================ LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR JUNE 2006 June 1, 2006 ======================================================= Summary of Events for June 2006: - Family Tree Maker Group: - Today, Thursday, June 4 - General Meeting: Tuesday, June 13 - Study Group: Thursday, June 15 - L-AGS on TV: Thursday, June 15 - The Master Genealogist Group: Saturday, June 17 - Opening of L-AGS booth at the Fair: Friday, June 23 - L-AGS Board Meeting - none in June because of a conflict with our work at the Fair. ======================================================= Future General Meetings June 13, "Breaking Down Brick Walls," Margaret Toth July 11, "Genealogy, History and Horse Medicine," Larry Mauch August 8, "What Can I Learn from DNA Testing?" Doug Mumma September 12, "Immigration," Sue Johnston October 10, "Scotch and Irish Records," Cath Madden Trimble November 14, "Chinese Genealogy," Kay Speaks ======================================================= A N N O U N C E M E N T S GRAND OPENING DAY AT THE FAIR ON JUNE 23 Jane Southwick, President Our genealogy booth at the Alameda County Fair opens on June 23rd, only three weeks away. So far we have had a gratifying signup by volunteers from other local genealogy and history societies, but a disappointing response by L-AGS members. It is important to sign up well in advance of the times you want to volunteer to make the distribution of parking and gate passes easier. We have a signup sheet on the Web to make it easy for you to volunteer. The address is http://www.L-ags.org/fairbooth Please keep this address as private as possible to safeguard it from Internet vandals. It should not be given out freely. One of the advantages of working at the fair is that volunteers are issued free tickets and parking passes for the day they volunteer. Fair booth staffers in previous years have found a great deal of satisfaction in talking to fairgoers and watching them discover something about their ancestors. There will be three computers, probably two PCs and one Mac. All will have live Internet connections. On the Web signup sheet there are slots for greeters. We have noticed that some people work better greeting the fairgoers, asking them to put a pin in a map to see where they were born, and writing down information about their family which helps the person sitting at the computer to find information on the Internet. We offer instruction for people who choose to work at the computer. This involves learning about the different Web sites on the computer, such as birth records, Social Security records, census records, etc. The classes will be given the first 3 Mondays and Saturdays of June, at 10 am, at the home of Gail Bryan (gailvb@aol.com). If another time would be better, she can be contacted and other arrangements can be made. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SEE US ON TV! Jane Southwick, President Dick Finn and I were taped by TV Channel 26 the evening of May 31, talking about L-AGS and genealogy. The program is Grass Roots Issues, hosted by Barbara Hickman. The show that was taped that night will be shown Thursday night June 15th, Channel 26, 7:30 P.M. Unfortunately, the broadcast time on June 15th conflicts with the Study Group meeting, so please tape the show and still come to the meeting. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEW L-AGS BUSINESS CARD Jane Southwick, President L-AGS has a new business card, summarizing the essen- tial facts about our society and giving contact information. Members are encouraged to carry a few of the cards to hand out to persons who show an interest in genealogy. The membership table will have them at general meetings, and I will carry some to give out at other meetings. We hope you find them useful. ======================================================= J U N E M E E T I N G S Visitors are welcome free of charge at all of our meetings. ======================================================= FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Leader: Dick Finn at XXXX@wecare.net Date and Time: Today, Thursday, June 1, 2006 - 7:30 p.m. Always the first Thursday of the month. Place: Room 2, Almond Avenue School, 1401 Almond Avenue, Livermore Map to the school: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-AlmondSchool.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NOTE For tonight's meeting, please park in the back of the school. They will be having graduation exercises at the school and parking in front will most likely be very hard to find. We will have the back door to our meeting rooms open. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We will be showing another section of the Official Family Tree Maker Training Video. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions. Bring your questions (on any version of FTM, any and all skill levels welcome) and let us help each other find answers. Most of our group are FTM users (from beginners to experts) who discuss problems and solutions, share successes, answer questions, and in general help each other with the Family Tree Maker genealogical software. All persons interested or potentially interested in Family Tree Maker are invited to attend. For information on our group please call Dick Finn at 925- XXX-XXXX or e-mail him at XXXX@wecare.net. Contact Dick for information about topics to be discussed. Visitors are welcome and there is no charge to attend. Bring your questions, comments, and if you have a laptop with FTM loaded (any version) and/or the FTM Handbook, you might bring them. Please avail yourself of the L-AGS FTM e-mail forum at mailto:ftm.group@L-AGS.org to post questions, answers and comments. ======================================================= MONTHLY GENERAL MEETING Barbara Huber, Program Chairperson mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 7:30 p.m. Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Pls-BethEmek.html Topic: "Breaking Down Brick Walls" Speaker Margaret Toth President of the Tracy Area Genealogical Society Margaret is a member of DAR, and is currently President of the Tracy Area Genealogical Society. She has been doing genealogical research for over 20 years. As a former vice president of an IT contractor for NASA, she uses her creative thinking skills used in programming for her research methods. Margaret has been teaching various genealogical subjects since 1994. Her primary skills are U.S. research. Visitors are welcome. ======================================================= STUDY GROUP MEETING (To view the description of the program in nicely formatted Microsoft Word, download the file from: http://www.L-AGS.org/Study_Group.doc ) Co-Leaders: Kay Speaks, Dick Finn, and George Anderson Date: Thursday, June 15, 2006 Always the third Thursday of the month. Time: 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map to meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Program A Blueprint for Genealogy Research on the Internet Presenter Kay Speaks My presentation is based on Kimberly Powell's Guide to Genealogy: http://genealogy.about.com/od/basics/a/internet.htm I recall meeting Kimberly Powell at one of the national genealogy conferences some years ago. She was introducing her new website, www.about.com, to genealogy researchers. Over the years, I've watched her website grow and have especially stayed tuned to her genealogy topics. This month we're looking at Kimberly's outline for researching a new family tree. For each step in your research, Kimberly provides a personal recommendation of online databases. With the use of the Internet, we'll visit some of these databases. A listing of these websites will be provided. If you have a favorite website you would like to include in our list, please send it to study.chair@L-AGS.org not later than Sunday, June 11. A research log will be provided to attendees to keep track of which sites you've searched and what you did (or did not) find. A source citation form will also be provided. Kimberly Powell's 10 Steps for Finding Your Family Tree Online: Step 1: Begin with Obituaries * Online obituary databases * Online newspapers and city, town, county locators Step 2: Dig Into Death Indexes * Online death indexes Step 3: Check Out the Cemetery * Online cemetery databases Step 4: Locate Clues in the Census * Quick review of wildcard search tips Step 5: Go On Location * USGenWeb * WorldGenWeb Step 6: Visit the Library * Links to find local libraries * Local historical and genealogy societies Step 7: Search Message Boards * RootsWeb genealogy mailing lists * Ancestry/RootsWeb message boards * Yahoo Groups and Google Groups Step 8: Ferret Out Family Trees * Kimberly's Top 10 pedigree databases Step 9: Search for Specialized Resources * Specialized genealogical information * Military service, occupations, fraternal organizations, school or church memberships Step 10 Stop by the Subscription Sites - - - - - We will continue the practice of trying to help with your brick walls. If you would like help, please bring 20 copies of a one-page handout summarizing the problem. Bring the receipt and you will be reimbursed for the cost of the copies. - - - - - Don't forget to use our L-AGS Study Group forum for any genealogy topic discussion or computer interest question. L-AGS is blessed with people willing to share their knowledge! E-mail the forum at: mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org Specific questions? Please send them to study.group@L-AGS.org prior to the meeting. ======================================================= TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP (To view the description of the program in nicely formatted Microsoft Word, download the file from: http://www.L-AGS.org/TMG.doc ) Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006 (We meet every third Saturday of the month.) Time: 9:00 a.m. - Noon Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html Leader: Kay Speaks, mailto:tvtmg.chair@L-AGS.org Instructors: Kay Speaks (presenter) & Sue Johnston (vacationing) Program: TMG Basic Concepts: A Metaphor to Help Understand the Basics & Flags - the "Other Tag" In May, we had the largest attendance since we've started our Tri-Valley TMG Users Group meetings! Thank you for those who attended. We hope to see you again in June. Last month we started our TMG learning cycle from the beginning. We decided to use Terry Reigel's website - Terry's TMG Tips, http://reigelridge.com/tmg. This is a wonderful site with lots of tips and tutorials which is constantly being updated. Terry has given us permission to use any part of his website for our sessions. As Sue Johnston will be traveling in June, we've decided to postpone the next tutorial section on Sources. Sue is extraordinary when teaching TMG's Sources and has many wonderful examples to share. Instead, our topic will be from Terry's "TMG Basic Concepts" sections, "A metaphor to Help Understand the Basics" http://reigelridge.com/tmg/basics.htm and "Flags - the "Other Tag" http://reigelridge.com/tmg/basics-flags.htm Don't forget to print these two topics and bring them to our meeting. We encourage you to share your customized "Flags" and how you use them within your TMG software. About our meetings: With the aid of a digital projector, Kay and Sue work as an instructional team. We discuss, demonstrate, and brainstorm best practices of the software. We use a hands-on method, so you learn TMG's features by actually entering samples of the lesson into a class TMG database. Each monthly session is like a mini three-hour TMG workshop. Guests are always welcome at our meetings. Accommodations for laptops are available. If you have a laptop, bring it with you to the meeting and a copy of the group's practice database will be provided to you. A feature of our teaching sessions is the ability to connect up to 15 laptops to the digital projector so attendees can share their ideas and projects. It also allows us to provide custom instruction to the individual user. A laptop is not a requirement as the lesson will be projected. If you can't stay for the entire 3 hours, come and leave early. TMG questions not specific to all attendees will be addressed in the later part of our meeting. Please bring samples of your problem if possible. We hope to see you at the next meeting! A free demo version of the software can be downloaded at http://www.whollygenes.com. For additional information, contact tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. =======================================================