February Genealogy Meeting and Class AND Information on Special Upcoming Events!

Our genealogical year got off to a great start with several very well-attended meetings. Our January "Ask Louie at Your Service" meeting, as always, generated a host of interesting questions, and we've added a handout covering the websites mentioned during the meeting to our Monthly Meeting page along with the digital recording of the meeting. The Irish Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted a Zoom presentation featuring the noted author, John Grenham. The recording of the meeting and Mr. Grenham's handout are posted on our Irish SIG page. The German and Jewish SIGs also met this past month, but neither meeting was recorded. We hope to see you at our February monthly meeting and our first class for 2025. Read on for details. 

Second Batch of Cemetery Maps Now Uploaded to our Website!

In August of this year, we announced that our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been using his talents to superimpose old cemetery maps onto new Google maps and georeference them so that exact locations of even long-gone cemeteries are now visible. Jim has worked with dozens of people in St. Louis City and County and beyond to obtain maps of the cemeteries, get permission to use them, and link them to the cemetery pages on our website. Because this is so time-consuming, we are releasing the maps in groups of about twenty to thirty, and now, we are happy to share the next batch of maps with you. (If you missed the post about the first set, you can read it here.)

Reclaim the Records Scores Another Victory for Genealogists

We have written several times in the past few years about the nonprofit organization called Reclaim the Records and its endless battles against governmental agencies on our behalf to open public records. This bold and tireless group is pretty much the David vs. Goliath of the genealogy world, taking on bureaucracy in state after state to ensure that genealogists have access to both indices and records that are, by law, open to the public. In their latest triumph for all of us, they have gone into action against the Department of Military Affairs, and they have won! We now have access to millions of records generated by the Veterans Administration for those military personnel who received benefits during the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries! This victory opens a huge record set that most of us have likely never known about. Read on for all the details!

Genealogy News from Missouri and Illinois

Many of us are homebound as the winter of 2025 continues to surprise us with unexpected watery and icy bounty. What better time is there to learn about more genealogy resources as well as some upcoming projects and meetings?  You won't have to shovel a drop or get out of your comfy pjs to learn about the wonderful work the Missouri State Archives has accomplished this past year or to attend a virtual meeting on researching in Illinois. So, settle in and read on for more!

StLGS News to Start the New Year

As the new year begins and a huge storm engulfs most of the country, we thought we'd bring you a bit of cheer with a few items of interest from our society. Our social media reach is expanding, and we want you to know how and where to get the latest information from us. And, at this time of end-of-year giving (and upcoming spring cleaning), we're restating our policies on what types of donated materials we can accept.