Open House Brings Out a Crowd!

For the first time in many years, St. Louis Genealogical Society hosted an open house on Saturday, 23 March 2024, and it was a great success! It was wonderful to see so many new faces as well as some old friends who stopped by to chat. Our hardworking volunteers provided coffee, cookies, and soft pretzel bites to munch on and were available all morning to greet visitors, give tours of the office, answer a myriad of questions, and encourage people to explore our website, attend our meetings, and be part of the exciting genealogical community in St. Louis.

Updated Congregations Maps Added to the StLGS Website!

Suppose you had a female ancestor who lived in St. Louis in the 1860s, but you couldn’t discover her birth date. There are no statewide birth records in Missouri prior to 1910, and, although the City of St. Louis kept a birth register, compliance was not compulsory; hence, it is incomplete. Religious records would be very helpful, as births, baptisms, confirmations, and other life events were usually recorded by religious leaders and kept on site. You know where your ancestor lived and what religion her family practiced, but how do you know what congregations were active at the time she was born? A new set of congregations maps is now live on our website, and an exciting feature of the maps is the ability to see exactly which churches and synagogues were open in the city and county at any given time. Let’s take a look!

Orphans in the Family?

Sometimes, because we are so used to the way we do things, we forget it wasn’t always that way. We assume that if an ancestor changed their name, they went to court to do so because that’s what most people do now. We also assume that if a child was adopted, some well-defined legal pathways were followed––again, because that’s what is expected today. However, the reality is that names were changed all the time without anyone taking any legal steps, and children were handed over to friends, clergy, family members, and other willing takers, quite often with no paper trail. Orphanages held thousands of children who still had one or more living parent, and children struggling to survive in poverty were often literally snatched off the streets and placed in institutions, sometimes without parental consent.

Celebrate National Women's History Month with a Remarkable Scottish Heroine

March, with its promise of growth and rebirth, is exactly the right time for National Women’s History Month and the celebration of International Women’s Day this week on March 8th. We genealogists know how difficult it often is to learn more about our female ancestors, largely because for most of recorded history, they were treated as second-class citizens. Historically, women have lost their maiden names when they marry; they have usually not been heads of household; they have been under-educated and undervalued, all leading to their “disappearance” from public records. As far back as 400 years B.C., the Greek statesman Pericles stated, “A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about, whether for good or ill.” That mindset persisted for centuries.