November/December Genealogy Meetings

As we approach the end of another busy year of genealogy meetings, classes, and special events, our StLGS volunteers are now hard at work planning next year's exciting calendar of events for you. We have one more meeting left on this year's calendar, and we have our last Jewish SIG meeting in early December. More information about everything is below.

St. Louis Hospitals on the StLGS Website

Medical records in almost every state are private, and it is often frustrating knowing that an ancestor may have been in a hospital but not why or where. Unfortunately, we can't solve the "why" problem for you, but if you had an ancestor hospitalized in St. Louis City or County, we have made inroads on the "where." We have long had a page on our website for St. Louis-area hospitals with a link to a list of known hospitals. On that page, you can also find a link to information about the cholera epidemic of 1849 and links to two repositories that have microfilmed registers from the old St. Louis City Hospital for a limited number of years. We are pleased to announce that our hospital list now has been greatly enhanced by webmaster Jim Bellenger, who has also used his map magic skills on a newly designed Google Maps interface, so you can see where each hospital was (or still is).

Doing Genealogy? Don't Forget History and Geography Too!

If you have been researching your family for a while, you have undoubtedly encountered tragedy. We often speak of the “good old days,” but the reality was that life was difficult and harsh, especially for pioneer families throughout the nineteenth century. It is especially important for genealogists to understand the conditions in which our ancestors lived, and to do so, we need to work not only with names, dates, and places, but with an understanding of history and geography.