I sincerely hope this finds you and your fellow members at the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society safe and healthy during these times we are all experiencing. During this unusual time, I want to bring to your attention a special offer from American Ancestors and NEHGS, America’s founding genealogical organization. We offering a special discount on new memberships during the month of April. Throughout April, the cost of a new, individual, annual membership is now $74.95. My hope is that your members will be able to use an American Ancestors membership to expand thier access to genealogical resources and continue their enjoyment of pursuing family history. If interested, I encourage you to share this link with your members: AmericanAncestors.org/april20off ,or direct your members to contact our Member Services Division at membership@nehgs.org or by telephone at 888-296-3447. This special offer is available through April 30, 2020, and is not valid on current renewals. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your time and consideration, Donald C. Reagan Directors of Business Development American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society
American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is the nation’s most comprehensive resource for family history research. Members have access to expert family history services through the organization’s staff, original published scholarship, its data-rich website at AmericanAncestors.org, outstanding online educational opportunities, and a state-of-the-art research center located in downtown Boston. American Ancestors helps family historians of all levels explore their past and understand their families’ unique place in history.
To our fellow genealogical family members and future conference attendees:
The 2020 FGS Family History Conference is now a little over four months away and our preparation for the event is moving forward. At this time, we understand individuals are focused on keeping themselves and their families safe and healthy. Our top priority is the well-being of all individuals who will be attending and supporting our event scheduled for September 2-5. Consequently, we are continually monitoring the situation related to COVID-19, nationwide and in our 2020 host city of Kansas City, Missouri.
We anticipate that our conference registration will be available online later this month. We will also be making information available to participants regarding the conference program and activities. Please refer to our conference home page https://fgs.org/annual-conference/ and our social media sites as we begin providing more information. We are excited about the program we have developed and have an impressive line-up of highly engaging speakers.
THE GENEALOGICAL FORUM’s Thursday Evening E-News Edition April 9, 2020
Memberships will not expire during the crisis, and will be extended a month beyond the date of our re-opening. Curious about the status of your GFO Membership? We’d love to have you as a GFO Member! You may renew online with a credit card now; membership materials will be sent later after the closure ends.We are grateful for all your support.
GFO’s Italian Special Interest Group met online. Have you been feeling a bit numb? Being out of touch takes a toll. What a pleasure then it was to be able to see and talk to fellow GFO members. On Tuesday, Stephanie Silenti held the Italian Special Interest Group meeting online via Zoom video conferencing. And on Wednesday, the Library Committee got a chance to catch up in the virtual world too. Yes, we had a glitch or two. No one cared. We got to chat while we waited.
GFO’s Library Committee had a virtual meeting that cheered everyone up. Library Chair Laurel Smith said it felt very healing to finally see and talk with each other again. I couldn’t agree more. The GFO will have some more virtual special interest group meetings and you’ll get advance notice of them here. I hope you’ll take part and find them as valuable as I have.. We got a bit of good financial news in the last week. Ancestry and Fold3 have agreed to suspend our pricey contracts for as long as the library is closed. They’ll extend our subscription by an equivalent number of months. If you’re a member, we’d welcome your renewal online using a credit card. It would certainly help us to continue paying our rent. (This keeps 74-years of collected holdings safe and sound for the future.) You’ll still receive an extension of your membership once our shutdown ends, and membership materials will be sent later. (Sorry, please, no checks sent by mail to an empty library at this time.) ▪ Vince Patton GFO President
Access Ancestry From Home For Free
We wish we had the website infrastructure to extend our library edition of Ancestry to you at home.
Absent that, here’s the next best thing. If you live in Multnomah County, Oregon, or one of many of its surrounding areas, the Multnomah County Library is now offering you remote access from your computer. If you don’t currently have a card, you can learn how to get one online, here. Once you have your card, you can then use the Library’s Ancestry subscription.
We might as well make the best of being stuck at home. What a great time to learn new genealogy skills! (Some of you already have. Please see the survey results below.) The genealogy conference website Conference Keeper has launched a new page dedicated to online events. Tami, the organizer of the site, is doing a great job compiling virtual genealogy lessons from all over the country. Many of them are free. Check this page and bookmark it. She updates it regularly.
Genealogists may be very interested in a report done by Leslie Stahl during the April 5, 2020, broadcast of CBS’s 60 Minutes. Stahl reported on the Dimensions in Testimony project designed by Heather Maio, who wanted to build upon the more than 55,000 stories of Holocaust survivors that have been recorded by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and take them a step further.
