Where are the Death Certificates?

St. Louis Genealogical Society has a very active presence on Facebook, both a News and Events page and a wonderful group just shy of 4,300 members. No politics, no precocious baby or animal videos, no endless goofy jokes—OK, maybe a few occasionally, but only about genealogy! We know that many people avoid social media, but our Facebook group provides a safe space for people to ask and answer genealogy questions, announce meetings and other special events, and spread the joy of genealogy. Sometimes inquiries are posted in the group that need a bit more time and space to answer, and this week brought up one that is so important, we thought we'd devote a post to it. So, for all of you asking about online death certificates, please read on . . .

Join us in Salt Lake City for a Week at the FamilySearch Library!

Registration for the St. Louis Genealogical Society's annual genealogy research trip to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, is now open. This year's adventure runs from Sunday, 5 October through Sunday, 12 October 2025. This is our thirty-second annual trip to the world's largest genealogical library. For one full week, you can enjoy non-stop, immersive working time in this huge genealogy playground! Read on for all the details.

April Genealogy Events AND Registration is Open for our Family History Conference AND Our Annual Salt Lake City Trip!

Our Open House on Saturday, 22 March, was a great success, and now we have more exciting events and meetings for you to attend, either in-person or via Zoom, coming up soon. Registration is open for our 53rd annual Family History Conference featuring Steve Little, Jim Brewster, and Josiah Schmidt. Remember that early registration ends on 17 April! By registering before that date, you save some money and help us plan more efficiently. In addition, one of the events we look forward to most each year is our annual research trip to Salt Lake City, and registration is now open for that. Read on for more!

David Rencher, Irish Research Specialist, to Speak at October Irish SIG Meeting!

For anyone doing Irish research, knowing where to look and what is available, especially in Europe, can be confusing. What records are there? Where are they located? How does a researcher access them? The October meeting of the StLGS Irish Special Interest Group (SIG) will feature all the answers to these questions presented by one of the foremost authorities in the U.S. on Irish research, David Rencher. Best of all, this meeting will be open to everyone and will be absolutely free! Read on for all the details.

State Censuses Can Add to Your Research

Although our August monthly meeting, Understanding and Working with the U.S. Federal Census, presented by StLGS librarian, Judy Belford, concentrated on the federal census, taken every ten years, mention was also made of state censuses, and what they can add to our research. Many states conducted population censuses in "off years," that is years in which the federal census was not held. Although taken randomly and in odd years, state censuses can often serve as substitutes for some missing federal records, and, for the most part, they asked different questions than the federal censuses, so you might learn additional information on your ancestors.

May's StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Classes; Last Chance to Register for the Family History Conference!

Because of the annual Family History Conference (FHC) scheduled for Saturday, 4 May 2024, there is no regular monthly meeting. We hope you will join us in June, and we'll tell you more about that meeting later on in this post. It's not too late to register for the FHC! You can still attend in person or watch the livestreaming next Saturday. Plus, everyone who registers will have access to all eight of the recordings, which will be available for ninety days after they are posted. You won't want to miss this chance to hear David Rencher, chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch, plus four other outstanding regional speakers! Here is what is coming up this month.

Learn More About FamilySearch.org

Many newcomers to genealogy have yet to discover the powerful website run by the FamilySearch organization in Salt Lake City, Utah. And many who have been doing genealogy research for years may not realize how this powerhouse website has grown, especially if it's been a while since you looked at it. You probably know the Family History Library (now the FamilySearch library) is the world's largest genealogy library and that for the past few decades they have been digitizing, indexing, and uploading their millions of microfilms to their website.

March 2024 StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Events AND Family History Conference Registration Opens!

Spring is in the air early this year, and we are looking forward to welcoming you to an enticing array of genealogy events. We will, of course, continue to offer you the option of attending remotely, but we hope with the warm weather, you will return to attending in person. It's always so good to see all of you! We want to remind you about our Open House on Saturday, 23 March, and we are also excited to announce our 52nd annual Family History Conference featuring noted genealogist David Rencher. Here is the upcoming schedule.

