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01/24/2011 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting featured a talk by club member Brian Lingard on researching with newspapers. Before the talk, George passed out a few handouts including "Scan a Book in 15 Minutes", "Jewish Genealogy News", and "Announcing the Formation of the Society of Sons & Daughters of World War II Veterans". Brian's talk began with some background and a timeline of the development of newspapers with the Unites States from 1690 up through the early 20th cenury. He covered what kind of information that you can expect to find in old newspapers including some things that most people wouln't expect to find (particularly in today's climate of privacy concerns). Lastly he talked about how to find out which newspapers may have existed in your region or town of interest, and where to find copies in the various formats of on paper, on microfilm, and online in digital form. He then gave a demo of using an online newspaper database that can be accessed for free via the Boston Public Library's website (requires that you have an "eCard" from BPL). Visit this link to obtain an eCard by clicking on the button labeled "Get a BPL eCard". Once you have an eCard, visit the newspaper resources page and click on "America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1922)" link and login using your shiny new eCard. 10/25/2010 - Special guest speaker Leslie Albrecht Huber Tonight's meeting featured a talk by special guest speaker Leslie Albrecht Huber, speaking about her new book "The Journey Takers". She spoke extensively about two majors themes of her book -- the emigrant experience of the western Europeans, and the role of family stories and how they need to be passed on to the younger generations so that they don't become lost to history. You can visit her website at http://understandingyourancestors.com/journeytakers.html to learn about her book and lots more. 09/15/2010 - Update Just a quick update to announce that our next meeting scheduled for 09/27/2010 Mon 7:00 PM will feature an introductory session for beginners to be led by George Brown, so bring a friend who needs some help getting started. 06/28/2010 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting with handouts. A club member gave out a handout on the recent talk at the Southborough Library on the 1940 US census which become available on April 2, 2012. Another club member gave out a handout on the upcoming (see events) Family Research Day on Sept. 11, 2010 in Lynnfield, MA. George gave out a set of handouts which included Reseach Recommendations: Connecticutt Probate Guides, Colonial Court Records: An Underutilized Source, Research Recommendations: Tips for Research Travel, and Research Recommendations: JSTOR (digital back issues of scholarly journals). Extra copies of all handouts can be obtained from George. 04/26/2010 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting with handouts. Our next meeting will be featuring guest speaker Janice Duffy from the National Archives, in Waltham, speaking about naturalization and probate records at the archives. 02/22/2010 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting where George had some handouts for the group. The handouts included a technology tip on photo restoration with Adobe Photoshop, a preservation tip on how to clean soiled documents, a review of a pair of books on "what did they mean by that?" by Paul Drake, and a list of Canadian research web sites. George mentioned that the Massachusetts Archives will be having a free workshop on Irish Genealogy on Tuesday, March 9. George also announced that on our May 24th meeting we will be having a guest speaker from the National Archives in Waltham, MA, Janice Duffy will be speaking on naturalization and probate records at the archives. Then George took us on a tour of the reference section of the Shrewsbury Library to look up many of the non-genealogical reference books that can be used by genealogists when doing research to help fill in information or look up other historical context. 01/25/2010 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting with a few handouts from George and also some from Brian Lingard. George announced an upcoming Family History Day sponsored by Ancestry.com and NEHGS for February 20, 2010 at 9:00 AM at the Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA. George had a handout about natural disasters and genealogy which mentioned that you've come up with an ancestor who just seems to have disappeared from the records, then perhaps they did, perhaps they were killed in a natural disaster. Brian handed out a few article summaries including researching maiden names, researching with tax records, and online genealogy courses. 10/26/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting where George and others had some handouts for the group. George had one on the effort to save the 2010 US Census from being thrown out without being microfilmed. Apparently the current plan is to use the data on the forms to count heads and gather other statistical data but then dispose of the forms once that work has been completed. Thus there is a movement amongst genealogists to save the 2010 census and to make sure that the forms are microfilmed before disposal. You can get involved by writing or emailing your representatives in Congress, and also officials at the census bureau and at the National Archives. The remainder of the meeting was spent with Brian Lingard giving a demo of his new Canon Canoscan 8800F scanner. It is an all purpose scanner that can scan photos, film, slides, negatives, documents, etc. The scanner also came with some software that can enhance faded slides and photos, can remove dust and scratches from images, and can help to make hard to read documents easier to read. 09/28/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting where George had several handouts that he had collected