We have an official ballot now for this year’s GFO Board election. Vince Patton is running for re-election as president. Alexa Waddle is running for secretary. Joyce Grant-Worley seeks re-election as a Director at Large. And Geoff Smith has offered to serve again on our Endowment Committee. While voting on a GFO election may not seem like a top priority right now, our bylaws require that the election be held. We are attempting to follow our bylaws despite the difficult circumstances. Only active GFO members are eligible to vote.The Forum Insider for April included online voting instructions.
Hall of Fame Nominations Sought
You have three weeks left to send us your GFO Hall of Fame Nominations! Any GFO member may nominate another member by May 1. Nominees must have a well-documented history of service, leadership, and accomplishment in more than one facet of the GFO, over a long period of time. Please include: * Name, list of services, activities, positions, and accomplishments; * A narrative describing the nature of their work in terms of its importance to the success of the GFO; * A short biography. Please send to secretary@gfo.org by May 1. The board will decide if any merit selection. Winners are awarded in June and receive a free Life Membership and their name on our Hall of Fame plaque.
What’s New in Online Digital Resources
Since we are unable at this time to process new books and new digital content for the GFO Library, we will be temporarily suspending our “What’s New” weekly feature. In this time of physical distancing and responsible sheltering in place, we will instead share online resources so that you can reach out and connect as well as continue to learn and build on your genealogy skills from home.
This week, we present some leads from GFO Italian SIG leader Stephanie Silenti. In addition to Family Tree Webinars, which is offering a free webinar every day in April, there are even more to choose from. Here are three:
Wondering how you can support preserving our history while stuck at home? Here’s any easy way that doesn’t cost you any extra. Please register your Fred Meyer Rewards Card to link it with the Genealogical Forum of Oregon.
Each time you shop, Fred Meyer donates to the GFO, based on your spending. But it does not affect the price you pay. What a great win-win! We thank all of you who’ve done this already. It’ll help us to pay the bills that are still due monthly, even while we are closed.
Some of our respondents shared information about new skills they’ve acquired during their time at home.
I watched 5 Top Websites to Decipher the German Handwriting. It introduced me to a couple of tools I didn’t know about. The webinar was free and I don’t know how long it may be available.I have been tracing some of the new information that My Heritage constantly turns out, only to find that the actual documents are often stored with FamilySearch which brings me right back to the GFO.I accidentally found important information on the Church History Library website from the LDS Church. This is different from the Family History Library, but both are located in SLC. The Church History Library is found across from the large Church Headquarters building and the Church Conference Center. I have not been there physically, but their online catalog can be very helpful.Watched a terrific free webinar on copyright by Judy Russell. It’s will make me think twice before I snag pictures from Find A Grave and newspaper websites and upload them to my Ancestry tree.
I learned some tricks for searching for the women in my lines from a webinar from the Florida Genealogical Society and watched several Rootstech presentations on German genealogy that were interesting.Colorizing black and white photos on My Heritage and creating a family tree, thanks to the GFO for communicating this temporarily free service!I have been studying BCG’s Genealogical Standards. The second edition came out in 2019. I have also been reading background material for pre-Civil War cousins from the south; just finished Slaves in the Family and am starting Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.I learned how to watch my ancestors on the FamilySearch tree so I know when changes have been made to them. Sometimes the change is record I don’t have. Sometimes it’s a mistake I can fix. I discovered I can also easily reach out to the person who made the change to see why they made it and find out if we’re related. Extremely valuable.
New Survey: Recent Discoveries?
Most of us are stuck at home, and most of those we’ve heard from tell us they are doing more genealogy than normal. We can all use a little inspiration, so, this week, we’d like you to tell us about a discovery you’ve made recently. Please share via our survey.
The GFO Research Library is closed, and all on-site groups, classes, and work parties are canceled. Tuesday, April 14: 6 p.m. GFO Board will meet by video conference.
I would like to make you aware of a project that may be of great interest to your organization and many of your members.
I am the director of a non-profit initiative known as Stories Behind the Stars, under the auspices of The Greatest Generations Foundation.
The ambitious goal of this project is to collect short profiles of all of the 400,000+ US World War II fallen in one online database. There will be a smartphone app that will allow anyone visiting a war memorial or cemetery to scan the name of the fallen and get a link to automatically take them to his/her story. This will work at Arlington National Cemetery, Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, even memorials in Washington state. It will make visits to the final resting places of our World War II fallen a much richer experience. Whereas now, a visitor just sees names and dates, when this project is finished, a visit to any WWII memorial or gravesite will come with that person’s story.
