Southwest Florida Germanic Genealogy Society Seminar

The Southwest Florida Germanic Genealogy Society is holding a seminar on Saturday, 10 March featuring Leslie Albrecht Huber.

Ms. Huber is an award-winning freelance writer and speaker who has written nearly one hundred articles that have been printed in over twenty different publications. She has won first place in both of the only two national family history writing contests and has published her first book, The Journey Takers, culminating her ten year research journey. Ms. Huber has a Bachelor’s degree in History and a Master’s in Public Affairs. She has worked as a professional genealogist tracing German families, both for a large company and in her own business.

You can get more information about the seminar times, costs, etc at http://www.swflgg.org/

Suncoast Genealogy Fair

The Suncoast Genealogy Society will hold its annual genealogy fair from 1-4 pm at the Palm Harbor Library on 31 March 2012. Registration begins at 12:30 pm.

There is no charge for admission, but reservations are necessary...Email john8530@aol.com . Seating is limited to 100 so don't miss out on this.

The featured speaker will be Debbe Hagner. Her topic will be "Tracing Your Ancestors Using United States Religious Records."

Imperial Polk Seminar in March

The Imperial Polk Genealogical society will hold its annual seminar on 3 March 2012 at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida.

The featured speaker will be George Schweitzer, an alumni and distinguished professor of the University of Tennessee. He will make presentations on "North-South Colonial Migration Routes," "Rivers to Trails to Roads to Canals to Trains," and "Obscure Genealogical Sources." The first two will be delivered in period costume.

For more details and registration form, go to http://www.ipgs.org/

All Those Documents Are Not Digitized Yet!

With increasing numbers of documents being digitized and made available online daily, it is easy to think that the Internet is all we need to look at as we do our research. A little consideration and logic will reveal that in not the case, however.

In case you need a rather in-depth discussion on the state of “world digitization,” Randy Seaver gives us an interesting article that tries to put it all into perspective. I myself know that most documents have not been digitized and are not on the Internet, but even so, I enjoyed Randy’s take on the subject. Read what he has to say at Genealogy's Star: What is left to digitize?

Sharing Your Family History with Your Children

I know many of you have an interest in this subject. Frequently I get into discussions with groups of our class attendees about the challenge of getting younger family members interested in genealogy.

Janet Hovorka, “The Chart Chick,” offers us a piece that presents her 6 principles for doing this. (I especially like the one that says “Teaching about family history is a lifestyle, not a single event.”)

The article is well worth the reading time. You can find it at The Chart Chick: The 6 basic principles of sharing your family history with your children.

Updates at FamilySearch.org

According to "Genealogy Blog, " the following databases were posted or updated at FamilySearch since 23 January 2012:

Arkansas, Marriage Index, 1933-1939 – index to marriages from the Arkansas Vital Records Division, Arkansas Department of Health – 421,079 records as of 24 January 2012.
Arkansas, Death Index, 1914-1950 – Index of deaths from the Arkansas Division of Vital Records, Arkansas Department of Health – 594,114 records as of 24 January 2012.
West Virginia Will Books, 1756-1971 – Images and index. The collection includes the index and images for will books from all 55 counties of West Virginia. Probate records include petitions, inventories, accounts, decrees, oaths of executors, forms about guardians and other court documents – 25,162 records and 325,731 images as of 25 January 2012.
Utah, Box Elder County Records, 1856-1960 – Browsable images of county records, marriage, naturalization, military, probate and land and property located at the county courthouse in Brigham City, Utah – 25,379 images as of 25 January 2012.
New York Probate Records, 1629-1971 – Imaged Records – Images from probate records in various county Surrogate Courts in New York. The content of the probate records and their year range vary by county. Most records end in the 1920s with some indexes continuing to the year 1971. This collection does not include records from metropolitan New York at this time – 1,631,822 images as of 25 January 2012, up 1,922 images from 28 December 2011.
New York Queens County Probate Records, 1899-1921 – Images of probate records and proceedings from the Queens County Surrogate’s Court in Jamaica, New York. – 761,504 images as of 27 January 2012 – up 38,268 images since 9 January 2011.
Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1841-1920 – Imaged Reords – Massachusetts births, marriages and deaths, 1916-1920 and state amendments to vital records, 1841-1920 located at the state archives in Boston. This collection is being published as images become available – 319,558 images as of 27 January 2012 , up 35,561 from 29 December 2011.
Arkansas County Marriages 1837-1957 – Index and images of marriages recorded in counties of Arkansas – 1,869,736 records as of 27 January 2012, up 81,822 from 4 April 2011.

Do you have Loyalist Ancestors?

Do you have a Loyalist ancestor? I do, and I delight in finding information about him and his family. He apparently was quite notorious in his area of New Jersey. He fought against his own brother, and eventually emigrated to Canada at the end of the war.

There are many good sources of information about loyalists, and fellow blogger Randy Seaver gives them good coverage in one of his posts. They include newsletters you can subscribe to and websites to visit including one hosted by United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada. Randy’s article is rich in research ideas. Check it out at Genea-Musings: Do you have Loyalist Ancestors? Check out the UELAC Site