The September 12th meeting of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group had 17 attendees.
In the first hour, Randy showed and discussed Michele Lewis's blog article "Starting at the Very Beginning" (http://ancestoring.blogspot.com/2012/09/starting-at-very-beginning.html) concerning how to start doing genealogy research. Each point brought spirited discussion from the group with examples from their experiences.
In the second hour, we discussed questions and research problems posed by the attendees, including:
1) Ralph asked how to find genealogy blogs of interest and how to follow them, and Randy showed how to find topic-specific blogs using Google, and how to set up and use a Google Reader account.
2) Kitty has a memory book that provides information about the birth and marriage of her ancestor Frederick W. Giesecke that lists his father's name as Otto. She has found the 1940 U.S. census with him as a brother to Elizabeth Collins, but could find little else about him. A search on Ancestry.com revealed "Fritz" and "Lizzie" with their mother in the 1900 US Census, so the father may have died. She wondered how to proceed. The group suggested looking for a marriage record for the parents, marriage records for the children, death records for the father, and death records for the known children that might list parents. FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com have several Texas vital records indexes available.
3) Connie has an older brother who was adopted in 1941 as an infant in San Diego. The California birth Index has his adopted name, not his birth name. The adoption record, obtained from court records, lists two potential birth parent surnames and the mother's given name. A search on Ancestry in the 1940 US Census revealed the probable family of the birth mother in Los Angeles County. Further searching on Ancestry provided an Ancestry Member Tree for the family. The group suggested that the brother send a carefully worded message to the AMT submitter asking for information about the mother.
4) Karen inquired about the 1940 US Census entry for her ancestor, Harry Linde. His wife apparently provided the information about the family. However, there were other households on the page without the indicator for the information provider. She wondered if that was an error. The group thought that it was - not every enumerator followed the instructions!
5) Jaye has an aunt buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, who married a Forrest Morrow, but divorced. Morrow apparently married again to a Dolly. She wondered how to find information about the second marriage. California marriage and death records on Ancestry.com or Rootsweb.com (http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/search.cgi) may have this information.
6) Gary continues to track down his Solomon Roff family in western New York. He has been tracking Roff families in the 1790 to 1840 US Census records to try to sort it all out. He continues to learn from the will of the bachelor Philip Roff who named his siblings, including Solomon.
The next CVGS Research Group meeting will be Wednesday, 10 October at 12 noon in the Conference Room at the Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library (365 F Street).
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