during the summer. The handouts included FamilySearch Expands Canadian Census Collection (1851, 1861, 1871, and 1891), Research Recommendations: iTunes University, Warnings of Pitfalls in Writing Your Family History, Research Recommendations: TNA's Digital Express Service (UK Archives), and Research Recommendations: National Museum of American History Blog (several interesting articles now posted). George mentioned the story about the imminent closing of the Library of Michigan, which is known as key resource for genealogy in that part of the country. There is an ongoing petition drive sponsored by the Records Preservation and Access Committee. The governor of Michigan has announced that the Library of Michigan system will be closed in order to close a $2 billion shortfall in the states budget. If this proceeds, countless records and other resources will be "scattered to the winds". Unfortunately it appears that there is little that can be done to stop the closings. George also mentioned that the poet Bruce Andrews has recorded a five part reading with SPAC of the Longfellow poem Evangeline. The readings will air on SPAC TV at various times throughout the month of October. This may be of interest to some since the poem is about the Acadian diaspora. The remainder of the meeting was general discussion amongst the club members about any special finds or break-throughs made over the summer. A longer discussion involved using a scanner to scan collections of slides, photos, documents, etc., and some recommendations about how to store and organize the digital files. Brian Lingard will be bringing his new Canon scanner to the next meeting to demonstrate how the process works. 06/22/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting where George made a few announcements and passed out a few handouts. The key announcement involved the changes in the library's budget and how those changes affect our genealogy club. All library staffers will be required to work some of their hours reshelving books and hence this means that George will be available to lead the club meetings much less frequently. Thus we will need to "self lead" our club meetings if we want the genealogy club to continue. George has reserved our usual meeting place for the next year's worth of meetings (though they are now earlier at 7 PM - see the meeting schedule for details). Everyone should make an effort to make it to the first meeting of the season on Sept. 28, 2009 at 7 PM so that we can discuss and decide how we want to the club to be managed for the remainder of the season. 05/18/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was supposed to be a regular meeting. But George wasn't able to make it to the meeting due to a conflict with travel plans running late. So I gave a talk on "Beginning Your Genealogy", which I had prepared since the last meeting based on a suggestion from George. He had noted last time that we have been getting a steady influx of new people into the club, many of which are just starting out with their research. The talk itself was heavily influenced by Emily Croom's book "Unpuzzling Your Past: A Basic Guide to Tracking Your Family's Genealogy", and other articles that I've read in the major genealogy magazines such as Family Chronicle, Discovering Family History, and Internet Genealogy. While giving the talk, I invited folks to jump in at any point with their own comments, questions, and/or examples. Just about everyone mentioned some useful example or other helpful bit of advice. While writing this update I have just realized that I had forgotten to mention that people can beginners can also reference any one of the many excellent getting started tutorials that can be found on sites such as RootsWeb, FamilySearch, and Cyndi's List. The notes that I handed out at the meeting are now posted on the docs page. I have also updated and posted some HTML versions of the useful forms that are also found on that page. Our meeting in June will be the last meeting for the season. Then we will be off for the Summer. Hope everyone will try to come in for that last meeting of the Spring. 04/27/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting. George had several announcements about upcoming chapter meetings of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists (see the events page for details), including a free genealogy conference to be held on May 15 and 16. George had a few handouts including a piece on genealogy software ratings for both the PC and the MAC, a reunion checklist, some new Irish records that have appeared online, a research recommendation about being careful how you use the information found in the "tan" books of the pre-1850 Massachusetts Vital Records that were produced for most towns in the state at that time, and finally a flyer from the census bureau about the upcoming 2010 census. The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing non-census records, including a couple of newly added books to the library -- one on "Find Anyone Fast", and the other on "New England Court Records". 