1 While unofficially marking the start of summer, Memorial Day is a national holiday devoted to honoring American war dead in all conflicts.  Many of us will remember and honor other loved ones.  What could be a more important day for genealogists? I had the privilege of visiting Arlington National Cemetery last weekend.  Nearly 5000 people are expected to visit on Memorial Day.   American flags will decorate the graves and niches of the 400,000 fallen heroes and their family members resting there.  Local ceremonies will be held on Monday at Tahoma National Cemetery at 1 pm, at Renton Memorial Park at 1 pm, and at the Auburn Veteran’s Memorial at 11 am. The Kent Historical Society will be open 12:00 – 4:00 pm Monday for a special observance of Memorial Day. ------------------------ Reminder:  Military records on My Heritage.com and Fold 3 are free to research today. I am pleased to announce that MaryLynn Strickland has accepted the position of SKCGS Blog Editor effectiv

While you are enjoying the beautiful May flowers, take some time to advance your genealogy skills and research. The Family Tree Maker Users Group will meet on Saturday, May 4 , from 10:15 – 11:45 at the Auburn Public Library.  Contact Winona Laird, education@skcgs.org or Dave Liesse, at ftm-group@skcgs.org for more information. The excellent attendance at the April General Meeting featuring a program on DNA shows that there is a lot of interest among our members in this topic.  To learn more, consider attending the Genetic Genealogy/DNA Interest Group on Monday, May 13 , from 1:00 – 3:00 pm at WAPI, 28815 Pacific Highway South, Suite 7A, Federal Way .  The topic is “GEDmatch Analysis: One-to-One and One-to-Many DNA Comparison Tools”. For more information go to the GG/DNA tab under Interest Groups at skcgs.org. Have you ever done research with a group of genie friends?  It’s fun! Try it at the Research Group, Friday, May 17 , from 1 – 3 pm at the Kent Family History Center, 12

By Valorie Zimmerman 2018 was a great year for South King County Genealogical Society, and we anticipate 2019 will be even better. We began the year by launching our new website at http://skcgs.org . Our mail list at Rootsweb was down for awhile, but is back. Our Seminar was tremendous, and we're planning another for 2020. We have had some great speakers at our regular meetings, we've placed for our formerly traveling library at the Kent Family History Center , have renewed our contract with the King County Library System to present our book collection to south King County at the Auburn Library , and have many thriving special interest groups. We had a very successful Intermediate Genealogy class following our 2018 meetings, taught by Winona Baird. Winona also began offering our Research Workshops in 2018. Our Board of Directors meets monthly at the Auburn Fire Station; all meetings are open to SKCGS members. Volunteers staff Genealogy Help tables monthly at three so

By  Barbara Mattoon Dave Liesse presented “Lesser Known Features of Family Tree Maker” at the Family Tree Maker Users Group November 3.  It was a fast paced, fact-filled presentation.  Dave has agreed to write it as a blog post to be published December 17, 2018. The Board of Directors held its regular meeting November 6.  In addition to regular business we held a round-robin discussion on how each of us could personally recruit and retain members.  Everyone made a commitment to an action that they would personally take.  You will notice that the loop is now on our web page.  Those who staff Library Help Desks committed to write personal notes to those they helped, and the President committed to write personal notes to guests attending the general meeting.  Both of these actions have been effective. Publicity Chair, Cheri Sayer and President Barbara Mattoon attended a Media Strategy Workshop presented by SoCo Culture on November 14.  The presenter was the Social Media Director f