THE LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR DECEMBER 2007 December 1, 2007 ======================================================= SUMMARY OF EVENTS FOR DECEMBER 2007 (See details on a later screen.) - Family Tree Maker Group: Thursday, December 6 - General Meeting: Tuesday, December 11 IMPORTANT - The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. - L-AGS Board Meeting: Tuesday, December 18 - The Master Genealogist: Thursday, December 20 - Study Group: No meeting in December ======================================================= A N N O U N C E M E N T S This month's general meeting on December 11 will be a triple-header: An exciting talk by Mary Dillon, a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of L-AGS, and the annual election of officers for 2008. Mary's presentation is described in the December Meetings section, and the other two events are the subject of separate announcements below. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ COME PARTY WITH US ON DECEMBER 11th In honor of our 30th anniversary, several members have worked hard on special exhibits and movies that you will enjoy. We will also have gourmet goodies to toast the occasion. For more details, see: http://www.l-ags.org/tracer/vol_27_4.html#Anniversary ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ELECTION OF OFFICERS FOR 2008 At the general meeting on December 11, we will hold the annual election for our Board of Directors. The nominating committee has proposed the following slate of candidates, with incumbents marked by asterisks: President Anne Homan* First VP, Programs Arleen Wood* Second VP, Membership Patrick Lofft* & Gail Bryan Recording Secretary Rose Marie Phipps* Corresponding Secretary Barbara Hempill Business Manager Larry Hale Other nominations may be made from the floor, provided the nominee is present or has approved in writing. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEW PUBLICATION Three members of L-AGS have recently transcribed and published early records of the Asbury United Methodist Church of Livermore. The authors are Gail Bryan, Kathy Chase and Jean Lerche. They located handwritten records of baptisms (1883-1930), marriages (1884-1930) and funerals (1918-1920) and transcribed them into digital form. In all, 621 individuals are named in the records. They included a short history of the church, a list of pastors who have served since the founding of the church, and an every-name index of the records. They then published their work on the Web and in book form. The Web posting is at: http://www.l-ags.org/Asbury/Asb_title.html . The printed book of 23 pages is available from: L-AGS P.O. Box 901 Livermore, CA 94551-0901 The cost is $7.00 for L-AGS members, $9.00 for others, with shipping and handling, if needed, costing $2.00. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SOME GIFT IDEAS There are two ways that L-AGS can help with your holiday gift-giving. If you have a relative or friend who is interested in genealogy, but is just getting started, you should consider a gift membership to L-AGS. Whether the recipient lives nearby or far away, the membership handbook, the quarterly Roots Tracer, and the instructive e-mail from members helping members are likely to get the person inspired and soundly started on the right track. A gift to the L-AGS library may be just the right present in some cases. A book bought with the donation can be inscribed with the your name and the name of the recipient. To prevent duplication of books in our library, and to meet the book selection criteria of the library, we recommend that any intended gift to the library be discussed with Judy Person at: mailto:library.chair@L-AGS.org ======================================================= D E C E M B E R M E E T I N G S Visitors are welcome free of charge at all of our meetings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Temporary Leader: Duncan Tanner at mailto:dntanner_105@comcast.net Date and Time: Thursday, December 6, 7:30 p.m. Always the first Thursday of the month. Place: Drive into the back parking lot at Old Almond Ave. School. As you face Almond Ave. we are in the building to the right in the front complex, room 5. Look for the FTM sign. Old Almond Avenue School, 1401 Almond Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Liv-AlmondSchool.html The meeting will be devoted to answering questions about FTM 2006/16. (I do not have FTM 2008). Please bring your suggestions to better use FTM as well as any questions you have that we, as a group, can help solve. 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, 1st Vice President, Program mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 NOTE: FOR DECEMBER ONLY, THE MEETING WILL START AT 7:00 PM. Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Pls-BethEmek.html Visitors are welcome at all of our meetings. A formatted version of this announcement can be found at http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/meeting_Dec11.doc . Guest Speaker: Mary Dillon L-AGS Member Founding Member of the Tri-Valley History Council Topic: "101 Ranch Genealogy" Mary kindly furnished the following description of her topic. She also included a brief biography. "The 101 Ranch belonged to my great-grandfather's sister and brother-in-law and was a major part of my Dad's childhood in Oklahoma. The 101 was considered to be the largest diversified ranch of the early 1900s. There were over 110,000 acres in cultivation. The ranch started a large Wild West Show that put Buffalo Bill out of business. They even had their own currency for the 3,000 people who worked on the ranch. The first oil well for Conaco Oil (at that time, Marland Oil Co.) was drilled on the ranch. The ranch started an early movie production company that later combined with some other independents to become Universal Studios. Some of the 101 cowboys went on to fame as movie stars - Tom Mix and Will Rogers, for example. There's a lot of interesting history that's part of the 101. "I have been a L-AGS member for 11 years. I am also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, tracing my father's family back to before the Revolutionary War. From then on, genealogy has been an addiction - though work often gets in the way! "I was born and raised in West Los Angeles, CA, am married and have a grown son and daughter and three grandsons. My career began in banking, then turned to tourism and personnel services. For the past eight years I have been the operations manager at Tri-Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. "I attribute my love of family history to my maternal grandmother who lived with the family when I was growing up. She would tell bedtime stories about growing up in a sod house in Nebraska Territory in the 1870s and 80s. I have always been the family collector of "stuff," including old papers, furniture and stories about early family. "My fascination with Oklahoma's Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch stems from my father's stories about growing up near the 101 and how "our side of the family is really ethical and boring," compared to the Millers!" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP Date: December 15, 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. - Noon (each meeting is like a mini- workshop) Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls- KollCenter.html A formatted version of this announcement can be found at http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/TMG_Dec07.doc . Topic: Customizing Your Source Citations Leader: Kay Speaks, tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org Instructors: Kay Speaks & Sue Johnston We continue with Terry Reigel's website tutorial on Customizing Your Source Citations, located at http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Sources.htm. TMG has a powerful and flexible system for recording your sources. It uses templates for recording information about your sources, then printing them in reports according to a set of rules you control. TMG's default templates mimic standard journal style sheets, but you can also customize these templates to suit your own needs. We will briefly cover general information, mechanics of modifying source types, general source customization, and we'll take a look at some of Terry's personal custom source types. If you have a copy of Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence or Evidence Explained, bring it along! If possible, please RSVP if you plan to attend the meeting, mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org . 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, thus 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 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. A free demo version of the software can be downloaded at http://www.whollygenes.com. For additional information, contact mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STUDY GROUP MEETING Co-Leaders: Kay Speaks and Dick Finn mailto:study.group@l-ags.org There will be no meeting in December because of conflicts with holidays. Have a brick wall that's driving your crazy? Need help brainstorming a particular research problem? Run out of ideas of where to research next? Have a great success story you want to share? How about a challenging research situation? Want to know how to research a specific ethnic group? Use the L-AGS Study Group Forum, mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org for sharing, helping, and brainstorming. That is what the L-AGS Study Group is all about! You can also post any suggestions for future Study Group topics. The Study Group Forum is NOT closed for the holidays. ======================================================= FUTURE GENERAL MEETINGS Arleen Wood, First Vice President, Program mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org ** December 11 - Mary Dillon - "101 Ranch Genealogy" - NOTE: the meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. for this month only. 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. UPCOMING PROGRAMS FOR 2008 Arleen Wood, First Vice-President, Program If you have suggestions for programs, please contact me at: mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org A formatted version of this announcement is online at: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/programs.doc ------------ January 8 "End Writer's Block: Write Your Family History One Byte at a Time" Sue Johnston ------------ February 12 "Ancestry: Review and What's New" Kay Speaks ------------ March 11 "Tradition and Tradition Breakers: One Korean Family Lineage, 720 A.D.- 1955" Hildi Kang