Find Your Ancestors in the Newly-Released 1931 Canadian Census

If you have ancestors from Canada, you know that there is a Canadian census, like ours, conducted every ten years, but unlike ours, a complete national census is not available before 1871, since Canada did not become a confederation until 1867. The first census for the Confederation of Canada covers just the four original provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. The next census, in 1881, covered the entire country as it existed then. There are earlier censuses for Canada, but they are for individual provinces and territories. All these early censuses are digitized and available online, most on FamilySearch for free and on Ancestry and Findmypast with a subscription. For a complete listing of available Canadian censuses and where they are located, see the article in the FamilySearch wiki, called “Canada Census.”

More Tips on Using the 1950 Census

Now that the 1950 federal census has been released, many of us have attempted to find our families or even ourselves. In looking for your relatives, you may have discovered that some major genealogy websites are in the process of indexing but have different states available. According to a news article from the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Ancestry and FamilySearch have partnered to create an index. Ancestry began by using a proprietary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology so an entire census index could be released as soon as the census went live from the National Archives in April. Now, FamilySearch volunteers are reviewing and making corrections to that index. The National Archives also released an OCR index and is asking for assistance in finding and correcting errors.

Free Genealogy Webinars are Just a Click Away!

Twelve months of mostly being at home has given many of us the chance to explore new ways of learning using our computers or tablets. Have you discovered the benefits of free webinars yet? Did you know you can watch thousands of digital recordings without any fees at all? Yes, sometimes there are advertisements, but they are relatively unobtrusive and easily passed over. By now, many of us also know that there are instructions online for just about anything we want to do. In fact, just last week, like magic, a two-minute YouTube video saved this writer a trip to the store and the price of a new pneumatic door closer when just a few squeezes of a piece of metal with a strong pair of pliers was all it needed. OK, that was fixer-upper stuff—what about our favorite hobby? Are there free webinars available on genealogy? Indeed there are, and here are some places you can start to look for them.

RootsTech 2021 Goes Virtual and NGS/FGS Complete Merger

RootsTech 2021

FamilySearch announced this week that RootsTech 2021 has been changed to a three-day online event from 25–27 February. Begun as a small conference in the late 1990s to explore the expanding role of technology in genealogy, RootsTech has grown into the world’s largest annual family history event. Since 2010, when it piggy-backed on the National Genealogical Society’s yearly conference, RootsTech, now sponsored by FamilySearch, has been held in Salt Lake City at the Salt Palace. By 2019, more than 27,000 attendees from every state and forty-seven different countries attended the conference. RootsTech 2021 was to be held in early February 2021 in Salt Lake City, but the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a complete change of plans.

StLGS August Genealogy Meetings and Events

As we continue our months of quarantine, we hope you are staying healthy and productive. Behind the scenes, the volunteers at St. Louis Genealogical Society are working actively to provide our members and guests with as much as we can, given the public health crisis. We have been delighted with how well our online events, meetings, and classes are going and truly appreciate the positive feedback we have received. Here is our revised schedule for August featuring more exciting online events, information about ongoing opportunities, and (cue the trumpets!) an announcement about our upcoming Fall Speaker Series, which will be open for registration very soon.

Making the Most of Quarantine Time: Genealogy Learning Online

With all the extra time we are gaining as we conscientiously obey the need for social distancing, why not take advantage of learning more online? Genealogists are indeed fortunate because there are many ways for us to continue learning from the comfort of our homes. A slew of trusted genealogy websites offer free video content that can help us become better researchers while we sit in our jammies and sip a hot beverage. You can watch a video on your own schedule or sign up for a live-streaming webinar at a particular time and date.