As a genealogy organization, you are aware that resources online now make genealogical research easier than ever. I learned this first hand over the past three years. I have had a lifelong interest in history, and particularly enjoyed reading memoirs. After the 2016 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a lot of news coverage was given to the remaining World War II veterans. It bothered me that little attention was given to any of the 400,000+ fallen who did not come home. WWII memoirs all mentioned how much these fallen meant to a victory they did not enjoy. I decided to do something about this.
I began a daily personal passion project to start writing about these mostly forgotten heroes. Each day I wrote a profile of one of the fallen on the 100th anniversary of his/her birthday. I recorded these stories in a blog at www.ww2fallen100.blogspot.com. I shared it with various World War II groups on Facebook. Others started joining me to write these stories and there are now more than 1,200 of these short profiles, including more than a dozen from Washington (see http://ww2fallen100.blogspot.com/search?q=washington) that have been read more than one million times. The newspaper in the town where I grew up, the Pueblo Chieftain, did a story about my efforts that was picked up by many papers around the country (see https://www.chieftain.com/7070e3a4-c500-11e8-9745-33c162a7202a.html). The project was slated to end this September with the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. However, at the encouragement of others, I decided to expand this project so that the stories of all of the 400,000+ US World War II fallen can be told.
The 400,000+ number is very daunting, but it is much more manageable for western states. In the case of Washington, WWII losses were probably around 6,000. I already have access to a database that has 5,000+ Washington related names. I just need help finding people who want to write profiles of the Washington fallen.
Ancestry.com has generously agreed to provide free access to their research tools (Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and Fold3.com) to anyone helping me with this project.
I created the website www.storiesbehindthestars.org to promote and manage this project. Though it just barely started, I already have volunteers helping from a dozen states.
The reason I am contacting WSGS is that I am sure you know of many, many Washington residents who would be interested in helping with this project. I need volunteers to research and write the stories of these ~6,000 Washington World War II fallen. It takes less than 45 minutes to research and write the average story. I have created a YouTube page (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6iv4ZzBam5y_yXk546P7Fu6bEIrz9jb5) with short training videos showing how to do the research.
Can you share information about my project with your members? At this time of social distancing, I think this project would be a wonderful use of time for those with their skills.
Feel free to call or email me to move this discussion further.
Following last week’s email announcing
free access to all U.S. census records on MyHeritage, I’m writing to let
you know that we’ve decided to extend this for another week. You can
now access the entire U.S. census collection for free through April 12.
THE GENEALOGICAL FORUM’s Thursday Evening E-News Edition April 2, 2020
Memberships will not expire during the crisis, and will be extended a month beyond the date of our re-opening. You may renew online with a credit card now; membership materials will be sent later after the closure ends. We are grateful for all your support.
Originally, we announced the GFO Library would be closed until April 1. Unfortunately, that’s not long enough. Medical
experts currently say the peak of COVID-19 cases may come in mid- May.
It will take several more weeks after that of steady decline before we
can safely get together. If they’re wrong and it peaks earlier, we still
have to wait for substantial declines, which could take weeks. ▪ Therefore, the only responsible thing to do is to close the GFO Library through May. ▪ Boot Camp is canceled, as are all Special Interest Group meetings. ▪ A few of our Special Interest Groups have expressed an interest in meeting online by video. Read the next article below for the first one! ▪ The Forum Insider for May and the Bulletin in June will be available only in electronic format.
We’re Minding Your Donations & Membership Dollars Safety is the first thing we consider in all our decisions during this pandemic. But
we’re also trying to find ways to save money. It’s disheartening to pay
monthly bills on a library we cannot open. We are fortunate to be
all-volunteer. It would be much more complicated – and expensive – if we
had employees. We’d like to publicly thank three vendors who have shared the pain with us to help save us money. Pacific Office Automation is giving us three free months on the lease of our copier. That machine is our workhorse, printing the Insider, Bulletin,
and scanning thousands of pages in our digitizing project. It’s also
our second largest expense. We agreed to an extended lease with them and
they lowered our payments too, when we start paying again. Likewise, WAVE Broadband agreed to suspend our internet service while the library is in “hibernation.” AbeBooks, through whom we sell used books, has also refunded us monthly fees while we are unable to fulfill book orders. They all accepted less money knowing we’re bringing in less. Unfortunately, our landlord, NAI Elliott,
only offered to delay payments until later, if we accepted a lease
extension. They did not offer any actual savings. Since it does not help
our bottom line, we declined. Suppliers of our pricey genealogy databases say they’re not able to suspend service. So, how do we stand overall financially? I’m confident we will weather this storm. That’s
because previous GFO leadership saw the importance of creating an
emergency reserve fund, and an Endowment. Thank you predecessors! We
are setting the budget for the new fiscal year which starts in July. We
are certain to need to draw from our reserves. The coming year will be
one for tight belts. GFO’s Board will consider the budget at its meeting
on April 14 (via video link) and I’ll report back to you after that. If you’d like to continue supporting us, we welcome any donations online with a credit card. Also, you may renew your membership
(or join) online with a credit card. Your membership materials will be
sent after the library reopens. We cannot accept checks at this time.
