Eastside Genealogical Society German Interest Group June Meeting

by Roxanne Lowe

The June meeting of the Eastside Genealogical Society’s German Interest Group (GIG) will take place Friday, June 3, 2016, from 1-3 p.m. at the LDS Church at 10675 NE 20th St, Bellevue, WA 98004.

This is their last meeting before summer break.  Please note that the GIG doesn’t have monthly meetings over the summer in July or August.  Their meetings will resume monthly beginning in September 2016.

The June meeting topic will be: “What Are Your Summer Genealogy Plans & How Might We Help You.”

Will you be going on a research trip, attending/hosting a family reunion, doing a genealogy project (like organizing your research and documents or writing a book or breaking down a brickwall or learning about DNA), or share what your summer genealogical plans or hopes may be!

Come share your plans & ask any questions that might help you be successful!

GIG members have experience and are willing to share what they have learned. We will all learn something new!

You’ll end your summer with the wonderful feeling of accomplishment and, at our September 2016 meeting, we hope you’ll share what you did over the summer!

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Oregon Trail An American Journey June 25th

by Charles Hansen

Do you ever wonder what The Oregon Trail looks like today? How much do you know about the experiences of those who crossed it in hopes of starting a new and better life?
Rinker Buck, author of The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, will be visiting Fort Vancouver National Historic Site on Saturday, June 25th from 1-5pm to talk about The Oregon Trail & his recent travels along the route as it exists today.

For more information click below

buck flyer

Serendipity Day

by Charles Hansen

Good Reason to Connect with Cousins

MyHeritage Releases Book Matching Technology

Genealogy Road Show, New Season on PBS

Accessing American Ancestors for Free

How Many of You Are There? Try Find My Name

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Last week, I drove from Spokane down to Kennewick to spend time with hubby’s cousin, Cathy. We spent a delightful afternoon talking family and working on our common Ancestry tree. She showed me all the “stuff” (read: family artifacts) around her house that belonged to her and John’s common grandmother. That was wonderful enough, but the “frosting on the cupcake” was that she gave me a start of the flowering plant that Grandma Ethel had brought all the way from Illinois when she was married in 1911 and came to Spokane. Now we have it growing in our garden and I will share with my children. It’s important to pass along more than facts and photos. (Anybody tell me what it is? She didn’t know.)

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Maybe we all ought to consider exploring/using MyHeritage….. This website has risen to be right up there with Ancestry and FamilySearch.

MyHeritage Releases Exclusive Book Matching Technology for Family History

MyHeritage users to automatically receive relevant excerpts from digitized books that reveal information about their ancestors and relatives

MyHeritage

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, April 7, 2016 — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, has launched today a revolutionary addition to its suite of technologies: Book Matching. This innovation automatically researches users’ family trees in historical books with high precision.

 

In April 2012 MyHeritage launched SuperSearch™, a search engine for historical records, which has since then grown to include 6.6 billion historical records, including birth, marriage, death and census records. By implementing its vision of enhancing genealogy with technology, MyHeritage then developed a line of unique and sophisticated technologies that automatically match the records from the search engine to the 32 million family trees uploaded by its users.

In December 2015, MyHeritage expanded its data collections to include digitized historical books, with an initial corpus of 150,000 books of high genealogical value. This collection was tripled last week to 450,000 books with 91 million pages. With a team of more than 50 dedicated curators, MyHeritage aims to add hundreds of millions of pages of digitized books to the collection each year.

As of today, MyHeritage users will receive matches between profiles in their family trees and the books from this collection. The Book Matching technology analyzes the book texts semantically, understanding complex narrative that describes people, and matches it to the 2 billion individuals in MyHeritage family trees with extremely high accuracy. This breakthrough technology is the first of its kind, and is exclusive to MyHeritage.

Book Matching has produced more than 80 million matches, and this number will continue to grow as the collection grows and as the family trees on MyHeritage continue to expand. Book Matching is currently available for English books, and the technology is being enhanced to cover additional languages. In addition, de-duplication technology is being added in the next few weeks to remove duplicate books that have been scanned and OCRed more than once by different sources.

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Seattle Genealogical Society Annual Meeting

by Charles Hansen

Seattle

 

SGS Annual Membership Meeting

Saturday, 4 June 2016 at 1 p.m.

