GenealogyClassBlog

I will be presenting two programs at the Family History Fair in Pagosa Springs, Colorado on Saturday, August 14, 2010. This will be my first time ever to visit Pagosa Springs and I am looking forward to it — to a brief vacation there, to meeting the genealogists there, and to presenting two of my favorite lectures:

• How to Be a Power Hitter:  Improve Your Online Searching Skills
• Information Overload: Organizing Your Genealogy Records

My friend, Patricia Lee is one of the main organizers and a part-time resident of Archuleta County, Colorado. She will be presenting at the Family History Fair, too. Her lecture will be “Irish Family History Research.”

You can read more about this all-day event in the Pagosa Sun. There have been two articles:

Photo by John Fancher

July 14, 2010 “Pagosa to host Family History Fair” by Patricia Lee

July 22, 2010 “So, who do you think you are?” by Patricia Lee

For more information, or to register for this free Family History Fair, contact Sharron Oldham, the Director of the Family History Center in Pagosa Springs, or Barbara Ford, vice-president of the Archuleta County Genealogical Society.

Last July I presented a program for the Tulsa City-County Library on organization called, “Information Overload: Organizing Your Genealogy Records.” It was very well attended. Many people struggle with the mountains of paperwork, photos, computer files, and notes that we produce as we search for our ancestors, and so the topic is a popular one.

The Tulsa Genealogical Society has asked me to present a program on organizing, with a special emphasis on the paper records. I am scheduled for their March meeting, Monday, 15 March. Janet Cottrell teaches a free beginners class beginning at 6:00, and the meeting is from 7:00 to 9:00.

The monthly meetings are held the third Monday of the month (September through May), at the TGS Library, located in the southeast corner of the Briar Village Shopping Center, in a suite of offices behind what was once a Price Mart. Meetings are free and open to the public.

The address is 9162 E. 31st St. TGS has a web site: www.tulsalibrary.org.

I received this by e-mail yesterday from the National Genealogical Society. If you’ve been looking for a good time to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, you might consider going for both the library and a national conference You may find that the FHL will be very busy with other convention attendees, but the library staff will also be expecting the crowds and will probably be able to accommodate the additional traffic.

Mark your Calendar for the 2010 Family History Conference, “Follow Your Ancestral Trail”, which will be held 28 April—1 May 2010, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Whether your family helped settle the nation, migrated across the country, stayed in the same place, or recently arrived in America, this conference has much to offer. A few examples of the Family History Conference’s diverse program offerings include the International Workshops which will focus on researching the cultural records of other countries through lectures, research, and problem solving; the Evening Celebration of Family History, which will incorporate a multimedia tribute to family history, a special guest speaker, and a mini-concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; and Ask An Expert, where the Utah Genealogical Association will sponsor twenty minute family history consultations to registered attendees.
Registration for the 2010 NGS Family History Conference to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, is now open. View the online conference program at http://members.ngsgenealogy.org/Conferences/2010Program.cfm or download a PDF version. For more information visit http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_info

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY If you have trouble logging on or registering, please e-mail Erin Wood at registration@ngsgenealogy.org or call her at (703) 525-0050 ext. 112.

To receive a conference brochure, please email Erin Wood.
Questions? Call (703) 525-0050 ext 221, or email Gayathri Kher

TGS Online Funeral Home Index

This morning I responded to a Tulsa, Oklahoma message board that you can find on RootsWeb.com. I realized that what I had written may not be seen there by many who might need to know about this valuable resource for Tulsa research. So, I’m offering an edited version here.

The Funeral Home Records of Tulsa was published in twelve volumes by the Tulsa Genealogical Society beginning in 1989. Through their work, it isn’t necessary to search through years of records to find the name of a person that you’re looking for.

There is an index to the first ten volumes available online the Society’s website, http://www.tulsagenealogy.org/library/FuneralHomeIndx.asp, with which anyone can search for a name of someone whose record was handled by one of numerous Tulsa funeral homes. For those names that are listed in this cumulative index, you will find a volume and page number, which would lead you to additional information.

There are a few Tulsa funeral homes that are not included, but you can see by visiting the web site above that they do have lots of funeral home records — some as late as 1984, but most up until 1980, and as early as 1906. The following are covered in the first ten volumes and the index (for information about the last two volumes, look for Publications at the TGS web site):

• Moore’s Funeral Home, Moore’s Memory Chapel, and Moore’s Eastlawn
• Ninde’s Funeral Home
• Whisenhunt’s Funeral Home
• Stanley’s Funeral Home
• Winterringer Funeral Home
• Lane Funeral Home
• Coulter-Brown Funeral Home
• Fitzgerald Funeral Home
• Heath-Griffith Funeral Home

For instance, Volume 1 includes the records of Moore’s Funeral Home for 1927-1955, extracted carefully by TGS members. TGS offers the volume for sale or will send a copy of the page with a self-addressed, stamped envelope and $1 per page (mail to P. O. Box 585, Tulsa 74101). Additional contact information, membership information, and descriptions of all of their publications may be found at their web site.

The entire set of Funeral Home Records of Tulsa may be found at the

• TGS Library, 9136 E. 31st St. (918-627-4224)
• Tulsa City-County Library’s Genealogy Center (918-746-5222; genaskus@tulsalibrary.org)
• TCCL’s Research Center (918-596-7977; http://www.tulsalibrary.org/askus/).

I would suggest an e-mail or phone call to any of these libraries to learn the funeral home, date and place of birth and date and place of death, of the person you find in the TGS online index Or, purchase or locate a print copy of the Cumulative Funeral Home Index.