SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

May 5, 2009

110th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

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

3.           Today, Russ Brabec will be discussing DNA and its connection with genealogy. We haven’t discuss DNA for almost a year now, so it would be interesting to see what is going on. We will get back to Russ after we have finished with the regular business.

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

5.           The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 7:30 P. M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The speaker for the this meeting will be Steve Morse, who will talk on “From DNA to Genetic Genealogy: Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask”. To understand the genealogical aspects of genetics requires an understanding of some of the basic concepts. This talk introduces genes, chromosomes, and DNA, and goes on to show how DNA is inherited. That knowledge of inheritance can be used for finding relatives you didn’t know you had, learning about your very distant ancestors, the route they traveled, and determining if you are a Jewish high priest. DNA and genealogy is not limited to people. This talk will be followed by a short talk by Megan Morse (Steve’s daughter), a wildlife educator who will present and demonstrate some applications to the animal kingdom using a live animal. Come a little early and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting.

6.           The meeting that was held on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society was a great meeting, and those who didn’t attend missed a great presentation. There was only two of us who attended. Myself and Rick Dusine. The speaker for the this meeting was Margaret Melaney, who talked on “Visiting Ancestral Homes”. Have you ever wanted to travel to the places your ancestors lived? Add color to your reports with photos and anecdotes? Discover living relatives, or just get a feel for how your ancestors lived? The talk covered preparing for the trip, how to make the most of your visit, what to look for, what you will want to bring back, and the etiquette involved in exchanging information. We learned how to recognize important local resources, and get some tips on genealogical serendipity. Margaret Melaney gets most of her family history information from strangers she meets in coffee shops, graveyards, libraries, archeological digs, and car repair shops. It was extremely interesting to hear all of Margaret’s personal experiences that she went through digging up her ancestors. If your ancestors came from a small town, you may be lucky. Just ask a few strangers if they ever heard of so-and-so, and the chances are you might luck out. Margeret actually saw some of the original homes that some of her ancestors actually once live in, by just asking a few questions of someone. The best chance one would have is shop owners who have been around for a long time, like “Samy, there was a Samy that use to live at the top of the hill”

7.           The San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s Fall Seminar  will occur on October 24 of this year. So mark your calendar so you will be sure to remember it. The speaker will be Karen Clifford, and I will have further details when they become available.

8.           Again, for those of you who are just dying to get more Genealogical information, the National Genealogical Society will be having their conference in Raleigh, North Carolina this mont on May 13 to the 16, 2009. That is this next week and this is the last time you will hear about it.

9.    For those who are interested, the National Archives and Records Administration, they have announced their Workshop Schedule for 2009. The workshop that was held on March 20, 2009, and April 17, 2009, are now history. There are still three remaining workshops which are:

All workshops will be conducted by Rose Mary Kennedy at NARA-Pacific Region, 1000 Commodore Drive, San Bruno, CA 94066-2350. To register and reserve a space, contact: Rose Mary Kennedy 650-238-3488, or E-Mail her at rosemary.kennedy@nara.gov. The cost is $15.00, payable in advance.

10.      In our January 6th meeting this year, I reported how one could obtain their Military Records for World War II. I was prepared to wait a couple of years, when I received them last month, which was only about a four-month wait, which is not bad. For those of you who are interested in what the military records of either you or one of your relatives did in World War II, it is now relatively easy to obtain this information, sometimes even if the main records were destroyed in the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1972 fire. My records were in the Records Center at the time of the fire, but they survived. They were burnt around the edges but mostly legible. It is now possible to order personnel records online, if you are the next of kin, such as spouse, child, grandchild, etc., of the veteran. Information that is requested to help find the correct record includes: Complete Name, Service Number, Social Security Number, Branch of Service, Dates of Service, birth date and place, and place of discharge. It may be possible to find a record without this information but the more information supplied the more likely it is that they might find some record. The internet address where this information can be obtained is:  http://www.archives.gov/veterans/evetrecs/index.html If you have trouble with this address, then go to Google and type in “Archives of veterans”, then click on “How to Request Military Service Records or Prove Military Service”, then click on “Use our eVetRecs System to create your request”, and this will get you there. You must fill out all the information that is asked, and after you have finished, you are to print a copy of it and mail it to the address that is shown on the printout. If you are not the veteran or the next of kin, you can still obtain this information by filling out a different form called Standard Form 180. All this procedure is spelled out for you when you open the home page of the Website. After reading the information on the home page, click on the button titled “Request Military Records” and then click on “Continue” at the bottom of the page to continue. This will bring up a “Notice and Privacy Statement” which is in very small print. When finished reading it, click on the “Continue” button at the bottom of this page will lead you through 4 stages for filling in the information that is requested for retrieving the records that you want. Most of the information that is requested is selected from a multiple choice of answers. The steps are very easy to follow, and you probably wont have any trouble. From this site, one can access Military Records by the General Public. One has to go through a little more details in order to obtain this information. This office receives about 4,000 requests a month for such service, so I guess they are probably swamped.

11.      There is very important article that I would like to read about our nations economy. It is more economic than genealogical, but I think it worth hearing. This is something that has been kept from the public, as you will soon see why. If you think this is bad, then watch the following video on your computer at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU. Unfortunately, I am not able to show this video to you here, since we are not set up for it. However, this is something must watch and it will scare you half to death. If anyone has trouble making a connection to this video, let me know and I will E-Mail the connection to you.

12.      In closing, I thought it would be interesting if I read the following short article entitled “Dandy Put Down”.

13.      One more that I couldn’t resist, entitled ”Woman in a hot-air Balloon”.

14.      Is there any questions or more information that one wishes to bring before us.

15.      And now, I will turn the meeting over to Russ Brabec to tell us how all this DNA stuff is connected to genealogy.

16.      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.