January Genealogy Meetings are Coming Your Way!

We hope you had a festive Chanukah, Christmas, and/or Kwanzaa and that your new year will be off to a good start. As we head into January 2026 this week, we want to remind you of our upcoming genealogy meetings, and we hope you will take out your calendar, whether on your phone or that old fashioned but still reliable paper version, and note the following dates. We hope to see you very soon at a meeting or two. And stay tuned for a busy and exciting genealogy schedule for this coming year!

We're All Set for 2026 and a Reminder About Giving Tuesday!

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and with the arrival of our first measurable snow in St. Louis this weekend, most of us are now well into the mood for the upcoming holiday season! We have a sneak peek for you now of the first StLGS genealogy programs of 2026, and we also want to remind you how important it is to help your favorite nonprofits as much as you can on Giving Tuesday. Please read on for details.

StLGS January 2025 Genealogy Meetings and Classes

Happy New Year! We are excited to share our first meetings and classes of 2025 with you to get your genealogy year off to a rousing start. We also want to say thank you again to those of you who responded to our Giving Tuesday reminder about much-needed donations. Your enthusiasm and unwavering support of St. Louis Genealogical Society is what makes our society so successful and what makes our volunteers continue to be strongly committed to our mission to preserve, educate, and publish. We thank you so much for recognizing our dedication and making all of our future work possible. Now, on to the beginning of what all of us hope will be another fabulous year for StLGS!

A Preview of 2025 AND It's Giving Tuesday!

As this year begins to wind down, the StLGS Programs Committee has been hard at work getting all of our exciting events for 2025 in place. We are ready to open registration for the January meetings, we have a full-day Jewish genealogy seminar coming in early February, an Open House planned for March, and much more! We offer you a teaser of January events this week with much more to come as we get closer to the new year. And, this week brings us Giving Tuesday, which all non-profits, like St. Louis Genealogical Society, rely on for much-needed donations. Please read on for details.

Open House Brings Out a Crowd!

For the first time in many years, St. Louis Genealogical Society hosted an open house on Saturday, 23 March 2024, and it was a great success! It was wonderful to see so many new faces as well as some old friends who stopped by to chat. Our hardworking volunteers provided coffee, cookies, and soft pretzel bites to munch on and were available all morning to greet visitors, give tours of the office, answer a myriad of questions, and encourage people to explore our website, attend our meetings, and be part of the exciting genealogical community in St. Louis.

January 2024 StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Classes

Happy New Year! Before we tell you about the exciting meetings and classes we have planned to kick off 2024, we want to say a huge THANK YOU! to all of you who generously donated to St. Louis Genealogical Society during the past year. The outpouring of donations and words of encouragement we have received from you mean the world to all of us who volunteer for the society. Everything we do throughout the year is for the betterment of our members and friends, and we thank you so very much for recognizing that. Now, read on to learn what we have waiting in the wings as the new year begins. . .

January 2023 StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Classes

Happy 2023! We hope you have had a peaceful and healthy holiday season and are now ready to start the new year with some exciting genealogy events. We continue to offer our meetings as hybrid when possible so that those of you who are unable to attend in person can still participate in society offerings. We start the year with what has become a tradition, our popular "Ask Louie" Q & A meeting, which, because of the unpredictable weather in mid-January, will be via Zoom only. We follow that with three SIG meetings and a new list of classes, so get ready for a full year of learning! Read on for more . . .

Library Resources, German Brick Walls, and Irish Research on Tap for March Genealogy

Snow, sleet, and ice may have been falling in February, but we know that spring is on the horizon. The recording of our February monthly meeting featuring archivist Mike Everman on probate records is now on the Monthly Meetings page and our Ask Louie January panel discussion will remain up until the end of March. Coming up next, via Zoom, is the March monthly meeting on using the St. Louis County Library History and Genealogy Department for your research. Plus, we have a German Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting planned for you, and it's not too late to register for the Irish research class coming up this weekend.

St. Louis Genealogical Society February Meetings and Classes

Our new year of genealogy meetings and classes is off and running. If you weren't able to join us on Zoom for our January panel discussion of "Ask Louie" questions and answers, you can still watch the recording that is posted on our website on the Monthly Meetings page. Our panel of genealogy professionals answered a number of questions that may help you with your own research. Our February monthly meeting, also on Zoom, will focus on an important record set—probate records—so you won't want to miss it!

