SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

September 6, 2011

137th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, October 4, 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, September 17, 2011 at 10:30 A.M., at the Grace Lutheran Church at Alameda de las Pulgas and 29^th Avenue in San Mateo. Come early at 10:00 A.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting.

The speaker for this meeting will be Steve Danko who will speak on the topic “Genealogy Blogs”. This presentation will discuss how genealogy blogs can help genealogists share their discoveries about their families, keep in touch with their genealogy society, and meet new friends. An increasingly popular way to publish genealogical information on the Internet is by the use of weblogs, commonly called blogs. Genealogy blogs include a wide range of subjects, including personal family history, genealogy education, genealogy news, local history, and personal diaries. Steve will show us how setting up and maintaining a blog is surprisingly easy and can provide benefits for your research in ways that other methods of disseminating genealogical information may fall short.

5.           There was no meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society for the month of August, so there is nothing to report at this time. There will be meetings of this Society for the months of September, October, and November, and then they will take the month of December off for the Christmas holidays.

6.           The San Mateo County Genealogy Meeting that will be held on October 19, 2011, at 7:30 P.M., I will discuss next month.

7.           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. 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 price of the meeting is not very expensive. I have now received complete details about this seminar and I have made copies for everyone. 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.

8.           Do you know who you are? Do you know who your ancestors are? There will be a series of 4 talks to jump start your genealogy which will be presented by the San Mateo County Genealogy Society on Wednesdays September 21^st and 28^th, and October 5^th and 12^th, from 6:00 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. at Canada College Library, 4200 Farm Hill Road Blvd., in Redwood City. The cost of the series is $10.00, or $5.00 for an individual class. Please E‑Mail programs@smcgs.org to register. I am passing out copies of the official announcement for those who are interested. A list of the dates, speakers, and subjects are as follows:

9.           I have been receiving a series of beautiful E-Mail pictures from Russ Brabec on his trip back East. Has anyone been receiving them also? A set of pictures on Spooner and the Railroad in Wisconsin displaying Railroad trains and their history. A set of pictures on Cranberries from the state of Wisconsin, which produces 60% of the cranberries in the United States, as well as being the No. 2 cheese producing state. A set of pictures on Galena Illinois, the home of Ulysses Grant. A set of pictures on the Minnesota state capitol, along with the gold-leaf sculpture of the Progress of the State at the entrance. A set of pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota showing the St. Paul Cathedral and the home of James Jerome Hill the builder of the Great Northern Railroad. A set of pictures of lighthouses at Two Harbors Light Station which is 27 miles north of Deluth, Minnesota, and which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Also the Split Rock Lighthouse which is one of the most photograph lighthouses in the United States, which is 16 miles beyond Two Harbors. And last but not least is pictures of Lake Geneva in Southern Wisconsin which is Railroad access from Chicago. The area was made popular as a summer retreat for the barons of the wealth in lumber, cattle, oil, steel, cement, manufacturing, and durable goods (e.g., Morton Salt, Wrigley Chewing Gum, etc.), with mansions and large homes such as Stone Manor and Black Point built on the lake during the heyday of the Roaring 20s. The city was then known as "The Newport of the West." The city is also known today as "The Hamptons of the Midwest." In the automobile era, the city's fortunes at first declined, and it became a haven for Al Capone and other mobsters. From these pictures, it looks like he has been having a wonderful travel experience. I hope he has found some genealogy also.

10.      I thought everyone would be interested in hearing another synopsis about the world’s economy. The following is an expert from the author Kevin Kerr, a world famous economist, entitled “Hurricane Warning – Prepare Now”

11.      In addition, I thought you would like to hear the truth about the Federal Depth of the United States from the following article.

12.      I would like to read the following article titled “My Dog”.

13.      And last but not least, I would like to read the following article entitled “One Wish”.

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

15.      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.