SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

March 4, 2008

96th Meeting

1.     Roll Call.

2.     The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, April 1, 2008.

3.     Has everyone made their mandatory assessment of $5.00 for the year of 2008.

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

5.     The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 10:30 A. M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Everyone is invited. Gayle Simons will be giving a talk on “How Genealogy Can Save Your Life.” Gayle Simons is a Registered Nurse who chooses to teach Genealogy Classes in the area. We all know the importance of our work in genealogy and the satisfaction we gain from researching our ancestors, but now it is their turn to help us. By identifying their causes of death we will hopefully be able to prevent those same disorders in ourselves. Come to this meeting and learn what medical conditions are familial or genetic, review how to read death certificates correctly, discuss obsolete terms for causes of death, and then chart and share your findings with family and physician.

6.     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.

7.     If any of you did not attend the San Mateo County Genealogy meeting on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, you missed another great meeting that was given by Cath Madden. There were only two of us from our group who attended. The topic, in case you have forgotten, was “Building a House History”. It was a great demonstration of what one can learn about the Land, the House, the City or Town, the Neighborhood, and the Street where any house is located. The history of a house starts with the land it lies on. Cath gave out flyers giving a list of several places where such information could be obtained, such as the Recorder’s Office, Assessor’s Office, Building Department, Water Department, Architect Records and Real Estate Records.

8.     As I have announced for several months now and for the last time, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society is planning a Spring Seminar on March 29, 2008 (Saturday), from 9:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. Registration begins at 8:15 A.M. The Seminar will be held at First Presbyterian Church at 25^th and Hacienda in San Mateo. The Keynote speaker will be Stephen Morse, who will talk on “Your Immigrant Ancestors”. There will be five other speakers who will also be talking on the same subject. Pass out copies of the Seminar Announcement. The list of the talks are on the rear of the Announcement. The form for registration is on the bottom of the front page. Fill it out and mail it along with your check to Patric Gilbride, who’s address is on the form. Make check payable to SMCGS Seminar. Mark this date on your calendar. So in case you have regretted not attending these Seminars in the past, here is your chance to make up for it. They are extremely well done, and well worth your while attending.

9.     Just so you wont get bored, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society is planning another Seminar on Novemer 8, 2008. The featured speaker will be Paula Stuart-Warren. When additional information becomes available, I will let you know.

10.                        Just in case anyone is interested, The San Mateo County Genealogical Society now has 947 CD’s in their library, covering just about any topic that one can imagine. They also have thousands of books and periodicals on genealogy. All these are available to anyone. If you are a member, you can borrow copies to take home with you.

11.                        As I have also announced in prior meetings, and for those of you who are just dying to get more Genealogical information, the National Genealogical Society will be having their conference in Kansas City, Missouri on May 14 to the 17, 2008. The topic of the conference is “Show Me the Nation’s Records”, which will feature record types from across the country with a variety of topics and workshops. This is the 30^th National Genealogical Society Conference in the States and Family History Fair. For more detailed information, go to the website http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/.

12. Last month I read “The Death of a Senator”. Today, I am going to read to you “The Death of an Engineer”.

13. Today, we have a special treat. Don Brozzo will give a demonstration on how he scanned old family pictures into the computer, created a Genealogy Family History CD by exporting data from Family Tree Maker, then created the CD using a program called GEDHTREE and then inserting pictures into the family tree that was created by GEDHTREE.

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.