6200 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115

This is an open invitation to all interested genealogists to attend the Annual Meeting of the Seattle Genealogical Society, to meet the members of the recently elected SGS Board of Directors, and to see the changes that have occurred at SGS during the past year.

More importantly, this will be an opportunity to learn of the exciting changes ahead for the society in the area of technology. Lisa Chan, the Director of Technology, will share with you her vision of how using technology can aid you as you move ahead with your research, and what SGS is, and will be doing to further advance into the digital age.

After the meeting, coffee, tea and cookies will be available. We would love to have you stay and enjoy a cup of coffee and a conversation about how you became interested in your family research and what your recent successes have been. I hope to see you at this important meeting on Saturday, the 4th of June, at 1 p.m. at the SGS Library!

Marilyn Rose,
Retiring President of the Seattle Genealogical Society

THE GENEALOGICAL FORUM Wednesday Evening E-News

by Charles Hansen

GFO1

THE GENEALOGICAL FORUM Wednesday Evening E-News 25 May 2016

For more information visit www.gfo.org, contact us at info@gfo.org, or call our library at 503-963-1932. We love hearing from you!

For a complete GFO CALENDAR go to www.gfo.org/calendar.htm.

Also, if you missed your free copy of our monthly Insider, you’re in luck because we saved you a copy at http://www.gfo.org/insider/16-May.pdf.

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Who’s the GFO Star this month?! That’s right, it’s our very own Liz Porter!

Liz

Liz Porter has taken on the HUGE task of updating the OPALS system by entering all our periodicals into the database, making the system more user friendly – Liz has become our periodicals expert! She learned the catalog and task so quickly! While Sarah and Laurel were unavailable, she learned to create labels to keep things moving. Her work is very accurate – and she has such a sweet disposition.

Thank you, Liz!

Note from the Editor: GFO Stars can be nominated by any of our patrons, visitors, or members. Simply fill out a nomination slip by the front door of the Library and add your nominee to the box on the wall above the donations jar.

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Goin’ for the Gold! Help us reach 100 Reviews on Facebook…

Rate

We need your input and we need your love!
And it only takes a couple of clicks…honest.
Step One Log into your Facebook page.

Step Two Go to the GFO’s Facebook page from your Facebook page.

Step Three Click the “Tell People What You Think” link at the top of the feed.

Step Four Click on the star rating of your choice (five! oh please pick five stars!!).

Step Five Type a review in the pop-up box.

It’s that easy. This is a great way to help others find out about the GFO, which will let us continue providing all the great genealogical programs and services you already enjoy so much!

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What’s Hot This Week in Genealogy??

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In Case You Missed It – The U.S. MIDWEST edition:
Almost 1,000 (983) new and updated Free Historic newspaper Links have been added to the 12 Midwest States’ free “newspaper link lists”:

Check out the whole list of states available HERE. And don’t forget to check out the free tutorials at the top of the same page!

William

Digital Library? Prince William, is that really you??
FREE ONLINE ACCESS TO PRE-1918
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY DEEDS is now available at this LINK.

You can retrieve PDF images of documents as early as 1731. Please remember that there are a number of significant gaps in Prince William deeds prior to 1865, as a result of the Civil War.

Those gaps may be overcome by using rent rolls, land tax lists, loose papers, court orders, and an old index. The latter item, Prince William County Deeds Index, 1731-1827, compiled by Charlotte Cain, is available at http://eservice.pwcgov.org/library/digitalLibrary/ in addition to several early tax lists transcribed by Greg Mason.

Ron Turner’s website contains many collections of Prince William loose papers, including documents from lost deed books. http://www.pwcvirginia.com/pwcvabookspublishedworks.htm.

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Interviewing for Oral Histories Class – June 5th

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Family history is often about gathering oral histories and stories from family members, and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon is here to help!
Description: The Oral History Project is a key part of the OJMCHE’s mission to preserve and present the history of Oregon’s Jewish community The central goal is to develop a community oral history archive that provides a chronicle of the experiences of the Jews of Oregon. The project began by documenting the lives of the former residents of South Portland in the 1970s. Efforts have also included the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and liberators of death camps. Several focused efforts are currently underway to collect multiple histories from within particular geographic or communal areas throughout the state.

