Genealogy in St. Louis: StLGS and SLCL Featured on Living St. Louis

On Monday, 11 January, the St. Louis Genealogical Society and the History and Genealogy Dept. of St. Louis County Library were featured on Living St. Louis, a local program on PBS, hosted by Ruth Ezell. Ms. Ezell's ten-minute segment focused on treasures one can find in church records and included interviews with StLGS Projects Director, Carol Whitton, and Scott Holl, manager of the H&G department at County Library Headquarters.

Carol described the process by which congregation records are being scanned and indexed at the StLGS office, and many of the office volunteers involved in the project were filmed at work. Scott was interviewed at the library. He showed an example of an Ortssippinbuch, a book written in German describing the genealogies of people living in particular communities, usually based on parish records. In addition, an introductory story line showed some Czech family letters from World War II serving as a way for two men to learn more about their families.

If you missed the show on Monday night or if you saw it and want to watch it again, you can find it online at http://ninenet.org/archives/30318/. And if it inspires you to help, we can always use more volunteers to work on the congregations project! You can scan, index, or proofread and many things can be done from home. Contact our volunteer coordinator at volunteers@stlgs.org to find out how you can help.

Some January 2016 News

Happy New Year! Now that the holidays are behind us, it's time to think genealogy again, and what better way to begin the year than with an StLGS monthly meeting? Please join us on Saturday, 9 January at 10:00 a.m. at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters auditorium to hear Information Systems Director Bob Goode explain "How to Use Evernote for Genealogical Research." Evernote is a popular cross-platform application that helps users organize and collect a wide variety of notes. You can use it on any computer, laptop, tablet, and/or smart phone. Bob will explain how this powerful piece of software can help you with your genealogy.

Due to the holiday and some computer issues at the StLGS office, the January issue of News 'n Notes will be a bit delayed; however, members should be receiving it next week. The complete 2016 calendar, meetings and events flier, winter/spring classes, and a Trivia Night registration booklet will be inside. Meanwhile, you can find all those items already online on our website. Just go to www.stlgs.org and click on the appropriate button or scroll down the page to find the calendar.

Did you catch the first program in the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.? The new season began last night, 5 January, and it was a truly fascinating glimpse into the ancestry of three disparate people who surprisingly had a strong connection to each other. Actor Ty Burrell, artist Kara Walker, and political organizer Donna Brazile share a tie to slavery and those sort-of-almost-but-not-quite accurate family stories that most of us have. If you missed it, it's well worth watching, and you can do so online at www.pbs.org/. You may want to hurry, though; the video will only remain on the site until the 4th of February.