Genealogical Musing with Fran

(Past StLGS president, Fran Behrman, so enjoyed writing her monthly column that we asked her to continue as a guest blogger. A natural storyteller, Fran has graciously agreed, and we know her many fans will be delighted to follow the ongoing saga of her research. Enjoy!)

We have all been there when we find something new but are not sure how it relates to our ancestor. We know it would be good to just bounce our thoughts off someone who could help to think it through face-to-face. Well, that was the simple thought, the seed, the need for Dorothy, and she decided to act! 
 

Dorothy contacted NGS for a list of members in St. Louis. She wrote letters to local institutions and placed ads in the local newspapers letting all know of an intended meeting on 6 October 1966. Now I would like to tell you that hundreds showed up, but that is not the case. There were thirteen, including Dorothy, but you do not always need large numbers to succeed. Enthusiasm and spirit count for much more in this situation. Dorothy and her merry band clicked, and as the saying goes, the rest is history!  The St. Louis Genealogical Society (StLGS) was established.

StLGS is fortunate that in its fifty-year history, volunteers have come forward to do the work that today supports members in all fifty states and six foreign countries. From that original thirteen have come thousands through the years to learn and share in this company of like minds. The mission of StLGS for fifty years has been to collect, preserve, and publish genealogical and historical records and provide educational and research opportunities Quite a lot to think about, right? 

I remember my first class when I was awakened to the wonder of what was possible and how to go about achieving success. I have had the good fortune to meet so many knowledgeable genealogists during the years, but I have never met one who thought they were finished learning. This is a challenging area of research and the information we gather requires discernment. What is that line from The Music Man? “You gotta know the territory.”

Our research will expose us to not only the history of our ancestors but the history of the world they created. How very exciting it is to make these discoveries! I hope that you are having as much fun with this wonderful exploration as I am, and I encourage you to take advantage of the local and national societies that exist to aid you in your success.

Good hunting, 

Fran Behrman

January General Meeting Cancelled

If you have been following the weather maps today, you can see that a very large, powerful ice storm seems to be heading straight for the St. Louis metropolitan area. With that in mind, we have cancelled the January meeting scheduled for Saturday, 14 January, at 10 a.m. at St. Louis County Library Headquarters. We hope everyone will stay home and be safe if the weather becomes treacherous. See you in February!

2017 StLGS Trivia Night Date

Although most of our members receive their News 'n Notes electronically, a few hundred still get a printed edition. If you are one of those people, your newsletters were mailed before we discovered a problem with our scheduled Trivia Night. The Richmond Heights Community Center had a computer outage and lost our reservation. By the time we found out, they had moved another group into the date we had selected, so, we have changed the date for this year's event.

The 2017 StLGS annual Trivia Night is now Friday, 3 March, at the Richmond Heights Community Center, 8001 Dale Avenue, Richmond Heights, Missouri. To better allow people to clear rush hour traffic on a Friday night, we are opening the doors at 6:30 and will start the games at 7:15 p.m.

If you have one of the original Trivia Night flyers, please note the date change! Registration is now open and we hope you will be able to attend. More information, registration, and the flyer are on our website www.stlgs.org/.


ALSO . . . Mother Nature is having a rough winter, and the weather forecast for this weekend is looking a bit dicey. Therefore, before you venture out to our monthly meeting on Saturday, 14 January, please be sure you check our website, or our Facebook page, our Twitter account, or the St. Louis County Library website. Please note: if the library is closed, our meeting is, of course, cancelled, and they may also announce the library closing on local TV stations.

StLGS Cemetery Project Completed!

(The following article, acknowledging the completion of the society's cemetery project, was written by Ted Steele, one of many St. Louis Genealogical Society volunteers who worked on our cemetery project over the years.)

Throughout the nineteenth century, thousands of families came to (or passed through) St. Louis, Missouri, on their way west. Some families stayed and some were in the city for only a brief time. In either case, many of those families had one or more of their members who died and were buried there. Since 2000, the St. Louis Genealogical Society (StLGS) has had a project to transcribe and index every burial in every cemetery in St. Louis city and county. Thus began a society effort that involved StLGS volunteers photocopying cemetery records or walking cemeteries to record whatever information could be gleaned from tombstones. This project identified 444 open or historical cemeteries in St. Louis city and county. Once the data was captured, StLGS volunteers created an every-name index to each cemetery.

It wasn’t always easy. By and large, cemeteries are private businesses, so access to their records or obtaining access to walk the grounds required permission from each cemetery owner. While many owners were happy to provide this access, others required considerable encouragement to do so. A few were adamant against allowing any access to their records—or their property. One by one, however, determined society volunteers worked with these recalcitrant owners, convincing them that creating these copies and indexes would provide both off-site backup for their businesses and alphabetical indexes to their interments that would prove to be helpful to them. One by one, they agreed.

In November 2016, StLGS volunteers completed their work on the last of these cemeteries, Oak Grove, in Normandy, St. Louis County. That effort, then, culminated the society’s project to record and index all of St. Louis’s cemeteries. During the past sixteen years, StLGS volunteers have captured and indexed more than 1.5 million interments. Those indexes are now available to society members on the society’s website at www.stlgs.org/research-2/life-death/cemeteries-2/st-louis-area-cemeteries-list/.

StLGS is now working to do the same with all St. Louis area congregations. Although this work has only recently begun, StLGS already has thousands of baptism, marriage, and burial every-name indexes for selected congregations available to society members on its website at www.stlgs.org/research-2/congregations/congregation-index/.

St. Louis Co. Library Needs Our Help

Our friends in the History and Genealogy Department at St. Louis County Library Headquarters need the help of all genealogists, and not just those in St. Louis, to determine the future configuration of a rebuilt Headquarters building. In order to provide for adequate space for the H&G Dept., the library needs to understand how much we use the facility, how important it is to have enough space in which to work, how much nicer it would be to have open stack access to all the collections, etc. Got ideas about technology? Heating/cooling?  Allocation of space? This is the time to make yourself heard.

Please take the short survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/dpwnyc7 and include your comments so that H&G takes priority in plans for the new Headquarters building. And please do the survey within the next week, if possible; time is of the essence, as planning has already started.

Mo. State Archives Updates Search Capabilities for the Post-1910 Death Certificate Database

On 5 October 2016, the Missouri State Archives announced that they have a new, expanded search option for their 1910 through 1965 death certificate database. Now, for at least part of the database, you can search not only by the name of the deceased person but by the names of their parents and spouses as well. There is also a date range function available.

The Archives has started adding names of parents and spouses mentioned on death certificates with the present and is working backwards; at this time, 1965 back to 1961 is complete. They are currently indexing 1960 and will add that year as soon as it is finished. They plan to continue working back to 1910, so ultimately the entire database will be expanded.

You can see the new search engine and start using it for the expanded search at https://s1.sos.mo.gov/records/Archives/ArchivesMvc/DeathCertificates#searchDB/. If you are interested in volunteering to move things along more quickly, you can volunteer to be an indexer at https://s1.sos.mo.gov/records/archives/evolunteers/.

StLGS Office Closures in October

The StLGS office will be closed on Saturday, 8 October and again on Saturday, 15 October so our volunteers can attend the monthly meeting on the 8th and the Fall Speaker Series on the 15th. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

For more information on these events, be sure to check the home page of our website www.stlgs.org/. Also, remember that early registration for the Speaker Series ends on the 8th. We hope to see you on both Saturdays.