Please don’t mail anything in; no one is there to receive it. Most important, be safe, and stay well. ▪ Vince Patton, GFO President
Italian Group Goes Virtual
GFO Italian Interest Group leader Stephanie Silenti passes on this invitation: It
looks like we have a good amount of interest to move the SIG to
digital/video next week, so let’s do it! I will figure out those details
and get them out to you this week. For now, please hold our USUAL TIME SLOT for Tuesday, April 7, 10am PT, for a digital gathering. The topic, I think, will be twofold:
a. Check in, say hello, remind you that it’s COMPLETELY NORMAL if
you’ve struggled to continue your research while we adjust to these new
circumstances. b. Sharing which genealogy resources have opened up
for free in the last few weeks. There have been several. I will try to
pull a list together but perhaps we can collaborate. Keep a list of any
you know of, and we can share them on Tuesday. Also,
if video meetings are new technology for you, don’t worry. This is how I
earn a living — I do it daily. I’m confident we can get you all up to
speed. If you would like to join in on this webinar, please email Italian@gfo.org.
ORForum—An Interactive Way to Get Answers to Your Genealogy Questions
Did
you know that the GFO has an online community of members who can help
answer your genealogy questions and point you to the resources you need?
Or help you figure out the handwriting on a census or baptism record?
Or even recommend a great place to eat when you visit Salt Lake City? If you would like to join this group or just check out the posts simply click below.
Here’s how the newspaper in Brownsville, Oregon, covered the 1918 pandemic shutdowns. Thanks
to Linda Lewis McCormick from the local historical society there for
finding this, and to GFO Members Don & Doxie Cook for passing it
along.
GFO Board Election Now Open
We have an official ballot now for this year’s GFO Board election. Vince
Patton is running for re-election as president. Alexa Waddle is running
for secretary. Joyce Grant-Worley seeks re-election as a Director at
Large. And Geoff Smith has offered to serve again on our Endowment
Committee. While
voting on a GFO election may not seem like a top priority right now,
our bylaws require that the election be held. We are attempting to
follow our bylaws despite the difficult circumstances. Only active GFO members are eligible to vote.The Forum Insider for April included online voting instructions.
Hall of Fame Nominations Sought
We are still looking for GFO Hall of Fame Nominations! Any GFO member may nominate another member by May 1. Nominees
must have a well-documented history of service, leadership, and
accomplishment in more than one facet of the GFO, over a long period of
time. Please include: * Name, list of services, activities, positions, and accomplishments; * A narrative describing the nature of their work in terms of its importance to the success of the GFO; * A short biography. Please send to secretary@gfo.org by May 1.
The board will decide if any merit selection. Winners are awarded in
June and receive a free Life Membership and their name on our Hall of
Fame plaque.
What’s New in Online Digital Resources
Since
we are unable at this time to process new books and new digital content
for the GFO Library, we will be temporarily suspending our “What’s New” weekly feature. In
this time of physical distancing and responsible sheltering in place,
we will instead share online resources so that you can reach out and
connect as well as continue to learn and build on your genealogy skills
from home. •
In a recent GenealogyBank blogpost, Gena Philibert-Ortega describes
five ways family historians can use library services even when the
building itself is closed. Check out her entry entitled Genealogy during Quarantine: 5 Things to Do When the Library Is Closed. •
How many of us wish we had a diary or journal from an ancestor who
lived through the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic? The Genealogy
Reporter, Amie Bowser Tenant has some suggestions for creating your own
journal of memories related to our current Covid-19 experience in her
post, Journaling about the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020. • Looking for fun ways to engage kids in finding family history? The National Archives is providing downloadable family trees and charts
for kids of all ages. What a great way to spend some of your time with
your loved ones in this time of physical distancing. While there, check
out some of their other Educator Resources.
Survey Results: Spending Time
Just
as we suspected, most of our survey respondents say they’ve been doing
more genealogy during the current health crisis. Organization is high on
the list. Here’s a sampling of what they’ve been doing:
Writing
a family history of one of my ancestral couples. I also wish I had time
to organize my files, etc. My room looks like I’m a CPA!Trying to read old French, Spanish and German documents.
