Update on St. Louis County Library Plans

As you no doubt know by now, the time is rapidly approaching for what has served as the Headquarters branch of St. Louis County Library to close and for the History and Genealogy (H&G) Department to move into temporary quarters until the new Ladue branch building is completed. As much as we are looking forward to having a brand new facility with updated technology for genealogists and room for H&G to continue to grow, we are also facing at least a year in which we will not have access to all of the genealogy materials we have previously had at our disposal. The H&G staff will be relocating to space at the Daniel Boone branch (see below). Although they are trying to keep a selection of St. Louis-based materials on hand, most of the large collection will be boxed and kept in storage until the new genealogy center is ready.

How Can a Presidential Library Help With Your Genealogical Research?

Even if your family had nothing at all to do with any of the United States presidents, there may be material in a presidential library that will help you “put the meat on the family skeleton.” As your family lived through events like World War II or the Civil Rights Movement, what happened to them as individuals was part of the larger history of our country that is being saved and explained in these institutions. Ready to learn about presidential libraries? You can learn about them and so much more at the StLGS Family History Conference coming up next weekend, Saturday, 14 May 2022. Read on for details!

Surprises Wait in Courthouse Records!

Our ancestors interacted with government officials on a regular basis at their county courthouses. Not just for recording births, marriages, and deaths, the courthouse was also for paying taxes, settling disputes, filing wills and probates, and obtaining business licenses and a wide variety of permits. The county courthouse was the center of the legal life of the community, and many of them still contain thousands of unique documents that can help us with our research.

May Meetings and Events and We Say Goodbye to Another Volunteer

The days are longer, more of us can now gather in groups without fear of getting terribly ill, and life feels a lot more normal these days, at last. Our April monthly meeting, held as our first "hybrid meeting," was a huge success. We learned so much about the "new" 1950 federal census from Missouri State Archivist John Dougan with about thirty people in our office and another large group watching via Zoom. We will continue offering you meetings in that format so no matter where you are or however you feel safe, you can take part in our society's events, meetings, and classes. Coming up are some great options for you. Read on for details!

An Unsung Hero of Family History: Lyman Copeland Draper

Sometimes we are guilty of thinking that people in the past were not at all like us, but the more we study family history, the more we find individuals worried about precious documents, fearful of the loss of oral tradition, and trying to preserve facts surrounding important events in American history. One of those unsung heroes was Lyman Copeland Draper, who lived in the nineteenth century and gathered as much information as he could on those he called “heroes of the Revolution” in the American south. Draper spent most of his life collecting information on the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812 in what he called the “Trans-Allegheny West, which included the western Carolinas and Virginia, some portions of Georgia and Alabama, the entire Ohio River valley, and parts of the Mississippi River valley.”*

Although a single index to the entire collection does not exist, you can learn how to access and use the Draper collection from nationally-known genealogical researcher, Dr. David McDonald, at the St. Louis Genealogical Society's Family History Conference on Saturday, 14 May 2022.

StLGS 50th Annual Family History Conference: Get in Your Car and Go—Midwest Archives and Libraries

We are excited to announce our 50th annual Family History Conference, this one in a brand new format, hybrid! We hope you will join us on Saturday, 14 May 2022, at the Maryland Heights Community Center, 2300 McKelvey Road, St. Louis, MO 63043, for this all-day event. You can attend in-person OR via Zoom, and, for the very first time, everyone who registers will be able to view all eight of the lectures, since they will all be recorded! Read on for all the details . . .

StLGS Congregations Index Pages Now Include Maps to Locate Churches and Synagogues

More maps for our website! Yes, we have spent a lot of time and energy recently on maps, but they are so incredibly valuable for genealogists, that we feel it’s worth devoting more than the usual amount of attention to them. During this past week, our map guru/technology volunteer, Jim Bellenger, uploaded a whole series of locator maps for all of our congregation indexes! That’s right––now you can click on a link and go to an exact location for every church and synagogue for which we have an address in our indexes.