"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 ...

October Is Family History Month Please share some of your stories here. Send us a sentence or paragraph and pictures: m.strickland@skcgs.org SeattleBGRG.org Telling Our Stories I heard a wonderful radio show this morning about story telling, which followed a great Black Genealogy Research Group of Seattle (BGRG) meeting yesterday about telling our stories. The focus of both the radio show and the BGRG meeting was not just telling our stories aloud, but in getting them OUT -- to our families, to our friends, to legislators or whoever needs to hear and remember them. The radio show is available for listening here:  Three comedians share their thoughts...  (31 minutes),  ...discover the power of sadness   (22 minutes),  both highly recommended.  In genealogy we tell stories about all sorts of things - some technical, such as how to use various record types or sets, how to locate repositories and find what we need, and most important, who our ancestors were and...

As Member-at-Large on the SKCGS Board of Directors, I get to do a lot of different things including head the Nominations Committee looking for officer candidates. I am happy to announce that we have a candidate for each of the pending openings for which we will have election at the May General Meeting. For Vice-President--Alexis Hacker Scholz. Alexis has served this past year, filling the position that was vacated when Valorie became President. For Secretary--Melanie Hinds. Melanie lives in Illinois and has been attending general and SIG meetings for over a year. She has been assisting us by posting items to the calendar. Nominations remain open until the election; contact me at nominating-committee@skcgs.org. Things I learned while talking to you 1.  Some people have problems finding the confirmation after registering for the general meeting.   Personally, I had problems as well until I learned to flag that confirmation email or put it in archives. I've since learn...

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...

By Barbara Mattoon The Society offers many opportunities to learn and develop genealogy skills in both large and small groups. We endeavor to offer activities at times and locations that will allow the largest number of members to participate.  March will  kick-off with the F amily T ree M aker U sers G roup meeting on Saturday March 2, at the Auburn Library from 10:15 – 11:45.  Winona Laird will teach us how to use Error Reports in FTM.  Please RSVP to Dave Liesse at ftm-group@skcgs.org as soon as you know you can attend.  We are outgrowing our space at the Auburn Library and may have to find an alternate location.  If that happens, we want to be able to let you know where to find us. ANNOUNCEMENT                          ANNOUNCEMENT                       ANNOUNCEMENT   Our long-awaited DNA Special Interest Group...

By MaryLynn Strickland How to begin a story or an article is usually the first thought for a writer.  The overall temper of the article may be set with specific facts or points of interest in mind, but that crucial opening sentence or paragraph can be difficult to phrase. So too in this article but there is another element—how to close.  This is the last issue of SoKingNews as we have come to know it.  No longer will the quarterly collection of articles and notices about interest groups be emailed to members and interested societies with whom we have exchanged information.  But this is not a sad event because SKCGS has been transitioning to a new format—the weekly blog! Since September society members have been contributing articles to the weekly blog.  If you have been following you may have enjoyed learning about the Black Diamond Historical Museum or Fiske Genealogical Library .  Maybe you got some new tips about using genealogical software or ...

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...