SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

August 2, 2011

136th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, September 6, 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.           There will be no meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogy Society for the month of August. The society takes off the months of August and December each year. The next meeting of the Society will be on Saturday, September 17, 2011 at 10:30 A.M., at the Grace Lutheran Church at 2825 Alameda de las Pulgas, in San Mateo. Come early at 10:00 A.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting. The speaker for this meeting has not been assigned yet, and when I find out I will let you know.

5.           The General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society that was held on July 16, 2011, was attended by just two of us. They were Bob Shoemaker and myself. We were able to get the correct keys to the Church, so we were able to have our regular meeting inside as usual.

6.           The speaker for this meeting was Nancy S. Peterson who spoke on the topic “Raking the Ashes”. Nancy’s highly praised guide in circumventing the enormous records that were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire has now been substantially updated and expanded to include newly released records and necessary information on post earthquake resources. The inclusion of a wide and detailed body of sources and emphasis on casting a much wider net than is customary makes this guide useful not only for anyone doing research where critical records have been lost or destroyed, but also for those seeking to create a fuller, richer family history. Nancy presented some of the highlights of her new book and had copies of “Raking the Ashes” on sale at the meeting. This was an extremely interesting meeting, and anyone who missed it missed a great deal of genealogical information that occurred around the 1906 fire and earthquake in San Francisco.

During the discussion period, it was brought up that a video was shown on 60 minutes about a month ago showing a video of a ride down Market Street in San Francisco in a cable car about 2 days before the 1906 earthquake, showing what Market Street looked like before it was destroyed. It was a fantastic video as old as it was. What was interesting was that the cable car from which the video was taken showed that all the street cars down Market Street were operated by underground cables, and not overhead electrical wiring. It showed a street car crossing Market Street once in a while, which showed that these cars were operated by overhead electrical wires. However, there were no railroad tracks, so the cars were probably operated by wheels of some form. If anyone has missed this video, it is well worth watching. It can be seen on the internet by going to Google and typing in “1906 San Francisco Earthquake 60 Minutes”, and then clicking on the title “San Francisco on Film Days before the 1906 Quakee-60 Minutes”. It is only 11 minutes long, and you wont regret watching it. You will also notice how traffic was handled in those days, both vehicles and pedestrians travelled indiscriminately. The video takes you from the foot of Market Street all the way down to the Ferry Building, nonstop. Cable car speed was about 5 miles per hour. Take a close look at the buildings as you pass down Market Street, most of them will not be there in two days. You will notice that most of the vehicles were ancient automobiles, but there are some horse-drawn carriages. There was not much traffic control at that time, and it’s amazing there were no accidents or people getting hit. You will notice that the vehicles behaved very carelessly and the people didn’t pay much attention to anything that was dangerous. This film was just recently dug out of the archives of some library and restored. It is absolutely priceless. So, bring up this video on your computer you will really enjoy it.

7.           As I reported last month and it is worth repeating again, there is a fantastic website on the internet that Russ Brabec E-Mailed me about, at least it seems so, which is located at www.familyhistoryexpos.com. It appears that this group holds seminars all over the United States, one of which will be held on October 7-8, 2011 at the San Mateo County Event Exposition at 2495 S. Delaware Street in San Mateo. This is the third annual Northern California Family History Expo this year. The registration fee for both days is $75.00. The Exhibit Hall is one of the greatest parts of the exposition which has lots of material for browsing. There is also a myriad of classes that will be given, about 82 in all. The topics and details for these classes I do not have yet, but will let you know the details when I receive them.

8.           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. The speaker will be John Colletta, Ph. D., who is one of America’s most popular genealogical lecturers. I have now received some of the details about this talk, which I passed out copies of it for you to take home with you last month. If there is anyone here who did not receive a copy of it, I have brought along extras this month. The price for the Seminar is $36.00 for Members, $42.00 for Non-Members, and $8.00 for lunch. The lunch is well worthwhile for that price, and the meeting is not very expensive. I will let you know when more details about this seminar become available. These Seminars have been well worth while in the past, and I highly recommend that you attend them. I am sure you wont regret it. What is also very convenient is that the Family History Center is right next door and you are welcome to visit it after lunch before the afternoon session begins.

9.           As I have reported earlier, the National Archives at San Bruno is having workshops this year. Thanks to Russ Brabec and Jon Miller who talked to Rose Mary Kennedy of the National Archives to get this information. They had to cancel the March and April workshops due to lack of enrollment and are at risk of not being able to run the classes next year if there is not sufficient interest. In the latest group, there is only one left.

2011 Workshop Schedule

National Archives Pacific Region at San Bruno, CA

To register and reserve a space contact: Rose Mary Kennedy (650)-238-3488. Fees are $15.00 payable in advance, please call for more information.

10.      I talked about Soundex last month which is the index that is used by the National Archives as well as other organizations. I had passed out copies of the article entitled “Thinking in Soundex”, so each of you could have this a reference material. So if you ever get the chance of visiting the National Archives, you will already be familiar with the system. I had spent some time last month explaining how the system worked so I wont go into any details this time. If anyone missed obtaining a copy of this article that I passed out last month, I have a couple of them left. If you wish to read the detailed explanation that I gave last month, go to our website and the entire meeting notes for last month is there.

11.      I guess everyone is well familiar with all the letters and E-Mail messages that they are being bombarded with about donating their hard-earned money to some worthy cause. It has become quite questionable of how worthy some of these causes are, like the promoters hip pockets. I would like to read this short article that was written by Karl H. Hale, who is a consulting psychologist, on a few of these worthy causes, entitled “Donations”.

12.      Back to genealogy, I thought you would like to know how civilization has progress over the last 100 years form this article entitled “One Hundred Years Ago”.

13.      I would like to read the following article titled “A New Disease”.

14.      And last but not least, I would like to read the following article entitled “When Grandma Goes to Court”.

15.      Are there any questions or more information that one wishes to bring before us?

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. 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.