FHC 2026 a Big Success Thanks to Our Wonderful Supporters!

Our in-person 2026 Family History Conference, "A Genealogical Journey Through Missouri History," is now a beautiful memory! Although it started as a cold, windy day, the hundred or so people who joined us at the Maryland Heights Community Center were happy and excited to be spending the day enjoying their favorite hobby. And, good news! It really isn't over, since registration for the conference includes a copy of our electronic syllabus and access to all six of the digital recordings. That means if you didn't register at all, you can still do so and watch all of the lectures. All the information you need is below the photos.

The StLGS Online Store Has Expanded!

With the introduction of our newly rebuilt online store, we can now offer some extra perks for our friends and members online! We frequently have people asking to purchase gift certificates for StLGS membership, products, and events. Until recently, we've only been able to provide those in-person or via mail. But that is now changing! In addition, we have greatly expanded our selection of books for sale by adding the gently used history and genealogy books in our Trading Post to our online store. We are excited to share the details with you!

Time for the StLGS Annual Family History Conference: "A Genealogical Journey Through Missouri History"

March and April have been filled with exciting StLGS genealogy events. After three very busy weekends of Open House, our monthly meeting, and our fabulous, exciting Trivia Night, we can't wait to welcome you to our next powerhouse event, our annual Family History Conference, Saturday, 18 April 2026. This all-day seminar, planned in celebration of America's 250th birthday, features archivist for the state of Missouri, John Dougan, and reference services director for the Missouri State Archives, Christina Miller, along with three local speakers: Andrew Hahn, Ilene Murray, and Carol Whitton. Registration is open now. Here's what you need to know.

Fond Farewells and a New Atlas on our Website

In this season of rebirth and awakening, it is with a heavy heart that we share sorrowful news. During the past few weeks our society and the St. Louis genealogy community have lost three of our longtime members and volunteers. Please join us in remembering Judy Doyle, Carol Kohnen, and Bob Moody, all of whom shared their knowledge, friendship, and dedication to many of us. Then, as a special treat, we hope you will enjoy another new atlas recently uploaded to our website.

Goodbye to Another Longtime StLGS Volunteer and Some New Maps on Our Website

Another of our valued StLGS volunteers has passed away, and we share an "In Memoriam" this week to our former remote data entry team leader, Mary Ryan. We'll fill you in next week on upcoming April events, but meanwhile, please use the Annual Family History Conference and Calendar of Events pages on our website for the latest news. Registration has opened for our annual Salt Lake City Research trip, and, in addition, we want to tell you about two new mapping resources uploaded recently to our website, so please keep reading.

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.)

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 Thanksgiving Genealogy Gift and Another Farewell

StLGS bids farewell to another past-president with the passing on 26 October 2024 of Neil Fiala, who served in 2000–2001. Neil and his wife Barbara were active volunteers throughout the 1990s, and you can read more about them below. We also have a very special gift to all of you, courtesy of our intrepid "geospatial genealogist," Jim Bellenger, who has been working non-stop on creating maps for every cemetery on our website. This past week, we have finalized and uploaded about forty new maps, and the linked list below is a thank you for your generous donations to the society. Read on for all the details . . .

Officer Election Results, Exciting Website News, and Thank You to Our Supporters!

Thanks to all of you who voted in the election for our 2025–2026 officers. With unanimous votes, we will have co-presidents for the next two years as Kathy Franke and Jeani Ward share that position. Jim Yochim has been reelected as vice president for membership, and Debbie Benoit will take over as secretary beginning in January. We’d like to say a huge thank you to both Karen Goode and Cindy Finnegan, our current president and our society's secretary, who are ready to step down and hand the reins to our newly elected officers. Cindy has prepared board meeting notes, tackled dozens of thank you letters, scanned years' worth of old documents, and assisted at many of our events. As president for the past four years, Karen has managed to guide us successfully through one disaster after another. Her tenure began with a complete shutdown due to the pandemic, which led us to learning from scratch how to set up Zoom and hybrid meetings. After the office opened again, and we settled back into a more normal routine, it was time for a massive cleanup so we could get new carpet and a much-needed paint job. When all was finally sparkling clean and everything in place, we were faced with water damage due to a badly leaking roof, which shut us down for weeks again, and now, Karen is leading us through a complete redesign of our website. (More on that in just a bit.) Her leadership skills and her determination and perseverance in the face of one obstacle after another have kept our society on a steady course during some incredibly difficult times. We thank both Cindy and Karen for their hard work and look forward to seeing both of them enjoying some new adventures in the coming year.

