CVGS Research Group meeting on 5/23

We had our monthly CVGS Research Group on Wednesday, with 16 attendees, including 3 visitors. It was an interesting and genealogy focused meeting!

I led off with the Genealogy News highlights for May - you can see it here at the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe. There was a lot of news this month!

We hooked up my computer to the projector, but couldn't access the Internet. Unfortunately, the wireless signal was too weak to use again. I had saved the CV Genealogy Cafe blog pages to my flash drive, so we used that to demonstrate the CVGS blog information.

Joan has a difficult problem - her John Robinson Hall (born 21 Mar 1886 in PA) has a marriage record in 1917 and a World War I draft registration in 1918 in California, but then there are no other records for him. He apparently abandoned the family in the 1920's. However, the marriage record lists his father as John S. Hall, born in Ireland, and Mary McLaughlin, born in PA. Joan would love to find a birth certificate and a death certificate, but has been stymied to date. We suggested trolling for the family in the 1900 census - and if in PA then writing for a birth certificate in that county. City directories might determine the approximate years they resided in PA.

Barbara wanted to know how to find an accurate list of children of an ancestor - one record says 16 children, but they can find records for only 14 children. We suggested listing the children by birth year and seeing if there are "holes" that might indicate a child that died young. Then, if they know the locality, they could look for cemetery records in that locality.

Bill was a visitor, and wondered about his Young family that received land in Ireland in the 1650 time frame. We suggested he review the British Isles Research Guide and some UK sites such as http://genuki.org.uk.

Elsie was a visitor, and was amazed at the level of knowledge in the group. She recently asked me to research her family, and I have found several generations. She needs to do more research to find additional information.

Susi and her daughter-in-law have been researching the Allen family of Henrico County VA and Boone and Green Counties KY. Littleberry Allen (b 1803) wrote a long document that identifies his siblings but not his children. They also have records for a Berry W. Allen (born 1854) whose mother is Sarah Ann Moody, but they don't know Barry's father's name - the assumption is that his father is a son of Littleberry Allen. They have found Berry in the 1880 census, but can't find him in the 1860 or 1870 census.

Martha received some land deed data from Frederick County MD about her Burkett and House families, but there is not enough information to identify siblings or parents of her Burkett House. We suggested looking for church records and probate records that might identify family groups.

We passed around examples of a Social Security SS-5 application, a World War I draft registration card, a list of deed abstracts, and several other papers in the "show and tell" part of the session.

We packed a lot into 90 minutes today! It was exciting to have such a good turnout (20% of our membership).