GenealogyClassBlog

Hardesty Regional Library

The Tulsa City-County Library is offering some great programming for July again this year, during what it calls Family History Month. Download a copy of the beautiful, new, July Event Guide for the complete schedule as well as an interesting article about Linda Colvard and her help with adoption cases, Or go to the library’s Events page to see what programs are scheduled for the rest of July.

On Tuesday, 27 July, I will be presenting “What’s New With FamilySearch?” from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St. in Tulsa. FamilySearch, also known as the online face of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, is a free website that is fairly easy to use even before attending a class. But there is much more to FamilySearch now that they have enhanced and improved it in the last two years. I look forward to exploring it with you on the 27th.

Last night I attended a very interesting program presented by Dr. Mary Larson from Oklahoma State University on oral history (more on that later), and on Saturday seventy people were in the audience with me as Meg Hacker of Fort Worth’s Southwest Regional Branch of the National Archives introduced us to what genealogists can find, how to access descriptions of collections, and how to use some online databases at their website — www.archives.gov. Both of these were held at Hardesty, as will most of the remaining programs for the month. This is a major change from the past, but the move from to Hardesty was necessary so that there will be more room and chairs for the large number of people who attend these programs every July.

This Saturday, though, the programs will be held at Central Library because the speakers will be featuring the collections of Tulsa City-County Library’s Research Center, where you can find city directories, maps, the vertical files, high school yearbooks, newspapers, and other little-known treasures for local research. See the descriptions of both the morning and afternoon sessions, to be held in Aaronson Auditorium on the first floor. There will be an open house on the fourth floor between the sessions. Parking should not be a problem on Saturday because of all of the unused metered spaces nearby. I hope to see you there.

Berwangen, Baden, Germany

I have been teaching myself to research using German genealogy resources for a while now. I have also been trying to learn to speak a little German and have learned to read some of the old Gothic print that was used in pre-World War II records. I have located and studied parish registers for Berwangen, the small town in Baden where my great-great-grandfather, John George (or Johan Georg) Mayer was christened in 1826. The parish registers were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah in 1978 and 1982, and so I have accessed them through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, by way of the New Haven Family History Center.

There are three Family History Centers in Tulsa now — two in churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a new one at the Genealogy Center. While anyone can order genealogical records on microfilm for a reasonable price through any of the three, the Genealogy Center has also been collecting German resources in print which anyone can use to help locate small towns like Berwangen. The location of the records is closely tied to the place where your ancestor lived. I have learned to use both the multi-volume resource, Map Guide to German Parish Registers, a great new resource, and Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, an important resource written in German, which was first published in 1913, and I’d like to explain the process of using both of these to anyone else who is interested.

Last spring I visited Berwangen. Although I didn’t actually do any genealogy research while in Germany, we met some wonderful people. The day that my daughter and I spent in Berwangen was the best day of our two-week trip around Europe. Before the trip, I learned to use maps on Google and while there we took pictures and video. Now that I have been there, I am anxious to learn more about the history of my ancestors in this town.

The Genealogy Center is located at 2910 S. Harvard in Tulsa. The free program will be in the Harmon Foundation Meeting Room from 2:00 – 3:30. I hope to see you there.

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