03/23/2009 - Special Guest Speaker Meeting Tonight's meeting featured a guest speaker, Marian Pierre-Louis, who presented her talk on "Finding the Gems in New England Cemeteries". Marian was a dynamic and engaging speaker who routinely presents various talks at area genealogy conferences. She talked at some length about the details and differences between conducting traditional and non-traditional cemetery research. Traditional cemetery research involves physically visiting the cemetery site and photographing and/or transcribing the headstones yourself. Non-traditional research is using the Internet to locate a cemetery and/or headstone information and photographs. The two best Internet resources for cemetery specific data to know about is www.findagrave.com and www.interment.net. Of special interest for New England cemeteries is www.gravematter.com which features only cemeteries in New England, but note that site does not appear to have been updated in the past couple of years. The site www.findagrave.com includes some 23 million records worldwide, with over 1200 just for Massachusetts. The site is entirely volunteer driven. You can enter data for an ancestor, then once entered, you can click on the "request photo" button to send a photo request to a volunteer who will take the photo of the headstone and then upload it to the site. The site www.interment.net does not include photos of headstones but does include lots of transcriptions. You can lookup potential ancestors via their surname. Note that the transcriptions appear to be for the entire cemetery and do not appear to be literals transcriptions of the headstones in all case. Marion concluded her talk by discussing some of the latest trends in cemetery research including using GPS to locate the cemetery and even headstones themselves, and two different methods of attaching a device to a headstone that contains family tree information for the deceased person's family (the device is read using a special handheld unit). Before her talk, George passed out a single handout that included several references to web sites that now include cemetery related research. He also had several announcements about upcoming conferences and other area genealogy talks (see the events page for details). 02/23/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting and George announced that the March meeting will feature a guest speaker talking about "Finding Gems in New England Cemeteries", and that the meeting will a bit earlier starting instead at 7:00 PM (see meetings page). He also announced that the April meeting will feature a planned round table discussion about non-census records. George mentioned that the Central Mass Regional Library System is undertaking a program to make vanity license plates available to librarians, see this website for details. George also mentioned that an upcoming meeting of the Worcester chapter of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists will feature talk by Patty Locke on "French Canadians and the Indians They Married", scheduled for March 7, from 10 AM to Noon, at the Auburn Public Library, Auburn, MA (see their website for more details). George only had a single handout this time on Research Recommendations: 2010 U.S. Census, which we discussed at some length. The planned questionaire is different enough from previous year's census that it appears that it will be of less value to future genealogists, see the U.S. Census Bureau's website for additional information, including samples of the questionaire and applications for becoming a census taker. 01/26/2009 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting. George mentioned that this year's New England Regional Genealogical Conference will held in Manchester, NH, from April 22-26, see http://www.nergc.org/2009/ for details. George handed out quite a few items this time, including:
George mentioned that the Massachusetts State Archives will be extending their hours through this Spring and Summer, and holding several free workshops from now until June 2009 - see their website for details. 12/15/2008 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting and George passed out some handouts on the following topics -- The Great Google Debate, Culture Shock, Rudy's List of Archaic Medical Terms, Care of Textiles, and Family Maps. George talked about how to obtain data from the 1940 and later census records. Access is limited and you must be a legal heir or legal representative. You can download a request form from the Census Bureau at this link. George also talked about a couple of newspapers that recently announced that they are placing back issue entries of obituaries online including the Times Colonist of Victoria, BC, Canada, and via the Jefferson County, Missouri library. Though not directly genealogical related, George mentioned that an upcoming talk at the library on March 2, 2009 will feature Peter & Deborah Lincoln, from Lunenburg, sharing their hilarious experience of visiting all 371 towns and cities in Massachusetts within a 9-month period. 11/24/2008 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a regular meeting and George passed out a handout that covered three topics -- Boston University Offers Certificate in Genealogy, Research Recommendation: Non-U.S. Spelling, and New Immigrants to Canada Database. George announced that a video of the last meeting's guest speaker talk on Acadian history and genealogy is now available in the library on DVD. The video is also being shown on SPAC over the next few weeks, a great opportunity for those who missed the meeting. The library has a membership to the American French Genealogy Society in Woonsocket, RI. The society gave the SPL a card which is good for 10 visits to the society's research library during the year. See George for details in case you would like to use the card. George mentioned that if we would like to keep having guest speakers we will need to come up with some creative means to help pay for the stipend that is often associated with a guest speaker, since there is no budget in these lean times to fall back on, and the Friends of the Library pool funds is getting stretched ever thinner. Contact George if you have any ideas to contribute. We then had a discussion about naming patterns and other problems that club members have been encountering. George suggested that we each think of, and perhaps research, a particular name related issue that we have encountered in our research to share with the group at the next meeting. 10/27/2008 - Special Meeting with Guest Speaker Tonight's meeting featured a guest speaker, Lucie LeBlanc Consentino, who presented a talk on "The Struggles of the Acadians in Exile". Lucie is an Acadian historian and researcher who also runs the Acadian and French-Canadian Ancestral Home website. Her talk on the Acadian deportations was quite interesting for anyone, even those without Acadian ancestors. 