Chance to Tour Lemp Brewery Caves

Our friends at Landmarks Association in St. Louis are holding a fundraising raffle for chances to tour the caves under the Lemp Brewery. This is a rare opportunity to see the caves that played an important role in the success of this once-active St. Louis brewery. The caves are not open to the public at any time, so this may be the only way that you can ever get to see them. In addition to the caves, the tour will visit other features in the building, such as the remains of the Lemp family's private theater and their heated swimming pool.

You can buy as many raffle tickets as you like, but only 1,000 will be sold. Each ticket costs $20 and the lucky winners will get two places on the tour. The drawing will be on Friday, 2 November. The tour will take place on the afternoon of the 16th of November.

Winners will be notified by Landmarks Association by phone or by e-mail. You can purchase your tickets by calling Landmarks at 314-421-6474 or send an e-mail to <lempcavetour@landmarks-stl.org>.

The Landmarks Association of St. Louis is dedicated to preserving the history of architecture and building in St. Louis City and County. You can learn more about this important organization at their website: www.landmarks-stl.org .

Speaker Series Reminder

Have you registered for the October Speaker Series yet? Today is the last day to save a little money on early registration. You won't want to miss J. Mark Lowe's all-day workshop on "Looking for Family in Court Records" on Saturday, 27 October at the Orlando Gardens in Webster Groves. Registration includes all four lectures plus a box lunch. You can register online at <www.stlgs.org>. Hope to see you there.

StLGS Website Update, Part 3

We've saved the biggest update for the end. Our busy webmaster, Jim Bresnahan, has finished uploading all of the cemetery data from the third of our cemetery burial CDs to the members only area of the website. Jim had posted the contents of the first two burial CDs online previously.

Each known cemetery has a page of information and we are adding photos, when possible. Remaining cemeteries are on burial CD4, which is still for sale. Jewish cemeteries are on the site and open to all in the public area.

To access the cemetery data, you will need to log in as a member. Then go to <www.stlgs.org>.  On the home page, choose the Research tab, go to Life and Death and then Cemeteries. Hope you find "good stuff"!

Updates to the StLGS Website, Part 2

Another new set of data on our website is coordinated with the articles on steamboats that appeared in the summer 2012 Quarterly. Due to space limitations, we were unable to print a long list of steamboat workers in the 1860 census and another set of databases of men who were masters, pilots, and engineers based in St. Louis in 1854, 1857, and 1915. Our webmaster, Jim Bresnahan, has created a new category for us under the Research tab on the home page. Go to Life and Death and then Occupations. You will find the new databases on the page that opens.

We also need to correct one sentence from our last blog. We did not clearly state that the issue of the St. John Nepomuk Messenger that is online is a special anniversary issue of the Young Men's and Young Women's Sodalities. This is not the church's anniversary issue but that of the two young people's groups. We are sorry for any confusion this might have caused.

Exciting New Data at StLGS.org, Part 1

During the past few weeks, your technology team has been hard at work on our website. We have added thousands of names to our expanding list of databases, and we'll share the information with you in a set of blog posts. Those of you who are members will be receiving more details in the October issue of News 'n Notes, which should arrive in your inbox tomorrow. We'll start our series with the smallest of the databases and work our way up to the largest. 

St. John Nepomuk Messenger

If you have Czech or Bohemian ancestors who were involved in the Sodality clubs at St. John Nepomuk church in St. Louis in the mid-twentieth century, you will want to look at this new database and set of PDFs. The current deacon of the church donated a copy of the anniversary issue of the St. John Nepomuk Messenger (October 1931) to StLGS. Two volunteers, Carolyn Finnigan and Susan Stauder, indexed the magazine, and StLGS Publications Director, Ilene Murray, scanned the pages and created PDFs of them. Webmaster, Jim Bresnahan, has posted the index and all of the scanned pages on the Czech page of our website. You can get there by going to the Research tab, then Community, then Ethnic, or go directly to <http://tinyurl.com/cx5vj4z>. You will find photos of many of the young people, lists of members, and some wonderful ads and historical tidbits.

"Ask Your Questions Day" Helps Members

Kudos to Publicity Team, Fran Behrman and Viki Fagyal, for organizing, scheduling, and hosting our first "Ask Your Questions Day" on Saturday, 15 September. With the help of some of our experienced office volunteers, about thirty StLGS members were able to get one-on-one assistance for a variety of brick-wall questions. Because members submitted their questions ahead of time via e-mail, the "experts" were able to do some research before their scheduled meetings. That meant people could receive individualized plans, specific websites or books to look at, and fresh eyes to help them solve difficult problems. Virtually everyone came away with new paths to follow for their research. Both members and "experts" agreed that the day was a rousing success. Most members asked for Fran and Viki to do this again, and they most likely will add this to our calendar for 2013. Watch for the next date so you can sign up, if you missed this opportunity.

Above, StLGS archivist, Dan Kerckhoff, helps two members with questions about Irish research.

September German SIG Meeting

The next German SIG meeting is on Wednesday, 19 September at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at St. Louis County Library Headquarters. The meeting features Carol Whitton, CG, who will discuss "Reading German Church Records."

The original date was to have been 12 September but was changed due to a scheduling conflict at the library. We apologize for inadvertently printing that original date in the last News 'n Notes. We know you will want to hear Carol's talk on this important topic, so be sure to make note of the correct date.