Lydia O’Connor
The October meeting was opened by club President Carol Tibor. There were no new members or guests so we proceeded to welcome our guest speaker. What an appropriate subject to learn about in the month of October, The Paper Trail of Death.
The guest presenter was Amy Urman, a licensed Private Investigator and the President of the Pima County Genealogy Society. She is also a genealogical lecturer and researcher. “A death is the beginning of a trail of paperwork.” We learned the many ways to track down relatives by obtaining different types of records. First, the most significant document to have in research is the Death Certificate. But of course, the one drawback to this document is that it is not filled out by the deceased. So whoever provides the information for a death certificate is not always accurate. We were reminded that this is a difficult time for relatives so information can be difficult to remember. There are other helpful documents that can answer these questions. For example, you could search us military records to find out if they served in the forces or had been added to a Military Record database. You could also check, Funeral Home Records and many more. Many of these records can fill in a void by naming relatives, dates, where a person lived and the cause of death. Other areas to search for information included cemetery records, church records, obituaries and newspaper articles. Amy also shared many helpful websites to use in searching for these documents. Unfortunately, the information is only as accurate as of the person giving the facts. Verifying information from a second source is recommended. Amy’s excellent presentation provided the audience with many resources to help answer those nagging questions in one’s genealogy research.
The regular business meeting followed our guest speaker. Several members are willing to present informative classes such as Beginning Genealogy and RootsMagic. These will be determined later. The raffle ticket winners for this month were Tom Perry and another member.
At our November 2 meeting our guest speaker will be Jan Larky who will discuss How to Write a Family Story. For those of you interested in leaving a written legacy behind for your family, this will be very informative. So if you are interested in learning how to write a family history or just want to become a member and find out what we are all about, join us at 1:00 p.m. the first Thursday of each month in the Coyote Room at SaddleBrooke One Clubhouse. Many of our members are willing to help you get started in tracking your history. All are welcome to attend.