"Helping You Find & Tell Your Family Stories"; generated by Bing Image Creator July 21 July 2024  We often ask for volunteers; after all, South King County Genealogical Society is an all-volunteer organization. Perhaps we don't focus enough on how we can help YOU . Incorporated in 1984 as "educational in character and  devoted exclusively to furthering genealogical research and interest in family and local history [1], we are here for YOU.  How Can We Help YOU Find and Tell Your Family Stories? Education When asked to suggest what they wanted to present to readers, here are some of the responses from your Board members:  (Barbara Mattoon) " SKCGS offers educational opportunities for a variety of genealogical interests and experience levels." Small sample of our educational offerings. SKCGS.org for details Entry level classes  offered to the community through the King County Library System . The Family Tree Maker User group discusses features of the ...

 THEIR HOME IN AMERICA Kristoffer Ulleland and Marianne Fitje grew up on neighboring farms in Naustdal.  Norway. They married there in 1888. Norway’s economy was hit hard by a  “depression” in the 1880s and early 1890s.   [ 1  ]   It was not easy to make a living so  Kristoffer and Marianne began to think about going to America. Kristoffer’s  brother, Olai, had emigrated to the Seattle area a few years earlier. He wrote  letters home telling of the availability of land and the abundance of work  available at good wages for those willing to work hard. On April 27, 1890, Kristoffer and Marianne said goodbye to their home and  traveled to Bergen, Norway. They spent a few days there visiting with Marianne’s  sister Helle. On May 3, they left Bergen for England. From England they traveled  by steamship, arriving in Halifax after 13 days on the Atlantic Ocean. They sailed  on down the St. Lawrence to Quebec then traveled ac...

White River Valley Museum The White River Valley Museum - photo courtesy of Barbara Mattoon Auburn, Kent, Algona, and Pacific Those of us who live in South King County are fortunate to have many local museums and historical societies that hold records and artifacts relating to this area. One of these repositories is the outstanding White River Valley Museum in downtown Auburn. Its collection covers the communities of Auburn, Kent, Algona, and Pacific. Exhibits The interactive exhibits include a room from The Tourist Hotel which was located just down the street from the Auburn Depot; The Northern Clay Company, later known as Gladding McBean which used clay from the Green River Valley, artisans from Vienna, and laborers from Auburn to produce the architectural terra cotta that still adorns high-rise buildings in Tacoma and Seattle; a Muckleshoot Indian canoe, and a tour through a replica of Auburn downtown in the 1920s. You can learn about the immigrant experience by visiting a Japanese-...

  Tucked away on the second floor of this unimposing building at 730 S 225 th Street in downtown Des Moines, WA,   is a treasure trove of South King County History. Historical Background It is believed that the Duwamish and Muckleshoot Native American peoples came to the present location of Des Moines to dig clams and spear salmon for their winter food supply, but that they did not have permanent camps at this location.  Captain George Vancouver passed by on May 26, 1792.  The next recorded discovery was made by explorers for the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1824. [1]  The Wilkes Expedition charted the coastline in the vicinity of the present site of Des Moines May 18, 1841. [2] The First Settlers John Moore probably arrived in the present location of Des Moines late in 1863, however, he failed to file for his Homestead Patent five years later. By mid-1872, he had filed and received his Patent.  It is thought that he was born about 1831 in Ireland and...

[1] Happy Birthday, George! George Washington was born on February 11, 1731. But wait, you say, “I always thought his birthday was February 22.” Well, after 1752, it was. When George was born in the Colony of Virginia in 1731, Great Britain still used the Julian calendar. The Julian Calendar had to be replaced because “it did not accurately reflect the time it takes the Earth to circle around the sun.” [2] By 1752, September had only 11 days. In 1752 Great Britain and its colonies adopted the Gregorian Calendar, which added 11 days to the months of January through March, and started the new year on January 1, rather than March 25. This changed George’s birthday to February 22, 1732! George did not seem to care. There are records of him celebrating his birthday on February 11, some years, and on February 22, in other years. Double Dating in Genealogy When you get back to the eighteenth century in your genealogical research, you may begin to encounter double dating. For instanc...

  Image courtesy Pikist We say repeatedly, “Don’t neglect books, not everything is online or ever will be.” But what do we do when the libraries are closed? Books.google.com Good news! You can still search for books. Perhaps the source best known by the public is Google Books. According to the New York Times, Google has scanned over 25 million books. [1] I entered “History of the Ball Family in Virginia” and got hundreds of books and journals. I need to refine my search to determine which Ball family. Ancestry.com Ancestry.com   has also published books. Going to Search > Card Catalog > Stories Memories & Histories and entering the keywords Ball and Virginia brought up 17 books including information about the Ball family in Virginia. The first hit was a book containing a biographical sketch of Mrs. Mary Ball Washington, the mother of George Washington. Reviewing the list, I saw others I need to review as I research that line. FamilySearch.org FamilySear...

Genealogy Education: Institutes If you have attended more than a few genealogy society meetings, you have undoubtedly heard the terms GRIP, SLIG, Gen-Fed, or IGHR mentioned.   Either you just let the terms float by, or you were reluctant to ask what they meant. These terms describe genealogical institutes.   A genealogy institute is not the same as a genealogy conference. Genealogy institutes offer intensive courses usually lasting four and one half to five days. Conferences offer five to seven hour-long presentations daily for three or four days. The presentations may cover many different genealogy topics. Several week-long “Institutes”   are held each year. Typically, the courses are intended for intermediate to advanced genealogists.    Until 2020, these institutes were in-person events held in a hotel, conference center, or on a college campus.   Some conferences and institutes were canceled this year due to the coronavirus, others converted to ...

Where We Have Been Back in February 2020, we at SKCGS were proud of ourselves because we had moved our newsletter from a quarterly print publication mailed to our members and friends, to a weekly blog posted on our website and emailed to members and friends.  We had taken the unprecedented step of accepting credit card payments online! Where We  Are On March 1, news that the novel Corona virus, which up until then was something we had read about or seen a news story about on TV in Wuhan, China, suddenly was here, in our country, in King County, in Kirkland , for heaven’s sake.   Just to be safe, the March Board and General Meetings were canceled.   Surely this would be under control in just a short time!   At about this time, our wise members, Valorie Zimmerman and MaryLynn Strickland realized that our members were not comfortable attending in-person meetings and began investigating online meeting options. An online platform was selected, and...