And now for some exciting news about our StLGS website  . . .

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).

Welcome to the Digitized Georeferenced Pitzman's 1878 Atlas of St. Louis City and County!

Happy Labor Day! St. Louis Genealogical Society’s volunteers want to help you celebrate this holiday weekend with a special gift to everyone, regardless of your StLGS membership status. Our amazing map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been laboring for months on an indexed, digitized version of one of the classic and beloved resources for twentieth-century St. Louis city and county residents, the 1878 Pitzman atlas. Pitzman’s New Atlas of the City and County of Saint Louis contains pages of detailed maps showing locations of specific landowners and many of the structures on their properties, as well as other landmarks, such as schools, houses of worship, cemeteries, and some businesses. For many years, StLGS was able to reproduce this atlas in book form for sale, but we have had to discontinue that option due to skyrocketing publication costs. The atlas was digitized many years ago and offered for sale by our society as a CD (and StLGS continues to sell those CDs in our secure online store.) However, never before has anyone been able to connect you directly to the page and location of everyone mentioned in the atlas . . . until now!

First of Many Cemetery Maps Added to the StLGS Website AND StLGS Members: Please Vote on Amended Bylaws!

Although we have had data on many St. Louis-area cemeteries on our website for more than a decade, we have not had the ability to add maps to the pages until our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, turned that task into his own pet project. For the past year, Jim has hunted down whatever maps exist for as many cemeteries as he could find and has used his talents to superimpose the old 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 the maps, get permission to use them, and link them in several ways to the cemetery pages on our site. Because this is so time-consuming, only the first batch of completed maps is now on the website, but lots more are coming!

StLGS June Meetings and Classes

Happy Memorial Day! On this special day of remembering those who have sacrificed for our country, we also look forward to the start of summer. We hope you are ready to join us for our June monthly meeting as well as some Special Interest Group meetings and an upcoming class. Please read on for details . . .

Updated Congregations Maps Added to the StLGS Website!

Suppose you had a female ancestor who lived in St. Louis in the 1860s, but you couldn’t discover her birth date. There are no statewide birth records in Missouri prior to 1910, and, although the City of St. Louis kept a birth register, compliance was not compulsory; hence, it is incomplete. Religious records would be very helpful, as births, baptisms, confirmations, and other life events were usually recorded by religious leaders and kept on site. You know where your ancestor lived and what religion her family practiced, but how do you know what congregations were active at the time she was born? A new set of congregations maps is now live on our website, and an exciting feature of the maps is the ability to see exactly which churches and synagogues were open in the city and county at any given time. Let’s take a look!

If Only Geographic Borders Didn't Change!

It certainly makes it easier to do genealogy if your family lived in the same place for hundreds of years, doesn’t it? Well, maybe. The reality is that over time, borders are always changing. As America became more settled by non-native people, the borders of cities, counties, colonies, and then states were forever shifting. In Europe, centuries of disputes over who ruled what and where meant that stability was the exception and not the norm. What do movable boundaries mean for those of us trying to research our families?

September Genealogy Meetings, Upcoming Classes, and Fall Speaker Series

It feels like the summer has flown by, doesn't it? But fall is almost here, and we are excited about our remaining meetings, some new upcoming classes, and our hybrid Fall Speaker Series. All the details to get you started with our fall event schedule are below.

StLGS August Meetings AND Registration for the Fall Speaker Series Opens!

We usually refer to the hot, humid, days of August as the "dog days of summer." But that doesn't mean you should be deprived of exciting genealogy events! Join us for these upcoming August meetings that should allow you to stay cool and learn at the same time! And registration is now open for our exciting hybrid Fall Speaker Series. Read on for all the details . . .

StLGS Trading Post Offers Atlases and Maps for Genealogists

Do you know where your family lived in relation to other family members or to the people who signed as witnesses on baptisms, deeds, wills or other documents? Maps help provide answers to where a family lived. And historic maps may include the names of landowners in a place and time. These maps may even help you locate the exact plot of ground where your family lived, so you can stand at their old homestead or even find a family burial ground.

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 . . .

More Free Interactive Maps for Genealogy and a Big Thank You!

After almost three years of pandemic uncertainty, the one thing that St. Louis Genealogical Society can be sure of is the loyalty and generosity of our members and friends. If you have been a regular reader of our blog, you know that like many non-profits, we have struggled to stay active and vital during a very difficult time. Because we have been so limited in what we can do to raise funds, we have relied more than usual on donations, and we are just overwhelmed by how incredibly generous so many of you have been.