09/22/2008 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was the first meeting of the new season. There were several new faces present, including a young lady who had inherited a bunch of material from her grandfather and now she wants make sense of it all. There were a few handouts that George had collected over the summer including Spotlight: Cambridge Historical Commission Library, a Research Recommendation on Worldnames, a Research Recommendation on AskAboutIreland.ie, and an update on the club's blog (see below). The Shrewsbury Genealogy Club's Blog has been reconfigured to allow members of the club to post new entries as well as post comments to existing entries. The new mechanism uses plain old email messages to add new posts. Please come to a meeting or ask George for the handout sheet that explains how it works (I can't post the details here since it could lead to spammers flooding the blog with useless postings). George mentioned that a relatively new site Family Builder is now offering a DNA testing service for only $60, which is quite a bargain. The site combines their DNA database, your family tree data, and elements of social networking sites all into one site. 06/23/2008 - Regular Meeting Final meeting before summer break. George talked a bit about the trip to Ellis Island that was also part of the "Big Read" event. George also brought in an old ledger book sent to the Shrewsbury Library from the Chicago Library, it was a hand written ledger of the 1855 census for Shrewsbury, MA. It is not known how they ended up with it. There was a single handout about several websites useful for looking up ancestors who were involved in various military conflicts, also mentioned was the new site Footnote.com that is seeking potential subscriptions via libraries, they are offering a free trial period (contact George for login info). The meeting closed with our "traditional" munchies to help close out the year. 05/19/2008 - Regular Meeting Special meeting that was part of the "Beg Read" event, featuring readings by students about family histories. 04/28/2008 - Regular Meeting George gave out several handouts including Online Resources for New England Research, Assessing a "family" Bible, Scottish Roots, and Preservation Tip of the Month regarding packaging for CDs and DVDs. 03/24/2008 - Regular Meeting This week George was out of town in Minneapolis at a Public Library convention, so I volunteered to moderate tonight's meeting. George left me some notes on a couple of announcements and several handouts. On Saturday, April 12 (1:30 to 4:30 PM), here at SPL, Sandra Goodwin, president of MASOG, will presenting a talk entitled "Using Technology to Enhance Your Genealogical Research, or, If Your Grandkids Can Do It, You Can, Too!". See the events page for futher details. SPL's "BigRead" trip to Ellis Island will be on Saturday, June 7. Tickets will go on sale at SPL on Monday April 7 at 10 AM. The bus will leave the Senior Center at 6:30 AM, returning to Shrewsbury around 9 PM. See the events page for futher details. Tonight's handouts included an explanation of "What is 'second cousin twice removed'?", FamilySearch has add a genealogy guide for Finland research, Steve Morse adds indixes to NARA's latest Germans/Italians/Russions data, 1871 England and Wales census now complete on Origins Network, research recommendation on genealogical writing - guide to grammer and writing, ethics in publishing family histories (a look at copyright law), and the benefits of recording longitudes and latitudes for locations of genealogical interest. A surprise tonight was news from a new member, Marjorie Hubbell Gibson, about a new book that she co-authored with Mary Ann Hubbell entitled "Hubbell by Choice". The book was recently published by The Hubbell Family Historical Society through the print on demand publisher Lulu in both hardcover and softcover. The book expands upon on previously published genealogies of Richard Hubbell by presenting the ancestors of his three wives and goes back about three generations. The book also includes numerous historical notes and details to give life to the otherwise potentially dry genealogical details that are usually found in such books. An excellent product of nine years of research. 02/25/2008 - Guest Speaker - Ernest Caponi Tonight's meeting started off with George mentioning that he spent the day in the Berkshire's with a group of librarians visiting some area libraries, including the Forbes Library in North Hampton. Tonight's main feature was a talk by guest speaker Ernest S. Caponi about researching his Italian ancestors and the publication of his findings in a book called "Arthur and Rose". You can find his book on Amazon.com and also on AuthorHouse. There is even a podcast of a recent interview that was featured on WBZ's 60 Minutes. His talk was quite entertaining and full of personal anecdotes. His book basically chronicles his search for his Italian roots and provides a great deal of documentation of his findings. 01/28/2008 - Regular Meeting Happy New Year everyone!! Tonight's meeting featured George discussing Civil War genealogy research. He started off the evening by discussing some background on the war via his recent reading of "This Republic of Suffering" by Drew Gilpin Faust ( see it on Amazon). He went on to discuss "Eye of the Storm" by Private Robert Knox Sneden, a collection of diary entries and hand drawn illustrations by a Civil War soldier who spent time as a prisoner in a Southern POW camp. The rest of the evening was devoted to reviewing several web sites useful for performing genealogy research for Civil War ancestors (see the Links pages for some examples). 12/17/2007 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting featured several handouts including NEHGS online seminar series, Scottish handwriting and Nova Scotia research, and Bible records online. 