January 2022 StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Another Farewell

We are excited to begin another year of interesting genealogy programs. While we did hope that we would be able to resume meeting in person, for now, we will continue meeting with you via Zoom. We had also planned to start hybrid meetings in February with our first 2022 class, but with the current COVID situation, that class will likely come to you online too. As much as we would like to have some attendees in person at our office and others joining us on their computers, this may just have to wait. If nothing else, these past two years have taught us to be flexible! We hope you had a happy holiday season, and you are ready for a busy year of genealogy. Here's a start for the new year!

January 2021 Genealogy Meetings and Classes

Well, we made it! Finally, 2020 is over and there is a glimmer of hope for a much happier, healthier new year. Now that the holidays are behind us and it's feeling like winter outside, it's time to get back to genealogy! We enter an especially important year in Missouri as we celebrate the state's 200th birthday! Look for special focus in our meetings, extra events, and our Quarterly journal on early Missouri history. Because it is still not safe to meet in person, we are continuing our virtual meeting schedule for the foreseeable future. We have had such positive feedback from so many of you, we can't wait until you see some of the exciting plans we have for 2021. Here's a start—stay tuned for a lot more!

Looking Forward to the StLGS Winter/Spring 2021 Schedule

We hope you are having a healthy and happy holiday season and staying safe. After you are finished celebrating Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, it will be time to get back to genealogy! In a more normal year, StLGS would have the whole 2021 schedule ready for you by now, but due to the uncertainty of the times, we are taking it a bit more slowly this year. We have no idea when it will be safe to gather in person, but we are looking forward to bringing you the very best experience possible by continuing our successful livestreamed and digitally recorded virtual meetings and classes. Take a look at what's coming up . . .

One Last Event and a Sneak Peek at the Exciting StLGS 2020 Calendar

Jewish SIG Meeting is Last StLGS Event of 2019

Because of the holiday season, StLGS does not schedule monthly meetings in December. However, there is one Jewish Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting coming up on Sunday, 8 December that is free and open to all, regardless of whether you have Jewish ancestors. This workshop, from 10:00 a.m. until noon, features "The Photo Detective," Maureen Taylor, internationally known for her expertise in historic photos and their preservation, who will present tools and tips for photo identification, family history and research, and photo preservation. She will focus on twentieth-century photographs and immigrant ancestors in this special workshop co-sponsored by the Brodsky Library, the St. Louis Jewish Community Archives, and St. Louis Genealogical Society.

The Jewish Federation is handling registration for this event, and pre-registration is requested. You can contact Kathy Schmeltz at 314-442-3761 or at kschmeltz@jfedstl.org or register directly on the Center for Jewish Learning's website. (See the blog post from 11 November 2019 for specific directions.)

January Monthly Meeting: Ask Louie

Please join us in January when our exciting 2020 schedule of meetings and events begins. Our first monthly meeting of the new year will be on Saturday, 11 January, at 10 a.m. in the auditorium at the Headquarters building of the St. Louis County Library, 1640 South Lindbergh Boulevard. We'll start the year with a panel discussion where you can "Ask Louie." Bring your genealogy questions or email them ahead to programs@stlgs.org, if they are a bit complicated. Our panel of experienced genealogists will try to help you break through a brick wall or two. More information is on our website's Monthly Meetings page. We hope to see you at the January meeting.

Annual Trivia Night: Saturday, 7 March 2020

This popular fundraiser will take place on Saturday, 7 March, at the Maplewood/Richmond Heights Community Center. Always a fun-filled occasion, this evening event has rounds of interesting questions, a fabulous silent auction, and bonus rounds with excellent prizes. Registration is now open, and we do hope you will invite friends or just come by yourself and make new ones. Go to the Trivia Night page on our website for more information and/or to register.

Much More to Come in 2020

To see all of the meetings and events planned for 2020 and/or to download an events flyer, visit the Calendar of Events page on our website. Save the dates for our Family History Conference, our Summer Speaker Series, the upcoming Technology Institute, and the annual Salt Lake City Research trip.

The Special Interest Group schedules and flyers for 2020 are now available as well. Check them out on the SIG web pages:

German SIG
 Irish SIG 
Jewish SIG