SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

January 4, 2011

129th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, February 1, 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 Saturday, January 15, 2010 at 10:30 A.M., at the Grace Lutheran Church at Alameda de las Pulgas and 29th Avenue in San Mateo. This is a new location for the group and there is better parking facilities. Come early at 10:00 A.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting.

5.           The speaker for this meeting will be Janice M. Sellers who will speak on the topic “Newspaper Research Online”. Newspapers are invaluable in genealogical research because they are an excellent source of information about births, deaths, and more. Although millions of pages of the world’s newspapers are now accessible online, finding the one you want isn’t easy because there is no one place to find them all. Janice will give an overview of what is available and how to find it. Janice is a professional genealogist specializing in Jewish research. She is the editor of “The Galitzianer” and “Zichron Note”, the publicity director for SFBAJGS and a long-time staff member of the Oakland Family History Center.

6.           There was no General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society in December, so there is nothing to report on this subject. There will be a San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s spring Seminar about March of this year. I will fill you in on the details when I receive them. It will probably be held in Menlo Park again.

7.           There will be a General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society next month on Wednesday February 16, 2011, the details for which I will inform you at our meeting next month.

8.           The San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be giving a series of four classes that are especially designed for beginners next month, which is titled “Do You Know Who You are?”. So jump start your family history research and sign up for this popular series. The series will be given at Canada College Library, 4200 Farm Hill Blvd., in Redwood City. The dates and times of this series is Fridays February 4th, 11th, and 25th and March 4th, 2011. The cost for the series is $10.00 for members of SMCGC and $20.00 for nonmembers. I am passing out a form for all those who think that they would be interested in attending, which they can fill out and mail in to the person who is in charge of putting on this event along with your check.

9.           The Menlo Park Family History Center located at 1105 Valparaiso Avenue, Menlo Park, will be giving a series of six lectures for their Winter 2011 Genealogy Classes. They will meet on the following Saturdays from 1:00 to 3:00 P.M., and will include a lecture, discussion, and hands-on practice. All the classes are free of charge. One can register online at http://mpfhc.org. or by calling 1-(650)-325-9711. The topics of these classes have changed since I reported them to you in our past meetings. The titles of the lectures are:

a.    January 8, 2011-Enhancing Your Family Tree Data Using the MPFHC Map & CD /collections-Inge Harding-Barlow.

b.    January 22, 2011: Is This My Ancestor or Someone Else of the Same Name. Living in the Same locality During the Same Time Period? – Sue Wakefield & Inge Harding-Barlow.

c.     January 29, 2011: New England Historical & Genealogical Databases now available at MPFHC.- David Brown.

d.    February 5, 2011: Changes in the Family Search Program Part I – Sue Allan & Judith Moss – The Basics.

e.     February 12, 2011: Changes in the Family Search Program Part II – John Gleed & Inge Harding-Barlow- Obtaining the Most out of the New Program.

f.      February 26, 2011: Charting Programs Available at MPFHC – Lyle Connell. Printing Genealogical Charts to Enhance Your Family Trees.

10.      About once or twice a year I give a report on the financial problems of our country, even though this is not quite genealogical. However, I think you would like to know what is going on in this world that our country is not telling you about. Today I would like to read part of the article that was published last month by the Weiss Safe Money Report.

11.      There is a lot of talk about the financial crisis in the state of California, and I think it is all explained by the following picture. This financial crisis is forcing the state of California and local agencies to make some tough decisions. If current conditions continue much longer, there’s a real risk that we may have to lay off JOSE!

12.      As a final thought I would like to read the following article which is titled “Little League Instructions”.

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

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. 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.