11/26/2007 - Regular Meeting Started tonight off with a few handouts incuding turorial offerings from The National Archives of England and Wales on Paleography and beginners Latin; Worcester data records; gazetteers for Canadian place name research; a better world: book by book; and Newberry Library launches interactive online map for genealogists. The rest of the meeting was turned over to guest speaker Harry Richardson, a retired history teacher, to speak about interpreting old documents. He is a long time collector of many things and in particular old documents. He brought in a sampling of his collection for us to examine. After a few brief introductory words, he handed out copies for us to read and record what information we could get from each document. He had two groups of documents - one group of mostly "declarations of intent" for naturalization from the mid-1800's - the other group a mixture of indentures, letters, deeds, and other court documents from about 1750 to 1850. Overall this was very interesting and informative. It is much better to be able to hold these old documents and examine close up instead of seeing them in a book or online. Many of the documents have watermarks that are all but invisible when not viewed in person. 10/22/2007 - Regular Meeting No handouts tonight but several news updates including NEhisgen partnering with Ancestry.com and offering a 30% discount off Ancestry until Dec 31, 2007; Ancestry.com to be acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors; DNA testing to be offered from dna.ancestry.com both Y chrom and mitochondrial; Federation of Genealogists Society conference for 2008 to be held from 9/3 to 9/6. 09/24/2007 - Regular Meeting George had many handouts saved up from the summer break, some highlights included a free seminar from NEHGS on the Massachusetts Bay Colony; genealogy programs for the Macintosh; U.K. National Archives New Birth, Marriage & Deaths Now Online; Spotlight: Birmingham Public Library, Alabama; and Veterans History Project. Other news included that Shrewsbury Library now has a microfiche/microform reader which can be checked out, Nancy Gaudette at Worcester Library has now retired, possible tour of Antiquarian Society in Worcester, and a possible tour of state archives. 06/25/2007 - Regular Meeting (with Party) There were a few handouts tonight including Historic Congressional Cemetary, Washington, DC; online database of US WW2 missing in action and POWs; correcting misspelled names; citing your sources; genealogist's resources for interpreting causes of death; and new databases on NewEnglandAncestors.org. Then we has a party to celebrate another year of club meetings and to socialize a bit before the summer break. 05/21/2007 - Regular Meeting News from Eastman - FamilySearch.org has over 2 million rolls of microfilm, FamilySearchIndexing.com is seeking volunteers to help with indexing more of their records. 04/23/2007 - Regular Meeting George relayed numerous announcements including the need for all genealogists to write to their congressman about supporting funding for the National Archives to ensure that it stays open for research. Visit this link for more details. There were several handouts including Familysearch.org has hit 150 million names online, Abenaki history, Newspaper research online, Roots television, Standford's copyright renewal database, Haute-Saone Genealogy records online, and more. 01/22/2007 - Regular Meeting Happy New Year! Hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas. To start this meeting, George read a genealogy Christmas poem which was very clever (though a bit late). There were several handouts and an announcement about travel packages to Ireland from Celtic Quest. 12/11/2006 - Regular Meeting Gentleman from the National Archives served as a guest speaker tonight and gave a talk on "Beyond the Census - local history at the National Archives". His talk centered around using other types of records such as post Civil War taxes, bankruptcy, customs, passenger lists, Corps of Engineers, WPA, and GSA Surplus Property Disposal. He followed the history of a local company -- The Waltham Watch Company -- through these various records. Overall it was an interesting talk and certainly raised ones awareness of what other tools a researcher could bring to bare on their own research problems. 11/27/2006 - Regular Meeting George mentioned a few items that came across his desk recently -- Genealogy Bank has added newspapers as an online subscription database, a places in Canada handout, and memberships at the Godfrey Library are $35 per year. 10/23/2006 - Regular Meeting George mentioned some recent news articles from Eastman's Online Newsletter (there is a free edition and a plus edition for $15 per year. 09/25/2006 - Regular Meeting George gave a summary of his visit to the FGS Convention (August 30 - September 2, 2006), unfortunately he could attend only one day and then found that the exhibit hall wasn't open until the next day. But he managed to return on Saturday for a couple of hours to explore the exhibit hall. George handed out several flyers that he had accumulated from the summer -- Irish maps article, Irish location maps are now online, Norwegian resources, World Vital Records International Data Sets are now online, a free online index to Griffith's Valuation, and residential genealogy online. A new club member suggested that everyone introduce themselves and mention what nationalities and/or localities they are researching. While there was a fair amount of divergence, it was noted that several within the group are interested in French-Canadian genealogy. 