Research Workshop We had a full house at Friday's Research Workshop, which is what our superstar SKCGS Member Winona calls our Members-only monthly hours at the Kent FamilySearch Center.  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED by David Gurteen: "Research Workshop" Every person with whom I had time to talk, whether new to research or life-long genealogists, talked about the stories they have uncovered and their inner pressure to tell them. Some feel most comfortable telling them only to family members who are interested; others want to put those stories in our Auburn Library Vertical Files, and/or in the files at the White River Museum or other local archives.   Ideas which came up in our conversations included adding those memories, stories, photos and record images to profiles in the FamilySearch Family Tree, on Wikitree  profiles  and even in Ancestry, MyHeritage or other public (or private, but shared with family) trees. Not everyone is comfortable sharing their research online, of cour

Courtesy of Islington.gov.uk Thank You! Volunteer Recognition Day is observed every year on April 20. In addition, National Volunteer Week is celebrated from April 14 to 20. During this week, volunteers are recognized for their selfless contributions to help others and promote good causes. At SKCGS we are always appreciative of the efforts of our many volunteers, regardless of the size of the job or amount of time of involvement.  As in an exquisite machine, every cog, regardless of size, is important for the smooth operation of the whole. SKCGS operates totally on the service of its volunteers.  Among those are the elected officers of the Board of Directors.  Nominations are now open for the positions of Vice President and Secretary, to be elected at the annual meeting, May 18, 2024. We are happy to announce that we have a candidate for each of the pending positions, but more nominations are welcome.    Nominees Alexis Hacker Scholz Currently Vice President of South King County Genea

AI: Bing Image Creator Generated Changing realities force many of us to consider the future of our genealogical collections. Whether a change in health, a new location or even just downsizing, it can be useful to evaluate what we have now, with an eye to the future. What we can pass along? Plan Ahead First: if you have online trees, create a plan to grant access to interested fellow researchers, even distant cousins. Depending on the website, you may need to add a codicil to your will, or just tell the site whom your successor will be.  Ancestry.com: there are two considerations: your DNA test and your tree(s). It is wise to share your DNA results with a cousin or other relative; no need to wait. Or you can  Assign a Manager .  For overall accounts and trees, there is  Ancestry® Family Plan Memberships .  FamilySearch help file:  How to Connect to a Family Member’s Tree .  B ecause it is a shared tree, a person cannot pass along their FamilySearch account. Ensure that your interested

The Blackwell's Kinfolk Family Tree highlights two prominent members. Arthur Ashe Jr.'s name is in gold, right. Family genealogist Thelma Short Doswell is highlighted in yellow, left .  Photo from Library of Congress, blog September 28, 2023 Have you checked out "our" library recently? By "our" library, I don't mean the library branch in your neighborhood, although it is definitely a place that should be very familiar to you. I mean the library that belongs to all of us--the Library of Congress.   At our fingertips we have the ability to  search millions of items in many formats and languages; to explore a growing treasury of digitized materials .  This is one of the most valuable resources available for enhancing our knowledge and understanding of the lives of our ancestors.  It's very easy to remember the URL--loc.gov.    Library of Congress Blogs | Blogs from the Library of Congress (loc.gov) And the collections and exhibits are constantly expandi

City Vectors by Vecteezy How are city directories useful to us researchers? Aren't they just boring lines with a few names and sometimes, addresses?  They can be so much more, but even just the name and address, and sometimes job description and place of employment is by *year* and so if you have two people of the same name, you can follow them annually, and usually sort them out once you cross-check that data with census and other records. And don't forget to search for maps of the time so you can correlate the addresses to the house or apartment, and perhaps note the place of employment as well. Sanborn maps are particularly wonderful for this since it shows the layout of the house on the lot, and indicates how large it was, and how it was constructed.  However, noting just the bare minimum information misses the real value of city directories. After you gather all the information and write your citation, scan up and down the page, whether it is organized by address or alphab

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

Dr. John Phillip Colletta Sept. 22, 2018 at beautiful Salish Hall on the Green River College Campus, Auburn The day began with coffee, tea, books, raffle items and a great Silent Auction John Philip Colletta, PhD., began the day by introducing us to archives, libraries and manuscript repositories, discussing who created the records or documents and where we might find them. After a thorough introduction, he dove into several research cases, which included the records and how he found them. This was very enlightening, because so often we find one piece of evidence but never follow up to find the records and story behind the notation in an index, or sentence in a book. Before lunch, we traveled through the Library of Congress, and what research one can do in each of the specialized Reading Room/Research Centers. After lunch, we learned of some Lesser Used Federal Record, which provide detail about our ancestor's lives and biographies, rather than lineage. The amount o