The official blog of the St. Louis Genealogical Society. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Send news to publications@stlgs.org .
If you are lucky enough to have a father in your life, we hope you had a wonderful day this past weekend enjoying his company and celebrating his accomplishments. We also thought you might like to know how Father's Day came about, and you might be surprised to learn how far back the tradition goes.
For the past year, our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been working tirelessly to find lost St. Louis City and County cemeteries, acquire maps of existing cemeteries, and use Google maps to locate and georeference as many of these sites as he can. He finished his first set of maps in August 2024 and his second set in January of this year. This has been an extremely time-consuming project for Jim and his resident StLGS editor, but we are delighted that he is finished (for now) and we can share the last batch of maps with you today. If you missed the post about the first set of cemetery maps, you can read it here. The post announcing the second set is here.
Summer is almost here, and we are excited to bring you some great upcoming meetings. We have one class scheduled for this coming weekend, and we want to remind you about the deadlines for registering for our Salt Lake City Research Trip or watching the digital recordings of the Family History Conference. Here's what's on tap for June . . .
Happy Memorial Day! This day has turned into the unofficial start of summer, but it was never created as a day to show off our barbecue skills or to bring our white jeans and shoes out of storage. The huge casualty toll of the Civil War was responsible for more gravesites than anyone could possibly have imagined, leading to the first "Decoration Day" on 30 May 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery. More than 5,000 people gathered to listen to future U.S. president James Garfield commending people for coming together to "pay their tribute of grateful homage" by walking through the cemetery and decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. During the next few decades, the idea of decorating soldiers' graves became widespread. By 1890, all of the former Union states had an official Decoration Day. Eventually, the name changed to Memorial Day, and by the end of World War II, soldiers from all American wars were being remembered throughout the country. In 1971, the name of the day was changed, and the fourth Monday in May became the fixed day of the holiday. Most of us have military ancestors who served and died in far-off places over hundreds of years. We certainly can't go to all of their graves to place wreaths or leave flowers, but we have an alternative for you, if you would like to remember their service.
Many of you know that our StLGS website is in the process of undeergoing an update. Our busy technology team has been working diligently on ways to best redesign our site to make it more user-friendly, easier to access on mobile devices, and more visually appealing. It's been a long, involved process of meetings and planning, but we finally settled on a local website development company and began to move ahead when a wrench flew into our plans.
Because of our annual Family History Conference that took place on Saturday, 3 May, there are no other scheduled events for this month. However, we have some great meetings coming up as well as a class, and we don't want you to miss the deadlines for registering for our Salt Lake City Research Trip or watching the digital recordings of the Family History Conference. We also have a fun link to share for those of you who are planning to print large family charts. Here's what you need to know. . .
Our annual Family History Conference on Saturday, 3 May 2025, was a huge success, thanks to dozens of hard-working volunteers and more than one hundred curious participants, both in-person and online. For the first time since the pandemic, we had an almost-capacity live audience, and our three dynamic speakers captivated everyone with the endless possibilities that artificial intelligence and DNA analysis bring to genealogy. If you couldn't attend on Saturday, we have a treat for you—all the lectures were recorded, and they will be available for viewing for the next three months. Here's how you can access them . . .
