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.

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.