Webinar: Virginia Minor, Early Suffragette

Thursday, 2 April 2020, 11:00 a.m. (Central Time)

The Show Me Missouri Speakers Bureau presents Sandy Davidson speaking about "Not So Minor: Supreme Court Denies Women's Right to Vote." Virginia Minor was an early suffragette from St. Louis, pre-dating Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She sued for the right to vote in 1872, a case that went to the Supreme Court, which upheld that Missouri law did not permit women to vote. When she died in 1894, the situation had not changed. Sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council and the State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO), this lecture is free but pre-registration is required. If you are interested, you can register on the SHSMO website.

Online Classes at FamilySearch

FamilySearch, one of the major online players in family history research, offers dozens of free instructional videos. The FamilySearch wiki is filled with videos narrated by experienced genealogists. You can watch at your leisure, stopping and starting as you like. You might want to start with "FamilySearch Research Wiki: What It Can Do For You!" an overview of the wiki, one of the most unheralded but valuable resources online. If you are new to FamilySearch, be sure to watch "Tips and Tricks Using FamilySearch Historical Records Collection." This video will help you navigate the vast FamilySearch collection.

Note that both these and other videos in the wiki bear a caution against using Firefox for viewing; however, both videos ran just fine in the newest version of Firefox so maybe the trouble is with older versions. Note, too, that if you scroll beneath the videos, you will see that you have the option to download both the video and handout material to your own computer. At the bottom of each screen is a list of more videos with related content.

If you are doing region-specific genealogy, you will be excited to see the wiki page with a list of countries on which there are instructional videos available.

As you can see, if you click "show" at the end of each line of black text, there are multiple classes with handouts for many countries. At the bottom of the list are also entries for North and South America. And at the top of the page are more general webinars and past research seminars (2016, 2017, and 2018 are currently available.)

If you want to see all the offerings in one spot, check out the "Classes in the Learning Center" page. Here you will find more than 2,000 videos, although not all are in English.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Search for genealogy videos on YouTube and you will find  hundreds. CyndisList also can steer you to many more. Have fun and remember that you do occasionally have to get up and stretch!

August Genealogy Meetings and Classes

August StLGS Monthly Meeting

Saturday, 10 August 2019

"Finding the Civilian Conservation Corps," by Nancy Schuster, St. Louis County Library Headquarters Auditorium, 10:00 a.m.; free, open to all, no pre-registration needed

More information on the StLGS website.

Jewish Special Interest Group (SIG) Meeting 
Wednesday, 28 August 2019

"Interpreting and Caring for Jewish Tombstones," by Diane Everman, Ilene Murray, and Rabbi Jeffrey Stiffman; St. Louis County Library Headquarters East Room, 7:00 p.m. Free, open to all, no pre-registration needed.

 More information on the Jewish SIG page on the StLGS website.

Other Upcoming Classes/Meetings

StLGS Class: Saturday, 17 August 2019

"Foundations of Genealogy, Part I," by Ilene Murray; StLGS Office, 1:00 p.m. Free to StLGS members; fee for non-members; pre-registration required at 314-647-8547.

StLGS Class: Sunday, 18 August 2019

"Using FamilySearch," by Bob Goode; StLGS Office, 1:00 p.m. Free to StLGS members; fee for non-members; pre-registration required at 314-647-8547.

StLGS Class: Saturday, 24 August 2019

"Foundations of Genealogy, Part II," by Ilene Murray; StLGS Office, 1:00 p.m. Free to StLGS members; fee for non-members; pre-registration required at 314-647-8547.

View the entire summer/fall 2019 genealogy class schedule here.

St. Louis County Library Classes
Numerous classes at all branches in August. More on the library website.  

Click on the August calendar and scroll down the page.

Carondelet Historical Society Meeting
Sunday, 11 August 2019

Discussion of early French settlements by Dr. Terry Norris, 6303 Michigan Avenue, St. Louis, 1:30 p.m.; free, open to all, no pre-registration needed.

More information on the group's website.

Czech Genealogical Researchers Monthly Meeting
Saturday, 10 August 2019

"Serfdom in Bohemia," by Marcella Milcic, St. Louis County Library Headquarters East Room, 3:00 p.m.; free, open to all, no pre-registration needed.

More information on the group's website.