Bio: Anne LeVant Prahl, the Curator of Collections at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, has been working in collections management since 1987. She began doing oral history by interviewing former members of Texas’ Black gospel quartets for the Texas Music Museum as part of her masters work in anthropology at the University of Texas. In Oregon, as part of her position of curator, she runs the oral history program for the museum, training interviewers, identifying interview subjects, and maintaining the collection of nearly 700 oral histories.

The meeting starts at 11 AM, June 5th.

SPECIAL VENUE
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
1953 NW Kearney St.
Portland OR 97209
Phone: 503.226.3600

There is no cost for this program. A donation to the JGSO or OJMCHE would be appreciated.

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Ireland

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!  
The GFO’s Irish Interest Group is in need of a brave new soul to lead the researching ranks of our Irish descendants beyond the terrors of seemingly insurmountable brick walls and through swamps of information overloads in our modern researching age.

Could this be you? If destiny’s calling, please give the library a call at 503-963-1932 or email volunteer@gfo.org to help out in this very vital way!

Visit the Irish Interest Group website for a peek at what they’ve been up to, and what we’ll all be missing with the upcoming retirement of their fearless leader, Suzanne Lemon, after September 17, 2016.

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What’s Happening this Week at the GFO?

SATURDAY, MAY 28th
DNA Basics 9am – 11am

As this session is a little shorter than normal, no formal presentation will be given, although we can explore the websites for each of the three main DNA companies (Family Tree DNA, AncestryDNA, and 23andMe). Regardless, we will focus on your questions and problems so everyone is more confident on what the three types of testing can and cannot do for your genealogy. Don’t forget your handouts HERE!

Please send your questions and problems to Emily at aulicino@hevanet.com before class.

Facilitators: Emily Aulicino and possibly Lisa McCullough

Website: http://gfo.org/intgrp/dna.htm

Italian Group (Monthly Program) 11am – 1pm

Ciao to everyone interested in Italian genealogy research. This is a great opportunity to learn, share, and enjoy others with a common interest. Italian genealogy research in the Portland area now has a home. Come join our group. Facilitated by Keith Pyeatt

British Group 1pm – 3pm

Focus: Researching in the British Isles: England, Wales, Scotland, and Scots-Irish. We try to have speakers who provide interesting experiences or online databases for research in these countries. One hour of the two hour meeting is devoted to Brick Wall questions. Questions may be directed to: Duane Funk at duanefunk@comcast.net.
MONDAY, MAY 30th – THE LIBRARY WILL BE CLOSED IN HONOR OF MEMORIAL DAY WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1st
Learn & Chat 10am – noon

Join us to talk about your genealogy questions and help provide support to others. Facilitated by Connie Lenzen.

DNA Q&A 1pm – 2pm

Lisa McCullough will be available to help answer your DNA questions, whether you are new and just getting started or have more involved questions.

Heritage Quest Research Library June Seminars

by Charles Hansen

HQRL is closed Friday, May 27th – Monday, May 30th

YOU ASKED FOR IT….once again we have several night classes.

June 2nd, Thursday 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. $15.00

Research in the Dakotas – North and South with Jim Johnson

The Dakotas have a rich and varied history. Native Americans, Germans from Russia, and many other ethnic and religious groups settled in the Dakotas. This class will provide a timeline of Dakota History to help you determine where to look for records pertaining to your ancestor. The area passed through many political distinctions before finally becoming part of the United States. We will show you where to find records both online, and in repositories for North and South Dakota records from the 1700s to the present day.

June 7th, Tuesday 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. $15.00

Research in Texas the “Lone Star State” with Jim Johnson

If you have ancestors who lived in, or passed through Texas, you are in luck! There are excellent genealogical records of many different types available for your genealogical use. We will show you where to find birth records, actual online death certificates, Texas confederate military records, immigration and naturalization records, cemetery records and many more types of records. Many counties have published land records and plat maps to show where your ancestors may have purchased land. You will also learn where to find early Texas newspaper records. Even if you do not have Texas ancestors this class can be useful to help you learn how to find these records in any state.

