Sunday, August 30, 2009

Genealogy Days in Chula Vista -- September 2009

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society events for September 2009 include:

** Wednesday, September 9, 12 noon to 2 pm, Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street) -- CVGS Research Group meets in the Library Conference Room. We will review the latest genealogy news, share success stories and information, and discuss members research problems, and potential solutions, based on the collective knowledge and wisdom of the group.

** Wednesday, September 16, 12 noon to 2 pm, Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street) -- CVGS Computer Group meets in the Library Computer Lab. We will visit some helpful genealogy web sites. This is an opportunity for those members who haven't used computers for genealogy research to practice with a mentor to guide them.

** Wednesday, September 30, 12 noon to 2 p.m., Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street) -- CVGS Program Meeting in the Auditorium. After a brief business meeting, the speaker will be Seth Mallios, PhD, an anthropology professor at San Diego State University, on "The Lost and Forgotten Cemeteries of San Diego."

** Monday afternoons (11 a.m. to 2 PM) - September 7, 14, 21 and 28 - Genealogy Table Talk with Dearl Glenn and John Finch in the Family Research section of the Chula Vista Civic Center Library. They are ready and willing to help people with their research, discuss a problem or success, or just tell stories.

The Chula Vista Civic Center Library is located at 365 "F" Street in Chula Vista - between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue, midway between I-5 and I-805 (take the "E" Street exit from the freeways).

We welcome guests and visitors to our CVGS programs and events - if you are in the greater San Diego area and want to attend our events - please come and introduce yourselves. If you have questions, please email Randy at rjseaver@cox.net or phone 619-422-3397.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

CVGS Picnic - RAOGK Angels

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society annual picnic was today, and we had 25 members and guests in attendance. After a short business meeting, and eating lunch in the shade on an 85 degree day, we shared RAOGK stories - that stands for Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness The question to be discussed was "Who has helped us in our research selflessly, and who have we helped?"

* Joan shared family information on her grandfather's brother with that brother's grandchildren, and has received wonderful information back from the cousin, and has shared lunch with her too! She also took a suggestion from CVGS members to search for "Hans" instead of "Johannes" in the passenger lists and found her ancestor.

* Randy shared his search for the parents of Ben Kaber to help the man in Holland that cares for Ben's grave in a World War II cemetery in Belgium. He also told about finding the house of his wife's great-grandparents in San Francisco on Google Street View that matches the large picture on their family room wall which dates from 1906. A blog reader took pictures of the existing house, and two cousins contacted him, took more pictures, and even knocked on the door of the house in question.

* John discussed his North Carolina research of the William Patrick family. He found that Patrick had a will from the abstract in a book, then obtained, through a friend and the friend's friend, the will and some land records. He followed up and received more information from a county library and the Wake Forest archives.

* Ann was researching her husband's Garvin family, and found a great-grandmother that lived to be 106. From a message board, she found another person researching the same family, but the email address was wrong. A colleague found another email address online, and she was able to contact the man, determined that they were cousins and they are sharing family information.

* Susan was searching for her great-great-grandfather's grave in Richview, Illinois. She had searched the local cemetery with no luck, but asked the man mowing the grass if there were any records, and he knew of a lady who had the maps. She was called, she came over, and they found the grave of her Civil War ancestor.

* Myrna's Beach family lived in Huron County, Ohio, and her aunt knew everything about their live in that county, and showed Myrna around. But they wondered where the family had been before. One record hinted at Pompey, Onondaga County, NY, and Myrna found books on eBay for sale. She called the local Historical Society to contact the book author, who was 85 at the time. It turned out the author was related to Myrna, had access to the records, knew where they were buried in the cemetery, and had been placing flags on the graves of Myrna's Revolutionary War soldier for over 45 years.

* Bobbie had several tales to tell - from her first CVGS Research Group meeting that helped her find Titus family records online, which enabled her to find and contact a researcher in Lake County, Illinois, who provided many family records; the librarian in Lake county that took her into the "back room" to see birth records; and the speaker at the local German society that put her in contact with a distant cousin in Bavaria.

* Ruth brought her Aunt Helen, and two nieces, from Washington to the picnic - Helen has been the one providing Ruth with lots of family information.