06/26/2006 - Regular Meeting Last regular meeting before summer break. Note that meeting times for next year are now posted on the Meetings page. 05/22/2006 - Regular Meeting George discussed his recent trip to Brussels, Belgium to locate more information on one of his ancestors. Sadly it turned out to yield limited results, but he enjoyed the trip greatly. George handed out several flyers on the following topics -- Ancestry.com's new Card Catalog search tool, Ancestry.com's upcoming World War II draft card database, a catalog for the upcoming FGS/NEHGS Convention (see the Events page). Various club members discussed other topics including -- a free DNA testing service being offered through Swedish Ancestry Research Association (SARA) in Worcester, MA; ideas for planning a family reunion; and ideas for upcoming club field trips. 02/27/2006 - Regular Meeting George discussed his trip out to the Pittsfield National Archives and the Pittsfield Public Library. The Pittsfield Library has begun digitizing many old documents, the digital copies will be accessible only within the library itself. George also handed out several flyers on the following topics -- World War II Enlistment Records Online, MyFamily.com's Canadian Web Site, Searching the 1911 Canadian Census, Canadian Ship Manifests Online, Chinese Canadian Genealogy, and the Irish in New York City. George usually has spares of these handouts near his office. 11/28/2005 - Regular Meeting Some members discussed various recent discoveries and passed around copies of interesting items. George handed out a flyer on the BYU Family History Archive. Brian Lingard presented demonstrations of several Gedcom to HTML tools (see the Docs page and the Links page for details). 10/24/2005 - Regular Meeting
Tonight's meeting included several handouts and information tidbits
from George including Dick Eastman's email newsletter, bit torrent,
website 09/28/2005 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was the first after the summer break. George handed out several flyers, including club meeting calendar, 19th century immigrants to the U.S. online searchable databases, online swedish dictionary, Civil War soldier's graves online database, Boston passenger lists online, important Irish database now online at NewEnglandAncestors.org, and copyright information. We also discussed possible field trips, ideas included visiting the Worcester Public Library genealogy collection, National Archives in Waltham, National Archives in Pittsfield, and also the local Family History Center in Worcester. George mentioned that a couple of new books have been added to the library's collection -- Stones and Bones of New England, and 2005 Local Court and County Record Retrievers. Also of note is that the free genealogy software package Legacy 6.0 has recently become available. 05/15/2005 - Status Update Just a quick note to mention that the Meetings page has been updated with meeting dates through June 2006. Also George asked me to pass along a notice that Inge Lindblad is available for translating German script found in various documents, Bible entries, etc into English. Please contact George or myself for Inge's contact info. 09/15/2004 - Status Update Hope everyone had a great summer. I have a request since I can no longer attend meetings myself, could someone please send me an email describing what was discussed at the meetings so that I can properly update the new and meetings pages. Thanks in advance. 11/18/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was mainly focused on how to organize your research results, both on and off the computer. George handed out several sheets of useful tips and web links for further information (see links page). Other handouts included some notes about the Farber Gravestone Collection, photographic enhancement and restoration services from Just Black & White, and Beyond the Passenger List - Immigrant Ship Information (some links have been added to the links page). 10/09/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was lead by Ron, since George was out of town. 09/17/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general meeting that mainly featured some self-help. George handed out a few things that he had collected over the summer. A woman representing the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) spoke briefly about how the DAR might be of help to genealogists. 06/19/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting featured guest speaker Linda Merle who discussed the topic of Immigration. Immigration research breaks down into roughly three periods -- 1906 to present, 1820 to 1905, and pre-1820's. The 1906 to present period is mainly characterized by the availability of naturalizations records. Such records include "first papers" also known as declaration of intent, petition for naturalization, and certificate of naturalization. All records were centralized with the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. From about 1890 to about 1924, most people entered through Ellis Island, which has detailed records, that also include other ports. In 1820, Congress passed a law requiring all incoming ships to register a list of all passengers with customs. Major ports are indexed and available on microfilm at LDS and NARA. Unfortunately, names weren't always given, and even if they were, the person may have lied for a variety of reasons. Such lists must always be compared with the US census, and other county records. Before 1820, no standard records exist. Other records such as the census are poor. Must simply rely on church records, bible records, and cemetery records. 05/13/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general discussion of people's research issues and also George handed out several sheets of web links for such topics as French-Canadian genealogy, Australian research, colonial times, Pittsburg history project, and some info on the AAD records available via the National Archives web site. George also talked about attending a seminar at the Plymouth Library. They have a guidebook available on Plymouth resources for genealogy and local history research. He proposed to the group that we consider doing something similar for the Shrewsbury area. Further discussion on the proposed project will be deferred until Sep 03. In the meantime, we assigned ourselves homework where each club member should list any such resources that they know about and send them in to George. 