June 17th, Friday 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. $15.00

Intermediate Family History or Beginning Class II with Dee Haviland Fournier

After you have searched for birth, marriage and death records and completed your census searches, you are ready for this class. Learn how to find and use: bible records, city directories, death indexes, immigration records, land records, military records, newspapers and wills.

June 30th, Thursday, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. FREE

Beginning Family History Research with Dee Haviland Fournier

Join us in a FREE class and learn about Heritage Quest Research Library (HQRL). This class will help you in the search for your ancestor, by learning how to find and use birth, marriage, and death records. Along with a discussion on how to use Census Records to further your research and some genealogy hints. Everyone is welcome and you may attend as many times as you like.

Coming soon to HQRL – (Roots Magic, Legacy and Gedcom), (Ancestry), (Pennsylvania), (Reading “old” Handwriting), Adoption, Digital Organization, Handwriting Analysis, Kansas, and Publishing Your Family History.

As a courtesy, please do not wear perfume or strong cologne to class.

3 ways to sign-up:

  1. In person at HQRL, 1007 S. Main St., Sumner, WA. The sign-up notebook is at the Front Desk.
  2. E-mail HQRLinfo@gmail.com– provide name, telephone number and your HQRL membership number,           if you are a member.
  3. Telephone HQRL at 253-863-1806between 10:00 am – 4 pm, Monday through Saturday. Provide you           name, telephone number and HQRL membership number, if you are a member.

Innovative Grant Applications Due on Wednesday

by Roxanne Lowe

Local Societies:

Get your Innovative Grant applications in by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Late applications will not be accepted.

The grants, up to $100, are designed to support the inventive and creative efforts of WSGS-member societies and organizations. Up to five grants will be awarded in 2016.

The simple application is only ONE page and is available here. Additional guidance on the program is here.

For more information, contact Roxanne Lowe, WSGS Recognition Chair.

Mary Stolaas Named Outstanding Volunteer in 2015

by Roxanne Lowe

Since 2003, the Washington State Genealogical Society has recognized more than 450 outstanding volunteers and teams, nominated by their local society or genealogical organization for their service and dedication. These volunteers are the backbone of their local society, giving their time and expertise, to the organization and the field of genealogy. In the next month, you will be introduced to each of the 2015 award recipients and learn why they received the 2015 WSGS Outstanding Volunteer and Team Award.

Today we’re introducing Mary Stolaas of Nordland, Washington, who was nominated by the Jefferson County Genealogical Society (JCGS). She was recognized for her dedicated volunteer efforts to expand and simplify local library resources.

Mary Stolaas

Mary Stolaas

As a retired librarian, Ms. Stolaas took on the job of reorganizing JCGS’s library of over 2,000 books and CD’s to conform to the Dewey Decimal System. Over the last few months, Ms. Stolaas has made the entire collection available online, using a program called “Library Thing.” As a result, JCGS members can now access the Library Things website and look for a resource by using a keyword to see whether the book or CD is available. Members no longer have to know the specific title or author to locate the book or CD. “Library Thing” also allows the user to search other libraries in its network, thus expanding the availability of genealogical resources.

Ms. Stolaas is a detail-oriented and respected member of the JCGS, and illustrates that she richly deserved being a recipient of a 2015 WSGS Outstanding Volunteer Award.

For more information on the WSGS Outstanding Volunteer Award program, visit the Recognition page of the WSGS website or contact Roxanne Lowe, Recognition Chair, at Roxanne@thekeeffes.com.

Eastside Genealogical Society June Meeting

by Charles Hansen

EGS

 

The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, June 9, 2016 in the Bellevue Regional Library, Room 1, 1111 – 110th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 at 7pm, with doors opening at 6:45 pm for networking.

Topic:  Let’s Go Exploring! No need to drive all over the states; there are many wonderful repositories just beyond your front door.    Bob Barnes will be presenting information about places to visit in the Puget Sound area where there are genealogical holdings.  Join us for an informative evening getting ready for summer research jaunts as day trips.  Let’s go exploring!

 

Also see our website for FREE genealogical help and other Special Interest Group meetings. Visitors are always welcome at all meetings. www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wakcegs/

 

Dorothy Pretare

EGS Publicity Chairperson

dpgen@comcast.net