CVGS Research Group meeting on 12 March

We had our monthly Research Group of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society today at the Library with 14 attendees, including five of our recent new members. After introductions and a brief description of the purpose of the meeting, Randy Seaver presented the Genealogy News of the Month. He also passed around examples of family tree charts made from FamilyTreeMaker 16 and Legacy Charting for comparison and discussion.

Then it was time for description and discussion of member research problems, and two of our new members wanted help with:

1) Charlotte has great-grandparents born in French Canada who died in Massachusetts in 1906 and had children in Massachusetts during the 1890s. She wanted to know how she could find their birth dates, birth places, death dates and places, and parents names. The group suggested using US and Canada census records, newspaper obituaries, city directories, naturalization records, border crossing lists, and the Massachusetts Vital Records (birth, marriage, death) at www.NewEnglandAncestors.org. For the French Canada connection, the Drouin and Loiselle records are online at Ancestry.com in the World collection.

2) Toni has an immigrant from Greece in about 1919, who settled in Montana, worked on the Great Northern railroad, and died in 1931 there. She has his death certificate, her mother's birth certificate, some photographs but not much else. She wants to find a marriage record and some sort of immigration record that might lead to his birthplace in Greece (or perhaps Bulgaria or Macedonia). The group suggested a newspaper obituary (from a local library or historical society), passenger lists, border crossing lists, and a marriage record where his wife resided before marriage, and at points between there and Montana.

Bobbie shared the two page article that she had published in the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society newsletter, and read the society president's message about their correspondence. Bobbie's case study about resolving conflicting evidence with respect to the cemetery listings published by the society and other records that identify the grave of her great-great-grandmother, Kunigunde (Boehmer) Titus. We asked if we could publish it in our newsletter too!

This was a very spirited meeting and was an excellent introduction to our society activities for the new members. We took some time to explain the best San Diego repositories for research, along with basic repository and online research techniques. Randy handed out several copies of his "A Beginner's Guide to Genealogy Research" with some forms attached.