* Helen's great-great-grandfather died in the Civil War in Mississippi. She found a book listing his death in Enterprise, MS, and wrote to the mayor for help. A researcher contacted her and sent pictures of houses were sick and wounded soldiers lived during the war, and sent pictures of tombstones in the local cemetery, including that of her Confederate soldier.

* Gary's mother died three years ago, and his 88-year-old step-father married again. The new wife encouraged him to sort out the barn filled with family history things, and Gary recently received a box chock full of photographs, mementos, and his mother's genealogy research papers.

* Ann has been helping her elderly neighbors answer family history questions by finding records online that provide information about family members and homes.

After the RAOGK talks, we had our "bring one, get one" white elephant gift exchange and everyone seemed pleased with their gift. Bernice had a book sale going, and gave away many sets of duplicate periodicals. Randy had received free copies of RootsMagic 4 and Family Tree Maker 2009 recently, and they were given to people that wanted them, for a donation to CVGS.

Monday, August 24, 2009

CVGS Annual Picnic on 26 August

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society Annual Picnic is this Wednesday, August 26th, at 11 a.m. at the Elks Lodge Picnic area (901 Elks Lane, just off Telegraph Canyon Road opposite Paseo del Rey).




From Telegraph Canyon Road, turn south on Elks Lane, go up the hill, turn left into the parking lot, and then turn right around the building to the picnic area and the upper parking lot.

Please bring your own food and beverage, plate, cup, napkins, utensils, etc.

Bring a wrapped “white elephant” gift exchange via a raffle drawing.

The Program will be members sharing the “Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness” that have been helpful to their research.

The Picnic is always a fun time of sharing with our society colleagues.

Contact John Finch (phone 619-426-4906, or email jan27@cox.net) for more information.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

19 August Computer Group Summary

We had 9 attendees at the CVGS Computer Group meeting on 19 August for hands-on computer genealogy work. When we arrived, we found that all but one of the library's lab computers had the Flash program installed - so now we can access more useful genealogy websites.

We demonstrated how to get to the FamilySearch Record Search site at http://pilot.familysearch.org - either through the home page of www.FamilySearch.org or by inputting it in the URL line. He recommended using the specific database menus rather than the main search menu to do searches, and noted that some databases have only indexes and some have only browsable images. The group reviewed the list of US databases available, and sampled the 1870 US census and the 1900 US census, plus the Texas death records and New Hampshire vital records.

We also went to the 1930 census on the www.Footnote.com site (which is free to access until the end of August) and we demonstrated the basic search sequences there, culminating in the record images and using the filmstrip to browse adjacent pages.

While others worked on their own problems, we tried to solve some research problems using these new tools. We found Rosa Darling in the 1920 census with her adoptive parents in Nebraska in the 1920 US Census on FamilySearch Record Search. We couldn't find her on Footnote in the 1930 census.

Gary found four Roff families in Tompkins County NY in the 1850 census on FamilySearch, which gives him more leads to connect to his Solomon Roff.

We found some 1860 and 1870 census records on ancestry.com for Clough and Sharp families in Ohio for Cynthia, and then found several newspaper articles and some book citations for her William Graves Sharp. Randy emailed these articles to himself and will email them to Cynthia.

It was a quick two hours.

The next CVGS Computer Group meeting will be Wednesday, September 16 at 12 noon in the Computer Lab at the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street, Chula Vista).

Friday, August 14, 2009

New or Updated Databases - August 2009

Here are some of the new or updated genealogy databases on several websites added during late July and early August:

http://www.newenglandancestors.org/ ($$, New England Historical and Genealogical Society):

* The Connecticut Nutmegger, Volumes 22-31
* The American Genealogist, Volumes 19-23
* New Netherlands Connections, Volume 12
* New England Historic Genealogical Register, 2008
* Massachusetts Vital Records – Marriages, 1911

http://www.footnote.com/ ($$)

* United States 1930 Census (97% complete) FREE through 31 August 2009. Go to http://go.footnote.com/1930census/
* Texas Death Certificates, 1890-1976 (Updated, now 52% complete)

http://www.ancestry.com/ ($$)