Focusing on records I have collected but not put into my data base.Reading newly acquired reference books and preparing for upcoming presentations.Finding people to send old “non-family” photos to.Working on my Ancestry ThruLines, writing to DNA matches.I
have been trying to get back to people who have contacted me from my
DNA matches. It is hard to maintain ongoing conversations with all these
people, but they are so important to moving my research forward.I’ve been researching, organizing, and reading the book “Tracing Your German Roots Online” by James Beidler.Investigating Family Tree webinars through the link the GFO provided (Thanks so much!).
This has given me a chance to catch up on some online classes.I am going through a lot of loose papers to extract information and organize things.I have a new great-grandson, and I have been working on a booklet for him.I am transcribing an old school/cemetery ledger book from 1871 to 1892 for our community.I’m finally taking time to watch some webinars, and I’ve begun to tackle the gargantuan task of organizing my digital images.Pounding my head on brick walls.
New Survey: Acquiring New Skills
Some
of you told us you’re reading books, others are watching webinars. We
love to hear about any new skills or tips you’ve learned in the last few
weeks.
The Week Ahead: The GFO Research Library is closed, and all on-site groups, classes, and work parties are canceled. Tuesday, April 7 10 a.m. – Noon Italian Special Interest Group meets by video conference. (See article above for details.)
I want to thank all the people that have been sending me the information on cancelled or postponed meetings, and hope all of you are well and not too bored to work on your genealogy while you sat away form other people. Lets hope it ends soon so we can get back to work before we all look like shaggy dogs. There are many free seminars this month so I hope you can find the one that will give you the clue to break all your brick walls.
TIP OF THE WEEK – ENJOY ROOTSTECH 2020 VIDEO SESSIONS Thanks to Karen P for this tip she shared with the Seattle Genealogical Society Networking Facebook group.
Recorded class sessions from the RootsTech 2020 Conference are
available for anyone to view for free! Karen highly recommends Blaine
Bettinger’s presentation “DNA, Genealogy, and Law Enforcement: All the
Facts”.
Here’s the link where you can watch free video of many of the sessions from RootsTech 2020, as well as RootsTech 2019: https://www.rootstech.org/video-archive
You are free to copy articles to any non-commercial web site or message board or printed publication you wish. Don’t bother to ask permission, just do it.
GFO’s Library Committee had a virtual meeting that cheered everyone up. Library Chair Laurel Smith said it felt very healing to finally see and talk with each other again. I couldn’t agree more. The GFO will have some more virtual special interest group meetings and you’ll get advance notice of them here. I hope you’ll take part and find them as valuable as I have.. We got a bit of good financial news in the last week. Ancestry and Fold3 have agreed to suspend our pricey contracts for as long as the library is closed. They’ll extend our subscription by an equivalent number of months. If you’re a member, 
We might as well make the best of being stuck at home. What a great time to learn new genealogy skills! (Some of you already have. Please see the survey results below.) The genealogy conference website 
We have an official ballot now for this year’s GFO Board election. Vince Patton is running for re-election as president. Alexa Waddle is running for secretary. Joyce Grant-Worley seeks re-election as a Director at Large. And Geoff Smith has offered to serve again on our Endowment Committee. While voting on a GFO election may not seem like a top priority right now, our bylaws require that the election be held. We are attempting to follow our bylaws despite the difficult circumstances. Only active GFO members are eligible to vote. The Forum Insider for April included online voting instructions.
You have three weeks left to send us your GFO Hall of Fame Nominations! Any GFO member may nominate another member by May 1. Nominees must have a well-documented history of service, leadership, and accomplishment in more than one facet of the GFO, over a long period of time.
Since we are unable at this time to process new books and new digital content for the GFO Library, we will be temporarily suspending our “What’s New” weekly feature. In this time of physical distancing and responsible sheltering in place, we will instead share online resources so that you can reach out and connect as well as continue to learn and build on your genealogy skills from home.
Wondering how you can support preserving our history while stuck at home? Here’s any easy way that doesn’t cost you any extra. Please register your Fred Meyer Rewards Card to link it with the Genealogical Forum of Oregon.
I watched 
I learned some tricks for searching for the women in my lines from a webinar from the 
Most of us are stuck at home, and most of those we’ve heard from tell us they are doing more genealogy than normal. We can all use a little inspiration, so, this week, we’d like you to tell us about a discovery you’ve made recently. Please share via our survey.
