SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

November 3, 2009

116th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, December 1, 2009. So, everyone please mark their calendar.

3.           Next month will be the election of new Officers for this group for the year 2010. So start thinking about who you want running things for next year.

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

5.           I attended an Annual Regional Meeting of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation that was held at the Fox Theater in Redwood City on October 15, 2009. There were over 1,000 participants who attended the meeting and it almost filled the theater. They served very nice refreshments after the meeting was over. The meeting covered discussions from about 10 officers and directors of the Silicon Valley Foundation which discussed what the foundation did in the past year and what it proposed to do for 2010. It gave examples of many families and benevolent institutions which they have helped throughout 2009. The opening remarks were given by Nancy H. Handel, Board Chairman, and the closing remarks were made by Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D. the CEO and president of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. There was no discussion about whether the facilities in which we are now meeting will be available to us next year.

6.           The San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s Fall Seminar that was held on October 24, 2009 at the First Presbyterian Church in San Mateo was a huge success. There were 107 participants who attended. There were only two of us who attended from our group who were Bob Shoemaker and myself. The rest of you miss a great meeting. It was one of the best Seminars that the society ever held. The speaker was Karen Clifford, who is an accredited Genealogist Professional in Midwestern and Southern States Genealogy, and President/CEO of Genealogy research Associates, Inc. She has been a college curriculum developer and instructor in Genealogy and Computer courses at Monterey Peninsula College. Karen has authored 7 college textbooks on genealogy and published numerous family histories. She is the former President of the Utah Genealogical Association. The seminar featured four lectures which were held between 9:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.  I have some copies of the Prospectus for your own information of what was covered. The information that was presented was what all genealogists should know in how one should go about retrieving genealogical information about their ancestors.

The first lecture was about using the Internet effectively in order to solve difficult research problems. Karen set up this procedure into five steps. Step One was to make adequate preparations before going online. Step Two was to learn about the records and research methodology for the locations and time periods. Step Three was to use the Internet in order to understand the locality. Step Four was to search your Goal. And Step Five was to study original and compiled records of the area on the Internet.

The second lecture was about understanding the Complete Identity of what you are searching for. If one is searching for a name, then one should be sure to establish the complete name. If one comes up with a name, be sure that all the details are correct, such as birth date, death date, etc. Learn how names are Anglicized, this could bring up problems otherwise. Take the time to analyze, evaluate, and record one’s findings. Karen went into great detail where much of this information could be found.

The third lecture was about letting Technology get you there faster. This procedure covered several different topics, which some of them were: Research goals, Research Objectives to Achieve those Goals, What is a Hypothesis, How to create a proper Hypothesis, Descendant Research, Better analysis of existing sources, using correct repositories for the information, keeping facts in proper order, etc.

The fourth and final lecture was the best of all and discussed My Favorite Websites for Genealogy. Karen discussed the features of 15 different Websites, starting with Cyndi’s List. The information of each of these websites is covered in great detail in the prospectus that I passed out.

7.           The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 10:30 A.M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The speaker will be Ron Arons, and the title of his talk will be “Mapping Madness”. In this talk, Ron will be discussing websites that provide historical maps and several online mapping tools. Ron demonstrates how both Microsoft Maps and Google Maps operate. The presentation also covers Microsoft’s Map Cruncher Tool, which mashes two similar maps together. Ron will also briefly cover IBM’s Many Eyes, Muckety.com, and Whitepages.com. Come early at 10:00 A.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting. This should be an extremely interesting meeting. This will be the last meeting of the Society for this year, and the next meeting of the Society will be on January 16, 2010.

8.           To bring you up to date on the San Mateo County Genealogical Society contractual agreement with La Cañada College to have their library housed in the library at La Cañada. The books and supplies in the Library will begin to be moved to the new location sometime in mid-to-late November. The new Library will be open to patrons at La Cañada College in early or mid-January of 2010. Maybe Bob Shoemaker knows more about this.

9.           I had reported in last couple of months that the Family History Center in Menlo Park now has a website which can be reached on one’s computer by entering the internet address www.mpfhc.org. I thought it would be worth while to everyone if I noted it once again, just in case someone hadn’t heard about it. This will be the last time. The site is not very detailed yet, because it is only a few months old. But it appears that it could be a great source of genealogical information in the future. The important information gives the days and the hours in which the Center is open, which has changed throughout the years. They have links to Lecture Series that they will be presenting giving detailed information of what will be covered. A very important link is to a description of how one should get started in his or her Family History, which is a very useful document. If you are planning to visit the Family History Center, it would be advisable to check the internet connection first to see that they will be opened on the day that you are planning to go.

10.      Rick Dusine sent me an E-Mail about a site that he found on the internet called Family History Archive” which allows one search over 50,000 family history books in their online collection which have been digitized. This site is one of the most extensive genealogy sites that I have ever run across. It is operated by Brigham Young University in Utah and can be accessed by http://www.lib.byu.edu.1. It is so huge, that I haven’t had the time to even begin research it. I quickly tried to find some of my ancestors, but without success. That doesn’t mean that they are there somewhere. I did find out that one has to register to get some of the information, but I did not find out whether there is a fee involved.

11.      Rick Dusine also sent me an E-Mail about a very interesting and informative genealogical website called “Eastman’s Online Genealogy”. This site was one of Stan Harris’ favorite websites, which we talked about occasionally about 10 years ago in this group. I thought it would be worth mentioning again at this time. The website address is http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/ . Eastman has a News Letter that one can subscribe by going to their site and registering. Unfortunately, it is not free. However, they do have a lot of information which might be useful.

12.      A series of lectures will be given by the Family History Center this month entitled “Fall Workshop Series”. This is a series of lectures for beginners in genealogy, and will be well worth while attending. They will be given on Saturday afternoons from 1:00 P.M. to 1:40 P.M. followed by practical discussions and participations in computer applications. During these discussions, the participants will be finding and looking up various exercise questions to gain experience in retrieving genealogical data. The following are the dates and topics which will be taken:

13.      There is an important upcoming Open House which will be cosponsored by the San Mateo County Geological Society and the Menlo Park Family History Center on Saturday, February 27, 2010. The Open House Lectures are free to the public, and they have drawn more than 250 attendees in the past years. So, they are very popular. There will be two Keynote Speakers and thirty-five half-hour lectures on a wide variety of genealogy topics. Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry.com has agreed to come to the Bay Area from Provo, Utah, and give a talk as one of the speakers. She was recently a featured speaker at the Southern California Genealogy Society Annual Jamboree. Her talk title was “What’s New at Ancestry.com”. I will report more information on this Open House when it becomes available. It sounds like a very interesting event and surely a must see opportunity for anyone.

14.      For those who want to reduce the number of Faxes they receive, there is an internet service that will supposedly do this for you. The name of the service is called the National Do Not Fax List Registry Service. It is found on the internet at http://www.nationaldonotfaxlist.org. The service is free, they are not a fax broadcasting company, and they do not send faxes. I do not know how good they are yet, but I do not think it will hurt to register with them. I checked Snopes.com to see if they had any comments on this service, and they ha`      d none yet.

15.      In closing, I thought it would be interesting if I read the following article entitled “When Grandma Goes to Court”.

16.      One more interesting story that I couldn’t resist, entitled ”The Story of the Four Horses”.

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

18.      I have placed all of my meeting discussions onto the SIR’s Website in case you would like to refer to some of them. They are found 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 2008 into a single folder titled “2008 Genealogy Meetings”. The monthly meetings for 2009 will be shown individually until the end of the year, and they also will be placed in a 2009 folder. This will save a great deal of space and make it much easier to look up the meetings.