* England/Wales FreeBMD Indexes Updated (W)
* US Virgin Islands Records (US)
* Passenger and Immigration Lists Index 1500s-1900s Updated (US)
* Selected US Naturalization Records – Original Documents 1790-1974 Updated (US)
* Jewish Family History Collection expanded (US, W)
* Social Security Death Index Updated (US)
* Many Canadian, Australian and German books (W)

http://pilot.familysearch.org/ (free) Record Search

* 1920 U.S. Census (21 states, 34% complete) (indexed, no images)
* Minnesota State Census, 1895 (indexed, no images)
* New Hampshire Birth Records, Early to 1900s (index and images)
* New York State Census, 1905 (browse images only)
* Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers 1621-1900 (browse images only)
* Mexico 1930 Census (8 states, 19% complete, browse images only)
* Spain Catholic Parish Registers – Avila and Gerona Dioceses (browse images only)
* England, Cheshire Non-Conformist Records, 1671-1900 (index only, no images)
* Argentina 1895 census (index and images)
* Argentina, Buenos Aires City census 1855 (browse images only)

Thursday, August 13, 2009

August 12 Research Group Summary

We had 12 members at our August 12th Research Group meeting, and there were many interesting stories and successes. Here's a synopsis:

* Nancy works at the Stein Family Farm, and is researching the family history of the Steins. She has Carl Stein's declaration of intention and naturalization certificate, but cannot figure out when he immigrated. The declaration does not list an immigration date or ship. The census records give different years - 1881, 1885 and 1884. The group suggested searching for a death certificate, an obituary or anniversary newspaper article to determine his birth date and birth place and perhaps the immigration date and ship.

* Phyllis has a problem with Family Tree Maker 16 - it won't print one family line on a pedigree chart even though the person has parents in the database. We suggested that she check to see if the person is identified as a "natural" child to the parents in the People > Other Parents screen.

* Gary received a box of family photos and papers from his father in Michigan. He passed photos around, and articles about an uncle's arrest for shooting melon thieves in the 1940s. He checked some older research and found that one source provided the parents of Solomon Roff and identified Yates County NY as their residence.

* John had some success at Carlsbad Library - he was able to eliminate one of the two William Patricks in NC in the 1760s.

* Randy showed the Dane county WI plat maps and Andrew County MO cemetery book pages he found at Carlsbad. He also discussed the Jefferson County NY Estate Papers for the Lanfear family, and passed the records around. Finally, he told about finding the McKnew house in San Francisco in Google Street Maps and being contacted by second cousins.

* Phyllis wants to distribute an ancestral book to her children and grandchildren. for each person, she is creating a page with their family data, pictures and an obituary. Two grandsons seem interested!

* Jean went to New York City in June and had great luck. She is adopted, and was able to find out the names of her birth parents from marriage records, her own adoption papers from the court, and contacted and met with her mother's sister in Philadelphia and a step-sister too.

* Helen S. said that she found some family records for one of her families in the next-door county.

* Cynthia found a book on Clough family while at Carlsbad Library. It said that one cousin married composer Stephen Foster, and she recalls meeting a Foster descendant who played the piano beautifully when she was a young girl.

* Ruth has traced both sides of her Hayley line back to Jamestown in Virginia. She's working on two family books or pamphlets to share with her family.

* Virginia passed around the Zionsville IN book she received, and is downloading the Demoss surname book from the BYU Family History Archive site.

* Bobbie had a wonderful research vacation in Lake county IL. Two sisters live on the Titus family farm in Fremont township, and she slept in the farmhouse. She made large plastic displays with nine family documents as gifts for her sisters. She came home with many pictures from the area, a plat map showing all of the family holdings in 1881, a picture of great-grandparents obtained from a local museum, and recent newspaper articles about selling one of the Titus farms and property. They are off to Nova Scotia next month for another trip.

This was a really good meeting with many good examples and research successes. It's fun to see our members applying lessons learned to advance their genealogy research.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

CVGS August Newsletter is online

The August 2009 issue of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) Newsletter is on the CVGS web page at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cacvgs2/Newsletters/09_08aug.pdf

Enjoy!

