LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR MARCH 2007 March 1, 2007 ======================================================= SUMMARY OF EVENTS FOR MARCH 2007 (See details on a later screen.) - Family Tree Maker Group: Today, Thursday, March 1 - General Meeting: Tuesday, March 13 - Study Group: Thursday, March 22 - L-AGS Board Meeting: Tuesday, March 27 - The Master Genealogist Group: Saturday, March 31 (Note change from regular date!) ======================================================= FUTURE GENERAL MEETINGS Arleen Wood, Program Chairperson mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org March 13, 2007 - "My new book, 'Historic Livermore, California: A-Z'" - L-AGS President Anne Homan April 10 - Ann Parker - "Weaving Personal Histories of the Past Into Fiction" - Historical mystery author discusses how her personal journey into her family's history led her to write a mystery series set during the Colorado Silver Rush of 1880 - with the goal of making the past "come alive" on the page. Saturday, April 21, 2007 - All-day free seminar with featured speakers Steve Morse and Susan Johnston. A special event jointly hosted by L-AGS and the Livermore LDS Church. May 8 - Barbara Leak - "Searching for Soldier Ancestors" - Designed to stimulate ideas, this presentation reviews a variety of sources for military information and clues to military service, from colonial times to the present. Sources covered include compiled service files, militia lists, draft registrations, discharge registers, census records, pension rolls, burial records, official rosters, county histories, and newspapers. July 10 - Jane Lindsey - California Genealogical Society Library - Slide presentation of the new space of the CGS library, available resources and website for on-line research August 14 - Marge Bell - "Churches and Cemeteries" September 11 - Chuck Knuthson - "Newspaper Research: A Window to the Past" - Newspapers provide a window on the lives of our ancestors, including vital statistics, death notices and obituaries, news, photographs and illustrations, legal notices, and social events and "gossip." They are also a rich source of information on individual and community lifestyle. Do not overlook this valuable family history resource October 9 -Cath Madden Trindle - "But It's My Family: Copyright Issues for 21st Century" - This lecture offers a discussion of current US copyright law, international copyright, pending legislation and court actions and ethical issues of copying and sharing genealogical information electronically or in print. December 11 - Mary Dillon - "101 Ranch Genealogy" - The 101 Ranch, considered to be the largest diversified ranch of the early 1900s, played a major part in her father's childhood in Oklahoma. Oil, Wild West shows, currency, and much more interesting "stuff" were part of the 101. ======================================================= M A R C H 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 mailto:XXXX@wecare.net Date and Time: Today, Thursday, March 1, 7:30 p.m. Always the first Thursday of the month. Place: Room 3 (around the back), Almond Avenue School, 1401 Almond Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Liv-AlmondSchool.html At this meeting we will start with questions and suggestions about FTM so please bring those you have been storing up. We had a nice talk about Timelines by Kay Speaks at the last Study Group meeting. At our FTM meeting we will see how Timelines work in Family Tree Maker and when you might want to use them. 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 mailto: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 Arleen Wood, Program Chairperson mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 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: My New Book: Historic Livermore, California: A-Z Presenter: Anne Marshall Homan President of L-AGS Author Anne Homan, L-AGS president, will give us a quiz to see what we know about Livermore history before giving us the answers in a slide show presentation of what is in her new book. Anne began working on a history of Livermore in 2001. (It has just gone to the printer.) Although liberally illustrated, "Historic Livermore, California: A-Z" is much more than a picture book. She interviewed many residents and did more than five years of research. A number of her weekly columns in the "Independent" are based on the material in the book. Anne Marshall Homan earned her B.A. in English Literature at Gettysburg College, did graduate work in English Literature at the University of Colorado, and finished her Master's degree at Holy Names College. She taught in the English Department at Livermore High School for 20 years; her favorite subject to teach was any sort of writing. After retiring in 1996, she worked for five years on her first book, The Morning Side of Mount Diablo, which was published in June 2001. It is a local history about the little back country road where she lives with her husband, Don Homan, on Morgan Territory Road. Since the publication of that book, she has been the featured speaker for local historical and genealogical societies, for Rotary and Lions Club meetings, for the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, for Save Mount Diablo, for Livermore and Pleasanton libraries, as well as for several bookstores and senior citizen's groups. A major interest in Anne's life has been nature study. She enjoys hiking, singing, and reading. She also writes haiku poetry and is active in an organization that teaches and encourages haiku poets. She enjoys visiting with and childsitting her two grandchildren who live in San Ramon. Visitors are Welcome. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP Kay Speaks, Leader Contact Mail: mailto:study.group@l-ags.org [For a formatted version of this announcement, go to: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/TMG_Meeting_Mar07.doc ] **** NOTE CHANGE OF DATE FOR MARCH MEETING **** Meeting Date: March 31, 2007 (Normally, meetings are on the third Saturday of the month) Meeting Time: 9:00 AM - Noon (each meeting is like a mini-workshop) Meeting Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Conference Room, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html Instructors: Kay Speaks and Sue Johnston Topic: Modifying Tag Sentence Structures, http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Sentences.htm Sentence Structures are templates that control how the data in the various fields in tags - names, dates, place information, or the text of memos - are assembled into finished text when narrative reports are generated. The Sentence Structures supplied with the standard Tags are fine for many purposes. Most users of narrative reports soon find that they want to modify the text generated by these standard Tags. They may want to create custom Tag Types and find they need to create Sentence Structures so these tags will generate the desired text. This class covers some basic information about modifying and creating Sentence Structures. 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. 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STUDY GROUP MEETING Leader: Kay Speaks Contact Mail: mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org [For a formatted version of this announcement, go to: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/SG_Meeting_Mar07.doc ] Date: Thursday, March 22, 2007 Always the fourth Thursday of the month Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Topic: NewspaperArchives.com and Ancestry.com Online Newspapers NewspaperArchive.com claims to be the largest historical newspaper database online, containing tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date. The website claims NewspaperArchive adds one newspaper page every second, that's over 80,000 images a day, or about 2.5 million pages per month Ancestry.com claims it is the largest historical newspaper database on the Internet. They are committed to add 1,000 newspaper pages a day to its historical newspaper collection. Their collection is also fully indexed and searchable. You can search or browse newspaper titles from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. These newspapers date from the 1700s to 2001. Both of these subscription websites will be reviewed online at our March 22 Study Group Meeting. If you plan to attend the meeting and wish to request a lookup from the newspapers, please send an e-mail request to study.group@L-AGS.org by March 9. Please provide name, event, dates, location and any keywords to assist in the newspaper lookup. Research results will be provided at the meeting. Have a genealogy brick wall? Let the Study Group help you brainstorm your research options. 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. You can also post any suggestions for future Study Group topics. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ L-AGS BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 Time: 7:30 PM Location: 2639 Tahoe Drive, Livermore, CA Members are invited to attend meetings of the Board of Directors. =======================================================