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Midwest Computer Genealogists
Volume 9 Number 12
The Midwest Computer Genealogy group usually meets the 3rd Saturday of
each month and but for December there will be no meeting this
year. January will be again at Foxwood Springs in Raymore.
Foxwood Springs is about a mile east of highway 71 on highway
58. Foxwood has a web site:
The last I heard was that Ken Sokel will be giving a program in
January on how to collect family history using a cam corder and how to
conduct interviews with family members.
Other groups:
For information on The Family Origins users group which usually
meets at the Blue Valley Library, 151st and Antioch. The new Blue
Valley Library address is 9000 W. 151st St please contact Jim Stout
at <mailto:jimstout@earthlink.com>jimstout@earthlink.com.
or Rowena Shaffer at snowtop@juno.com .
To check on the status of FOG use this URL: http://chezjacq.com/MCG.htm#FOG
To check on MCG use: http://chezjacq.com/MCG.htm
A TMG group (The Master Genealogist) Meeting is held the
4th Thursday of each month starting at 10:00 AM. The meeting is in
Hanson Hall of the Old Mission United Methodist Church located at 5519
State Park Road. This address is located at the southeast corner of
the intersection of Mission Road and Shawnee Mission Parkway.
[Fairway, KS] For questions contact Judy Revare at
913-491-1768 or email to judy@revare.com.
Combination Secretary and President's Comments for the month.
Have to try to get a short newsletter out this month even if we have
no meeting scheduled. I did not make the November meeting as we
had people in working on the foundation of the house plus they took
out the patio. The patio has been replaced but the whole area
around the house is now dirt and when it rains it will be mud to no
end. Was down to Branson last week and got in on the big snow
storm down there. Yes it can rain, freeze ice and also snow up
to 8 inches of white stuff. Fun to drive around in and because
of it we didn't get to see the Christmas lights in Branson. Had
my sister and her husband along from Minnesota as well as my cousin
from Alberta, Canada.
I understand that the meeting in November was well attended and I also
got an email from the Marjorie Slavens, who was the speaker and she
sent along a write up of her talk and I will include it at the end of
the newsletter.
Are you a paid member for the current year of MCG, you can tell per
records I have by looking at your email address on this newsletter you
get. In front of your name you will see a P-3 if you have
given the treasurer you membership dues. I am still sending the
newsletter out to all I had on the records from last year if they have
a valid email address and I find that some are now bouncing each month
and those will be removed from the list. If you wish to renew
please contact the treasurer who I have listed in the officer list at
the end of the newsletter.
By the way my email address can be shorten to what I have listed in
the officer contact listings. Worldnet changed their programing
so the worldnet can be dropped but it will continue to show in my
email as there is to much to change in the computer for the Internet
to get the computer generated things changed. I also got a
message from Worldnet telling me they had a anti virus checker on line
now to stop all virus which will go a long way to eliminate them if
all servers but one on their networks and according to some
advertising I got from them they say you can save the cost of an anti
virus program in your computer. Another comment I will make is
that the font size is changing at now and then as it depends on
whether I copied and pasted it in the newsletter or wrote it in into
it from Eudora which I use for my email on the computer. the one
thing it lacks is an easy way to control the font size and type as you
type away.
The other day I got a call from Bannister Mall asking if we were
coming back to the mall with our meetings and I told her we would have
to wait and see and she told me that if we decide to do that to give
her a call to schedule it in.
With that will say Seasons greeting to all and see you next year.
Don
Food for thought this time of the year: From email list.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof
overhead and a place to sleep ... you are richer than 75% of this
world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a
dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness ... you are
more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you
are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest,
torture, or death ... you are more blessed than three billion people
in the world.
If your parents are still alive and still married ...you are very
rare, even in the United States.
If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly
thankful ... you are blessed because the majority can, but most do
not.
If you can hold someone's hand, hug them or even touch them on the
shoulder ... you are blessed because you can offer healing touch.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in
that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more
blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at
all.
Below is the summary of the talk given by Marjorie Slavens that she
forwarded on to me to pass out to the members.
GENEALOGY ON THE INTERNET by Marjorie Slavens
I. Organizing your genealogy files
There are many genealogy
sites on the Internet, some of which are of general interest and some
of which are sites related to individual research. It is
important to organize your Favorites into folders so your list of
Favorites is not so long you cannot find the individual site for which
you are looking.
For this presentation, I
organized my Favorites into the following folders
1. U. S. GenWeb www.usgenweb.org
A. U. S. GenWeb Home
Page
B.Text Links to States.
2. Ancestry.com
B. 1920 census
C. 1930 census
D. U. S. census
E. Birth marriage and death
records
3. Genealogy
A. Genealogy.com Home Page www.genealogy.com
B. GenForum www.genforum.com
C. Family Finder
D. LDS Home Page www.familysearch.org
4. Libraries
A. North Branch of
Mid-Continent Public Library
B. Kansas City Public
Library
C. DAR Library
5. Government
A. National Archives www.nara.gov
B. Government Land Office www.glorecords.gov
C. Library of Congress www.loc.gov
5. GenCircles www.gencircles.com
For this presentation, I
also had on the Favorites the U S GenWeb site for Henry County,
Missouri and the GenForum site for the Eppright family.
