Lydia O’Connor
Pat Rourke, club treasurer, welcomed members back from summer trips. Many attendees shared the genealogy findings discovered during the past few months.
Chris Nelson, club secretary, provided details about a social event coming up on November 4. This will be an opportunity for members, their spouses or significant others to relax in a less formal setting away from the clubhouse and get to know each other and talk about our genealogy adventures. This event will be held at Chris’ home from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. All are asked to bring an appetizer to share and a drink of choice. We hope all can attend and create lively discussions about family research projects.
Our guest speaker, club member Rondie Yancey, presented “Cruising the Internet—Genealogy Sites you Shouldn’t Miss.” There are numerous research sites available for research. Many are free or have a small cost but the information you get is invaluable. Rondie explained that most sites have tutorials to guide one and make life easier. Some of these sites include the always popular Ancestry.com and Family Search sites. Ancestry has different levels of cost depending how involved you want to get while Family Search is free. We were given tips to follow such as don’t always trust other people’s trees as gospel. Also, start research by inputting larger data first and work down to smaller data. For example, input a state and work down to cities and more specific information to obtain clues. Some of the other sites Rondie mentioned were Familytreewebinars.com, Newspapers.com, Cyndislist.com, Google, Fold3, and even the Library of Congress. The archived information is endless and there are so many items of information that a person never thought could be obtained in research. There is even a website on the Google site called “Hangout” that enables one to talk and see a person you want to communicate with. Rondie demonstrated how to navigate on a few of the sites mentioned to show how easy it is to obtain long sought information. The audience was very grateful for the information Rondie shared and are sure to go home and explore some of the sites she discussed.
In October, the guest speaker will be Melanie Sturgeon who will give a presentation entitled “Family History Records in State Archives.”
The meeting ended with a door prize raffle. The winners this month were Lydia O’Connor and Bobbie Freer.
All are welcome to attend our meetings and learn more about discovering their family roots.