New Naturalization Indices Added to the StLGS Website!

Almost all of us had immigrant ancestors, although not all of them chose to become American citizens. Necessary for voting and to attain some legal status, citizenship was not a priority for those who didn't expect to buy land, weren't welcomed by the often-crowded communities in which they found themselves, or didn't especially care about electing local or national officials. Prior to September 1906, naturalization was a function of individual states and could take place in any court in the country. The number of years one had to be a resident fluctuated over time, and there were no restrictions about where you had to complete the process once you started it. And it was a process. First, an immigrant had to file a declaration of intention to become a citizen; these were often called first papers. The next step, after a certain number of years had passed, was a petition for citizenship, or final papers.

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).

Missouri, St. Louis, and Irish Offerings at our Family History Conference, Saturday, 4 May 2024

Last week, we told you about the FamilySearch part of the program for our annual Family History Conference, Successfully Navigating Websites for Your Genealogy, coming up on Saturday, 4 May 2024. (Did you miss last week’s post? You can read it here.) But, in addition to the three lectures that our featured speaker, Chief Genealogical Officer for FamilySearch David Rencher is presenting on the library and its catalogs, we have five more exciting talks scheduled for the big day. You can learn more about important resources at the State Historical Society of Missouri, the brand-new Clark Family Branch library here in St. Louis County, our own StLGS website, and fantastic sources for online Irish research. PLUS, all participants will have access to the full slate of eight lectures and an electronic version of the syllabus via our website for three months after the conference. Excited? Read on for more information . . .

Open House is Back! Come Visit on Saturday, 23 March 2024!

During the early 2000s, St. Louis Genealogical Society hosted an Open House at our office in Maplewood. It was held on a Sunday afternoon and always attracted an enthusiastic crowd. We enjoyed showing off our home base, greeting old and new friends, and sharing progress on our many projects. As time passed, however, and we got busy with many other events, Open House slipped under the radar and faded away. Then, of course, the pandemic shut us down, and even more years passed by without a way to celebrate our society. This year, we are reviving this fun way to spend a morning. We're changing it to a Saturday so more people can attend, and we can't wait to welcome you to our office!

New on the StLGS Website . . .

It’s been a while since we have brought you updates from the StLGS website, https://stlgs.org, so this week, we will catch you up. During the past few months, our volunteers have been working hard to add new data to our congregations project, upload new biographies, update and correct cemetery data, and add new information from donated memorabilia.

Hidden Genealogy Treasures on the StLGS Website

(Thanks to StLGS member, Marsha Clark, for writing the beginning of this week’s post.)

Marsha writes . . . Doing a little digging last night, I thought I'd try one more time—after many years of having just put it aside as a lost cause—to find my father's mysterious uncle who was adopted at a young age by a family in St. Louis. He was in rural Illinois as a child, and he and his siblings needed to find homes to live in when their last surviving parent, their father, died. Supposedly this youngest son died as a boy due to an accident; that's how I remembered hearing the story.  As it turned out, however, this uncle did not die young after all.