Best Reason to Throw a Party The best excuse to clean your house , I once read, is to ready it for a party . While cleaning house, I thought, is the same true about "writing it up"? Writing the stories of our ancestors and relatives is the culmination of our work. When we know that our place is welcoming to guests, we feel free to celebrate; telling stories of the past unlocks the lives of our families to all who hear them. Writing the stories is t he best excuse to research. Write while researching so that that your thoughts have somewhere to go‒directly into the notes, before they evaporate. Writing soothes the itch in the brain instead of sending us down rabbit holes. Now is a great time to get started writing, in preparation for Family History Month in October . Courtesy of the National Genealogical Society Writing tests our research and thinking It is while writing that holes in the story are exposed, inconsistencies glare, and leaps of logic fall flat. If our analysis...

Grumbles and Thanks  Online you will find both, as people discuss the new FamilySearch search interfaces, just in time for Family History Month. Change is always difficult! Fortunately they have created a new landing page to get users oriented.  New Landing Page In the image below, there is a circle around a big change, underlined one way to get back much of what you might miss from the old page, and pointed an arrow to a link to get a whole lot more help.  Circled: Birth or Death year - This can be a time-saver when you know only one date.  However, the underlined link is usually where you will start: MORE OPTIONS. MORE OPTIONS screen If you want Exact Search for any field, the arrow shows where to enable it. Usually this is only useful if you know precisely what you want to find.  The images above are the top of the new page. Scroll down just a bit, and there is more.  TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE SEARCHES on the left leads to a separate page called  Best prac...

By Barbara Mattoon To communicate with our members more frequently than a quarterly newsletter, the Board of Directors has decided to initiate a weekly blog post.  The blog will contain: Society news and announcements as well as current news items of interest to genealogists, Book reviews, interviews, suggestions for research, Articles about local locations of interest to those studying family history and Stories from our members and other Washington State Societies.   Most of you have already learned the benefits of belonging to a local society (or more than one).   However, I am sure that when you talk with others about the Society, they say “Why would I want to join the South King County Genealogical Society?   My family is not from this area”.   Here are a few things you could share to convince them to join: One of the most important reasons to join is to draw on the knowledge of a group of experienced genealogists.    I...