II. Free Genealogical Sites
1. U. S. GenWeb
This was the first major
site we used. We placed on our favorites the states we usually
visited, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and
Oklahoma, but the states rapidly increased. Within the state
links, we chose major counties in the states for our research.
For example, in Missouri, Jasper, Henry, Cooper, Audrain, etc.
U S GenWeb is manned by
volunteers, and some sites are better than others. Henry County,
Missouri is an excellent site with most cemetery listings and many
tombstone pictures. For my family, there were 35 hits on the
site for Slavens, some of which were obituaries we had furnished but
others furnished by the volunteer or other people. The search
feature on such a site is very beneficial.
2. GenForum and GenCircles
Both GenForum (www.genforum.com)
and GenCircles (www.gencircles include bulletin boards where
researchers can exchange information. Both sites were developed
by the same person. GenForum notifies a submitter by E-mail when
someone has placed a response after the query on the message
board. You can search your family surname forum or request that
a new surname forum, such as my mother's Eppright forum, be created.
GenCircles is relatively
new. The site promises not to sell or distribute any information
placed on the site. You may register for free, and the site is
free. Besides the "forums", which are called clubs on
this site, you can upload family files. E-mail addresses are in
graphics to help avoid spam to users. One excellent feature is
the "Smart Match", where you can quickly search the entire
site to see if someone else's data base includes each of your family
members. Some information in family files is not correct, but
that is true of files on almost all sites, and one must verify the
information.
3. RootsWeb
I did not discuss RootsWeb,
which is the largest free site and is probably better known to most
researchers.
4. Libraries
The library sites are
excellent to determine what books and materials are in the
library. For local libraries, it is possible to order books on
line and have them delivered to your local library.
5. Government sites
The National Archives has
made their site extremely user-friendly for people who are visually
impaired. Many records are on the site and other records are
listed in indices and can be ordered.
The Government Land Office
(www.glorecords.gov)
has original land patents. Some of the records have been scanned
and are on the site. The records are very helpful for placing
people in a given location at a given time, and the scanned images are
from original sources.
III. Paid Membership Sites
1. Ancestry.com
Ancestry is generally a
good site. Memberships may be taken in parts of the program,
such as Census, Historical Newspapers, Britain, Ireland, Scotland and
Wales, etc. or in the entire program. The full membership is
about $200.00. The Census section was our first choice because
it has all census images from 1790 to 1930. There are no indices
for 1870, 1900, 1910, and the 1930 index, which is an every-name
index, is only complete for 13 states and the District of
Columbia. All indices are to be complete by April 1, 2003, a
year after the census was released to the public.
The 1920 census is
completely indexed for heads of household and the index listings are
linked to the images.
There is a data base
listing for each state, and we looked at the Missouri site.
Military records from the
Revolution to World War I are available, and there are scanned images
of many pension applications. There are also family files which
have been uploaded to the site.
2. Genealogy.com
The site is not really as
user-friendly as Ancestry. The major focus of the home page is
to sell CDs or memberships. The census images are scanned in
black and white and are clearer than the gray-scale images in
Ancestry. There are images for from 1790 to 1870 and there are
some indices, but most of these are only available on CD. The
1900 census is fully indexed by head of household. We also have
the World Family Tree, Immigration Records, and Genealogy Library as a
part of our membership
Finally, I want to
apologize to those of you who could not read the text. I do not
have to worry about reading the screen and did not know where the text
size was located. For your information, it is on View, Text Size
in Internet Explorer. It was set on smaller, with the options
being largest, larger, medium, smaller, and smallest. Next time,
I will know, and I hope this helps any of you who want to change your
text size in the browser.
Contact members of the MCG group are as follows:
President---------- Donald Bjuland
816-461-4948 dbjuland@att.net
Vice President---- Judy Revare
913-491-1768 judy@revare.com
Secretary------------Open---need help on note taking
Program chair----- Have group but no chairman named as of yet.
Treasurer----------- William Hawkins---913-631-6294 bihawk@earthlink.net
Members are as follows:
(James E. Stout) <mailto:jimstout@earthlink.com>jimstout@earthlink.<mailto:jimstout@earthlink.com>com
(George Wiszneauckas) geowis@aol.com
(Rowena J. Shaffer) snowtop@juno.com
(Ruth MaGill) armagill@worldnet.att.net
Kathleen McPhilliamy jrmcp@earthlink.net
Group dues are still $12 a year and the year runs from June 30th to
July 1st of the following year. New member dues are prorated at
a dollar a month for balance of club year remaining.
Dues are due and you may send your dues payment to
William Hawkins
5436 Flint
Shawnee, KS 66203
Don Bjuland (editor) dbjuland@att.net
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