04/10/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting featured two presentations. The first one was from Bob Sweet of Rock of Ages Memorials. He handed out copies of a workbook on family genealogy. If you would like a copy and didn't get one yet, contact George to see if he has an spare copies. Most of the meeting consisted of a talk by Charles Waid and his wife on their experience doing genealogy research in New England from the perspective of being a non-New Englander. They moved here for a couple of years from Washington state just to concentrate on genealogy research. Among the lessons learned is that they had to learn the "language" of New England. They also found that the towns here are "strange" and that libraries are quite helpful, but you need to know all the questions to ask. In particular, you must ask about everything, since they may not have the material in the library but will often know where it might be found. For example, in Marlboro the old tax records are held by a town historian. He also happened to mention that the Conneticut State Library has a very good and large genealogy collection. George announced that two new books have been added to the Shrewsbury Library -- Writing Family Histories and Memoirs, by Kirk Polking, and Middlesex Cemetaries (in reference) by the Middlesex County Genealogical society. Also in case you missed it, our club was featured in the March 21, 2003 edition of Community Advocate. The article was by Lori Berkey and featured a photo of club members and comments by several individuals. 03/11/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general discussion of various topics. George handed out several info sheets including one detailing several web sites of interest for French Canadian genealogy, on gedcom viewing software programs, and on understanding the art and symbols on tombstones. Brian Lingard passed around a few books that he brought in. We also discussed several people's research problems including where is Muggs Landing, Ethan Allen's ancestors, and which genealogy software to use. Also of note, I have added a members page and an events calendar page. If you would like to have a link to your family history web page, please send me the URL via email. You can also send along any event information that you would like to see added. 02/13/2003 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general discussion of various topics. We talked a bit about how people did at the National Archives field trip. We also discusses possible future field trips to either Family History Center Library in Worcester, or the Worcester Public Library. We also discussed the possibility of getting a "group" subscription to one of the on-line (pay) services such as Ancestors.com or Genealogy.com which would be accessed from the library. George then handed out numerous handout sheets detailing several web sites of interest (see links page) and also some information about an upcoming conference on Cape Cod (see events page). George also mentioned that he had recently acquired a set of CDROMs that would be useful to anyone researching their French Canadian roots. 02/04/2003 - Brief Update George has informed me that a journalist from an area newspaper will be interviewing him about the club and will be at the meeting next week to take a few photos. So everybody smile! Also I have posted a few useful forms that I created recently using MS Excel. Check them out on the docs page. 01/15/2003 - National Archives Field Trip Tonight's meeting was the field trip to the National Archives in Waltham, MA. We had about 17 or 18 people go on the trip tonight, quite a good turn out. Hopefully everyone found something that they were looking for. I for one definitely plan to visit the Archives again as soon as possible. Bring your ideas about what the next field trip should be to the next meeting in February. Some possibilities include the Worcester Public Library and the NEHGS headquarters in Boston. 12/16/2002 - Message from George Dear Shrewsbury Genealogy Club members & friends: I have set up our next "fieldtrip" to the National Archives in Waltham, Mass., on Wednesday, Jan.15, 2003. We will gather at the Library in time to leave at 5:30 pm, and will visit the Archives until closing time (9 pm). They can accommodate only 20 people, so please call the Library to sign up. The following people are already signed up; if you're on the list and don't want to go, please let me know so your space can be filled by someone else. And if you want to go and your name doesn't appear below, please call and sign up ASAP.
ALREADY REGISTERED: P.S. We were only 4 who showed up last evening for the regularly scheduled December meeting--and I had even brought some refreshments! Better luck next time, I guess! Happy holidays to all 12/12/2002 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general discussion of several different topics. We discussed the field trip to the National Archives in Waltham scheduled for Jan 15, 2003. If you want to attend, please contact George to secure your place. We'll gather at the Shrewsbury Public Library at 5:15 and leave by 5:30 pm. It should take us about 45 min. to reach the Waltham site. This would leave us about 2 1/2 hours to visit, be introduced to the Archives, and begin poking around (so bring your "research queries" with you!). We would leave Waltham when they close at 9 pm, and be back in Shrewsbury by about 9:45 pm. George mentioned a flyer for the National Genealogical Society Regional Conference, coming up on Feb 14-15 2003 to be held on Hilton Head Island. Contact George to pick up a flyer. George also mentioned a rental program with the National Archives that allows you to rent microfilms of census records. Contact George to pick up a flyer on the program. The next club meeting after the field trip is scheduled for 2/13/2003 Thu 7:30 PM. No agenda has been set for this meeting as of yet. As always, please let me know if you would like to anything added to this site. Also let me know if you find that any of the links are "dead". A site mirror is still in the works. 