SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

June 7, 2011

134th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, July 5, 2011, the day after the 4^th of July, which made it possible to have a meeting here. So mark your calendars accordingly. Our regular SIR’s Luncheon meeting is tomorrow which makes kind of a full week of it. This only occurs not more than once a year.

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, June 15, 2010 at 7:30 P.M., at the Grace Lutheran Church at Alameda de las Pulgas and 29^th Avenue in San Mateo. That is this month. Come early at 7:00 P.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting.

5.           The speaker for this meeting will be Christine Green who will speak on the topic “The Power of Google”. Google can better help you with your genealogy once you master the search techniques it offers. But Google is more than a search engine. Have you used Google Images, Google Videos, Google Books, Google Maps, and Google Earth. Learn how the Power of Google can enhance your genealogical searches. Chris has been addicted to family history for 10 years and is currently finishing up her PLCGS in English Genealogy.

6.           The General Meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society that was held on May 21, 2011, was attended by just two of us. They were Bob Shoemaker and myself. The speaker for this meeting was Marcia Holstrom who spoke on the topic “Social Networking for Genealogists”. Social Networking may be great for some and a mystery to others, but does it help us in our Family History Research? Marcia explored this question for us, looking at some of these information exchange opportunities and their value or lack of value to us in our search for quality rather than quantity in our research. Marcia Holstrom was trained as a geographer, and is now a popular genealogy lecturer and teacher. It was an interesting talk.

7.           As I reported last month, 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 will let you know of more details about this seminar when they become available.

9.           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.

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.      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 third time that I have made this announcement. The 42^nd 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.      Last month, the subject about Soundex came up which is the index that is used by the National Archives as well as other organizations. I am passing out copies of the article entitled “Thinking in Soundex”, so each of you can 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. It is not too difficult to learn. This system is a useful tool to understand and develop potential alternative spellings for a surname. Essentially, the Soundex index has 4 characters, which consists of a letter followed by a dash, followed by 3 numbers, such as H-536. The letter is the first letter of one’s surname that you are looking up, such as H for Henderson. The three numbers are the code numbers for the corresponding letters following the first letter of the surname. For my Name Henderson, the number 5 stands for the letter N, the number 3 stands for the letter D, and the number 6 stands for the letter R. All vowels are not counted as well as two consonants which are H and W. The Soundex Coding Guide is enclosed in the handout. If there is not enough consonants in the name, fill out the remainder of the index with zeros. There is also several special Rules that need to be followed which are also included in the handout. This system was developed by Robert Russell for the Rand Company, and the Bureau of the Census chose this system as the means of organizing its new Works Progress Administration (WPA) card index for the 1900 Census in 1936.

12.      Last month, I reported on the latest news that was floating around the world on the nuclear accident that occurred in one of the nuclear reactors in Japan, and the resulting radiation that the country was exposed to. This is not strictly genealogical, but I thought it would be interesting in hearing about it. I discussed the Radiation Dose that one can receive safely and unsafely. Today, I thought you would like to hear a blow by blow report on this accident as published by the Nuclear News, an official Engineering Magazine which concentrates on nuclear energy. Very important to notice this report was not picked up by any newspaper or other publication, primarily because of political embarrassment and consequences.

13.      I would like to read the following article titled “The Green Thing”.

14.      One last final thought, I would like to read the following article titled “Assassin Opening”.

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.