The July meeting of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group was today at the Library. There were 13 attendees at this meeting, and they all had something to share. We started with introductions, and welcomed two visitors (Frances from Chula Vista, and Cynthia from Washington DC) and Ellie, a member from the Bay Area. We started with asking the attendees what genealogy research they've done this past month:
* Randy discussed attending the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank, and passed the syllabus around plus his blog posts about the Jamboree. He also showed the Google Maps Street Views and how it can be used to view ancestral homes.
* Dave found a cousin in Georgia and they've been sharing lots of information about their families.
* Jeanne found some cousins addresses using http://www.whitepages.com/ and found them on Google maps. David (10 years old) read the book Private Eyes for Idiots and wants to apply the lessons to genealogy research.
* Ellie has been working through her late mother's scrapbooks, and shared a postcard in German. She is putting a book together using Microsoft Publishing.
* Cynthia has been visiting the DAR library and the Archives in Washington, DC, but has had trouble finding information about her Russian ancestors.
* Marie has been talking to a Nebraska home town neighbor of her parents, who shared lots of juicy stories about her mother and her siblings as teenagers.
* Virginia enjoyed the SCGS Jamboree, especially the Naturalization and Genealogy Organization talks. She contributed information to a family newsletter editor.
* Shirley also enjoyed the Jamboree, and after hearing Leland Meitzler's talk about "Genealogy Organization in the 21st Century," she bought a 500 gb hard derive and has started building her digital archive of documents.
* Dick received the NPRC information about his father's WW 1 Army service - there were only four pages because of the fire in 1973.
* Frances is just starting her research, and has visited Santa Barbara to find cemetery records and has talked to her grandparents about their family.
* Bob found a 1920 picture and article on the San Diego Historical Society web site about his great-grandfather who settled near Julian in San Diego County and had a store in Ensenada in Baja California. He also obtained an enlistment record for him in the Spanish-American War that said he was blue-eyed, not brown-eyed. Now Bob knows where all the blue eyes in his extended family came from!
* Nancy is wondering how to find a family Bible with the names and dates of one of her families. She has a typed piece of paper from the Bible records, but would like to find the Bible.
Randy briefly discussed the Genealogy News of the month,
Ellie asked the group to help her find more records of Bernhart Heinrich Kopcke, her grandmother's older brother. She thinks he was born before 1880, emigrated from Germany after 1880, and died around 1900, but has a photograph with his name on the back that shows an older man. He lived in Arkansas and Texas for some period. She has checked several online resources, including passenger lists, 1900 census records and the FHL Catalog. The group suggested posting to surname and locality mailing lists and message boards, looking in the 1910 census in case he "went missing," doing dating of the clothing in the picture, naturalization records, and a name change.
The CVGS Research Group meets every second Wednesday at 12 noon in the Conference Room at the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library.
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