11/17/2002 - Message from George Dear Shrewsbury Genealogy Club members: I have spoken with people at the National Archives Regional Office in Waltham, about having us visit them. They're very willing to have us come, but NOT on a night that we usually meet. They're only open Wednesday and Thursday nights, and the 2nd and 4th Thursdays are always devoted to special workshops their own staff offer. So... if we want to visit them (and not compete with another program), we'll have to change the date of our monthly meeting. Here are the possible date changes; please let me know if you have any preference for one date over the others:
Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2003 [instead of Tues 1/14] We would follow a schedule similar to the one we used when we visited the State Archives last summer. We'll gather at the Shrewsbury Public Library at 5:15 and leave by 5:30 pm. It should take us about 45 min. to reach the Waltham site. This would leave us about 2 1/2 hours to visit, be introduced to the Archives, and begin poking around (so bring your "research queries" with you!). We would leave Waltham when they close at 9 pm, and be back in Shrewsbury by about 9:45 pm. If we car-pool (let me know if you're willing to drive your car), we could accommodate 20 people total. So, please let me know ASAP which date or dates are best for you. Then I'll set the event up with Waltham. As usual, please share this info with friends, etc., who do not have e-mail (and urge them to get e-mail ASAP!). Our next regularly scheduled meeting will be at the Library Thursday, Dec. 12, at 7:30 pm. See you then, and have a Happy Thanksgiving! 11/14/2002 - Regular Meeting Tonight's meeting was a general discussion of several different topics. We discussed several dates as possible times when we could do the field trip to the National Archives in Waltham. George will be polling people on the possible dates -- Wed 1/15/03, Thu 2/7/03, or Wed 2/12/03. George mentioned his meeting with a roundtable of librarians with an interest in genealogy. At the meeting an offer from the New England Historical Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is making a 100 page bibliographic desk reference book for just the cost of shipping to librarians (and others). George is taking orders, just send him some email if you would like a copy. The cost will be no more than $1.00 (or $0.50 if enough people order the book). The book was produced as part of the Genealogy Outreach program (see http://www.genoutreach.org/). George mentioned a web based course in genealogy available free of charge from the web site http://www.kovacs.com/. The catch is that you have to buy a book, the details of which are on the web site. The library is buying a copy of the book. More general discussion -- Scottish research, the War of 1812 resources for soldier listings, and local town maps with family names on each house. One club member mentioned an interesting seminar that she attend called Pajama Genealogy (see http://amberskyline.com/pajama/ for details). 10/15/2002 - Special Announcement! SECRETARY GALVIN ANNOUNCES FAMILY HISTORY DAY AT THE MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin invites you to join in the celebration of Family History Day, which will be held at the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum at Columbia Point on October 23, 2002 from 5:00pm to 8:00 pm. The reference room hours have been extended until 8:00pm. Staff and volunteers will be available to assist with your family research questions. Janis P. Duffy, Reference Supervisor and Genealogist, will present a 6:30pm lecture entitled, "Introduction to the Genealogical Resources at the Archives". This evening celebration with extended hours will provide the public with the opportunity to attend a lecture about the genealogical resources of the Massachusetts Archives and to utilize the records in the Reference Room. The lecture will be held in the Conference Room. Participation is limited and registration is required. You may confirm your attendance by registering in person at the Reference Desk, by calling 617-727-9268 or by email to commonwealthmuseum@sec.state.ma.us. Admission and parking are free and the Massachusetts Archives is handicapped accessible. -End- State House, Room 337, Boston, Massachusetts 02133 10/08/2002 - regular meeting Ron McKenzie did a repeat of his talk on "On-Line Genealogy Research". Thanks Ron! Topics included getting started, finding researched data, finding data sources, collaborating with others, and how to save your search results. 09/12/2002 -- First regular meeting! This meeting turned out to be a general discussion on what people want to do next. Also we talked about other possible field trip destinations -- including National Archives in Waltham, Worcester Antiquarian Society, New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston, Daughters of the American Revolution house (Worcester), and the Worcester Public Library. We have tentatively scheduled a field trip to the National Archives in Waltham for the Nov. 14 meeting. Members can meet at the library for car pools. Exact times and other details are still forthcoming. George mentioned a new book that has been added to the library's collection -- "Discovering the History of Your House". George also mentioned that you can find the book along with other genealogy books and videos under Dewey Decimal 929.1. Someone mentioned an open house happening in Worcester called the Salisbury Sampler to be held on Sept. 21 from 12-4 PM, where people several of the historic sites and other institutions that are resident along Salisbury Street will be open to the public. |