Hey, San Diego South Bay genealogists - we would love to have you attend our meetings - please contact me for more information or look for the monthly flyer in the libraries.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Interesting Genealogy Blog Articles

Here is a selection of genealogy blog articles gleaned from late July and early August, in case you missed them the first time around:

* It’s 2014! Do You Know Where Your Data Is? By Dick Eastman in Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. (http://www.eogn.com/ )

* Why retracing our African roots is so difficult by Tony Burroughs on Anderson Cooper’s 360 blog (http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/17/)

* Why Cloud Computing Makes Sense for Genealogy by Dick Eastman in Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (http://www.eogn.com/)


* A Baby Boomer Remembers the Man Who Came to Dinner… Every Night by Craig Manson on the http://www.geneablogie.net/ blog.

* How To Get Kids Interested In Genealogy by Elyse Doerflinger on Elyse's Genealogy Blog.


* Microfilm Scanning at the FHL and FHC by Randy Seaver on the http://www.geneamusings.com/ blog.

* Starting Your Family Tree: Advice from the Pros on the Genoom blog (http://blog.genoom.com/)


* How Genealogists Use Social Networking by Gena Philibert Ortega on the WorldVitalRecords Blog.

* Genealogy Societies Need To Look Toward The Future and Genealogy Societies Need To Look Toward The Future (Follow-up Post) by Elyse Doerflinger on Elyse's Genealogy Blog.


* Where is my family's file? by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the MyHeritage Genealogy Blog.

* Top Ten Rules of Genealogy by Michael Hait on the Genealogy Wise blog.


* 10 Truths About Genealogy by Tami Glatz on the Relatively Curious About Genealogy blog.

* More SCGS Genealogy Jamboree Audio/Video by Randy Seaver on the Genea-Musings blog.


* Taking on your Brickwalls by Gena Philibert Ortega on Gena's Genealogy blog.

* Online Digitized Collections for Genealogy by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.

Genealogy Days in Chula Vista - August 2009

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society events for August 2009 include:

** Wednesday, August 12, 12 noon to 2 pm, Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street) -- CVGS Research Group meets in the Library Conference Room. We will review the latest genealogy news, share success stories and information, and discuss members research problems, and potential solutions, based on the collective knowledge and wisdom of the group.

** Wednesday, August 19, 12 noon to 2 pm, Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street) -- CVGS Computer Group meets in the Library Computer Lab. We will visit some helpful genealogy web sites. This is an opportunity for those members who haven't used computers for genealogy research to practice with a mentor to guide them

** Wednesday, August 26, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Elks Lodge Picnic Area (901 Elks Lane in Chula Vista) - CVGS Annual Picnic. Bring your own food and beverage, a wrapped white elephant gift for the raffle exchange, and a story about Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. Contact John Finch (619-426-4906, or jan27@cox.net) for more information.

** Monday afternoons (11 a.m. to 2 PM) - August 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31 - Genealogy Table Talk with Dearl Glenn and John Finch in the Family Research section of the Chula Vista Civic Center Library. They are ready and willing to help people with their research, discuss a problem or success, or just tell stories.

The Chula Vista Civic Center Library is located at 365 "F" Street in Chula Vista - between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue, midway between I-5 and I-805 (take the "E" Street exit from the freeways).

We welcome guests and visitors to our CVGS programs and events - if you are in the greater San Diego area and want to attend our events - please come and introduce yourselves. If you have questions, please email Randy at rjseaver@cox.net or phone 619-422-3397.

Monday, August 10, 2009

We're back online ...

On about 1 August 2009, Blogger decided that this blog was either a spam blog or had objectionable content and the blog disappeared until today.

Needless to say, we were a bit perturbed about this turn of events.

There is absolutely no way to send a nasty email, or make an angry phone call, to the "powers that be" at Blogger (which is owned by Google, of course).

Once I could log onto the Google Gmail account (and I couldn't do that for several days), I managed to post a note on the Blogger Help Forums about our specific problem. There were many other bloggers complaining about the same problem. Eventually, one at a time, the shut-down blogs were returned so I figured that it would be only a matter of time.

Fortunately, we don't rely on advertising revenue, or have a bunch of needy affiliates, so there was no financial loss for this event. But it did make us aware of the fragility of a blog on any free host - you are at their mercy if they go out of business or something happens that causes them to take your blog off of the Internet.

Thank you, Blogger, for restoring our little genealogy blog to its place in the southwest corner of the genealogy blog world.

I will resume posting CVGS news and activities tomorrow!