SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting
April 5, 2011
132th Meeting
1. Roll Call.
2. The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, so mark your calendars accordingly.
3. Is there any other Old Business or New Business that we should take care of before moving on?
4. The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Wednesday, April 20, 2010 at 7:30 P.M., at the Grace Lutheran Church at Alameda de las Pulgas and 29th Avenue in San Mateo. Come early at 7:00 P.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting.
5. The speaker for this meeting will be John Shellabear Gleed who will speak on the topic “Black Sheep in Your Family”. John’s presentation will help you pursue information on those persons in your family which “no one will talk about”. He will offer a definition of “Black Sheep” and present a set of five categories of the genre. John will show examples of information, and offer ideas on how to break down those two brickwalls of this type of research which are “Disappearence” and “Name Change”.
6. The General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society that was held on March 19, 2011, was attended by just three of us. They were Bob Shoemaker, Russ Brabec, and myself. The speaker for this meeting was Kay Speaks who spoke on the topic “Interpreting Passenger List Annotations and Manifest Markings”. Prior to attending a lecture by Marian L. Smith, Kay thought all the random markings and numbers that are located in passenger lists were just an annoyance. Marian Smith’s lecture was like a genie rubbing a magic lamp granting your wish for enlightenment! Researchers may find that annotations provide the clues for breaking through their brick wall! Kay is a member of the Livermore Amador Genealogical Society where she has been a conference coordinator, speaker, workshop leader, and writer for the quarterly Roots Tracer”. This was an extremely interesting meeting. It is amazing what information can be obtained from random markings and numbers that are on passenger lists. Kay had brought along a copy of a List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States as an example of what one could look for. It definitely takes some experience to be able to understand what all these markings mean. She has written various interpretations on the list what several of the markings mean. Unfortunately, the copy of the list is not very clear. I am passing around Kay’s copy to see what this all means.
7. There will be a General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society next month on Saturday May 21, 2011, at 10:00 A.M., the details for which I will inform you at our meeting next month.
8. The San Mateo County Genealogy Society Spring Seminar will be held on Saturday, April 30, 2011 from 9:00 A.M. to 3:15 P.M., that is this month. It will be held at the Menlo Park LDS Church, 1105 Valparaiso, Menlo Park. The speaker will be Susan Goss Johnston who will speak on “The Best Things in Life Are Free”. This is an extremely worthwhile seminar for anyone who is interested in genealogy to attend. I am passing out what information that I have for those of you who would be interested. Susan Goss is a frequent speaker at Bay Area genealogy meetings and conferences. She is a graduate of the National Institute on Genealogical Research “Advanced Methodology and Evidence Analysis” course at Stanford University, and the National Archives course “Going to the Source”. Susan’s personal research focuses on families in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region. Her lectures include real-life examples and case studies. At this Seminar learn how to dig deeper into free websites and navigate the “Deep Web”. These seminars are always well attended and well worth your while to attend, so get your reservation in early.
9. The San Mateo County Genealogy Society Fall Seminar will be held on Saturday, October 29, 2011 from 9:00 A.M. to 3:15 P.M. I will let you know of more details about this seminar when they become available.
10. Again, in case you feel that you have not attended enough genealogy meetings, there are several meetings going on all over the country. This is the second time that I have made this announcement. The 42nd Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree will be held on June 10-12, 2011 at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport, Burbank, California. There will be 45 plus speakers talking on about every subject one could imagine. To find out more on this go to www.scgsgenealogy.com on the internet.
On September 7-10, 2011 in beautiful Springfield, Illinois the 2011 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference will be giving “Pathways to the Heartland”, A Conference for the Nations’s Genealogists. This conference will be hosted by the Illinois State Genealogical Society. This year’s conference offers an exciting opportunity for anyone interested in researching their family history. There will be over 165 educational sessions and 13 luncheons which are designed to balance the needs of genealogists at all levels, exploring a variety of records, strategies, and other tools available to those interested in researching their family history. For those who are interested contact Diane Smelker at president@smcgs.org.
11. Has anyone any relatives from the state of New Hampshire? Have you tried the “New Family Search”, https://www.familysearch.org? There are over two million records in the following record sets:
1. New Hampshire Birth Records, Early to 1900.
2. New Hampshire Births & Christenings 1714-1904.
3. New Hampshire Death Records 1654-1947.
4. New Hampshire Deaths and Burials 1784-1949.
5. New Hampshire Marriages 1720-1920.
Records are being added daily and many like these early birth records have images of the original records.
12. Check Book has published a rating of all the Computer Repair Shops in the Bay Area, which I thought you would like to know about. These ratings are made by individuals who have actually been customers of these Repair Shops and not by a rating company. They are judged according to 6 categories: Doing Work Properly; Starting and Completing Work Promply; Letting you Know Cost Early; Advice on Service Options and Costs; Overall Performance; and Percent of Customers rating Shop “Adequate” or Superior” for “Overall Performance”. Who was the top performer? Datawise was far superior than anyone else. They were judged 100% in 5 of the categories and 90% in one of the categories. There wasn’t anyone that was close to these results. The next in overall performance was some of the Apple Stores. Some of them were just plain poor. The worst for Starting and Completing Work Promptly was Fry’s Electronics in Palo Alto with a 10% appraisal rating. However, anyone who has dealt with Fry’s probably already knows this. However, their sales of products are handled much better. Does anyone wish to know the ratings of any of their Computer Repair Shops which they have used or want to know a little more detail about a particular Repair Shop?
13. Today I am going to refer to a little economic history which I thought you would be interested in. This information I have obtained from “Early Warning Report” by Richard Maybury. I will not read the entire article because it is too long, only the important exerts from it.
14. I would like to read the following article titled “Understanding Derivatives”.
15. One last final thought, I would like to read the following article titled “Grand Theft”.
16. Are there any questions or more information that one wishes to bring before us?
17. 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 2010 into a single folder titled “2010 Genealogy Meetings”. The monthly meetings for 2011 will be shown individually until the end of the year, and they also will be placed in a 2011 folder. This will save a great deal of space and make it much easier to look up the meetings.