Hello, and welcome to the StLGS blog. If this is your first time to visit us, then welcome, and we hope you will become a regular visitor and tell other genealogists about us. For our regulars, welcome back and thank you for your continued support.
The Fall Speaker Series, Google Strategies for Genealogy, on Saturday, 20 October, was outstanding! I remember back about ten years ago that we had a program on using Google and I went, and it blew my mind away with what I didn’t know about “Googling.” Yes, it is both a noun and a verb. But isn’t that the way it has been with technology? We are always catching up. Some who know me well will say that I was left behind and will never catch up. Probably so, as I still am in love with my vinyl records and turntable, index cards and card file cabinet, pencils and paper. But that being said, I am an avid Google user. So often I have said “Just Google it!” It is my first and true go-to website, which is exactly what our featured speaker, Lisa Louise Cooke, emphasized.
Don’t know about you but I can remember life without the internet. It seems impossible to think that there was a time that this resource didn’t exist with its instant information and communication. What will be the next new way to get and give information? There was no telephone, television, internet, or any of the mass communications of today when I was born. Our first television was as large as a side-by-side refrigerator. The telephone––you had to ask the telephone operator to connect you and the line was shared by many. Wow! Now I can sit down and type this message and just forward it to you through this magic media. What is next? Are flying automobiles coming?
[Editor's Note: Yes, flying automobiles are coming! Here is just one example of what might be in our future, the Terrafugia Flying Car, introduced in 2012 at a New York auto show. "This flying car is said to be capable of getting 35 mpg when on the road and up to 400 to 450 miles when in the air. The Terrafugia seats two people and also comes with four wheels, two wings, air bags, and a parachute, if you purchase one, but they are not cheap as they have been priced at $279,000." Photo and quote via Wikipedia Commons. Photo by LotPro Cars, The Terrafugia Flying Car@the 2012 New York International Auto Show, Uploaded by Mark Warren, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19065243]
Keeping up is so very hard to do and that is why StLGS hosts programs such as Google Strategies for Genealogy.
Don’t you love the searching! The hunt! The new discoveries! Where else does the Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie in us get to come out and play? Wouldn’t life be just ordinary without our genealogical pursuits?
I want to close with a short story. My grandparents both came from small towns in southern Missouri to start life anew in the town where I grew up. He was alone, a bachelor with one eye and a pocket full of money. (I don’t know where the money came from but have papers to prove it existed and when asked how he lost his eye, he would just smile.) She was a widow with four boys under the age of ten years, and she came with her two sisters and their husbands. There were jobs and a new community. These two people with different backgrounds found each other, married, and made their house a true home where I was privileged to spend many an hour learning from both of them. Oh, the memories of the wonderful times we all shared. It was when my daughter had to do a family tree project for school that I realized how little I knew about the lineage of my grandparents. And so it began! You would think after all these years I would be finished, but really, is anyone ever finished with genealogical pursuits?
I do hope that you too are having fun and making new discoveries, and if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to StLGS. Happy hunting!
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