

14. 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.