LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR APRIL 2007 April 2, 2007 ======================================================= SUMMARY OF EVENTS FOR APRIL 2007 (See details on a later screen.) - Family Tree Maker Group: No meeting in April - General Meeting: Tuesday, April 10 - Free Genealogy Seminar: Saturday, April 21 - L-AGS Board Meeting: Tuesday, April 24 - Study Group: Thursday, April 26 - The Master Genealogist Group: Saturday, April 28 (Note change from regular date!) ======================================================= A P R I L M E E T I N G S Visitors are welcome free of charge at all of our meetings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FREE GENEALOGY SEMINAR Learn How To "Find It" and "Cite It" Sponsored by L-AGS and Livermore Family History Center For a formatted version of this announcement, go to: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/seminar.doc Date: April 21, 2007 Registration: 8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Seminar: 9:00 AM - 3:15 PM Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore Map: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Dr. Stephen P. Morse, PhD: San Francisco, CA (Find It!) World-renowned engineer and amateur genealogist Genealogy Website: One-Step WebPages, http://www.stevemorse.org/ Lecture Topics: * A Potpourri of Genealogical Search Tools. * What Color Ellis Island Search Form Should I Use? * Playing Hide and Seek in the U.S. Census. More than 15,000 genealogy researchers visit Dr. Morse's free One-Step Web Pages daily. Join us and learn to search some of your favorite websites faster and more efficiently! Susan Goss Johnston: Fremont, CA (Cite It!) Professional Genealogist, Teacher, Lecturer Topic: "Adventures in Source Citation" Ms. Johnston, a member of the Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society, teaches genealogy classes at Las Positas College in Livermore, California. Her lectures are always eagerly anticipated. Registration: Seating is limited. Pre-registration deadline is April 19. Optional registration with lunch deadline is April 13, 6 PM. All sack lunches must be pre-ordered and prepaid, $4.50. (See link below.) Phone: (925) XXX-XXXX or (925) XXX-XXXX for more information. Seminar Committee: Kay Speaks (Seminar Chair), Arleen Wood, Caroline Foote, Dick & Jean Lerche, Dick Finn, Eileen Redman, George Anderson, Grace Morris, Jane Southwick, Kevin Gurney, Larry Renslow, Lois Barber, Marie Ross, Nancy Southwick, Paula Brown, Rose Marie Phipps, Susan & Terry Silva, James Davis, Bill & Marelene Silver, Jean Petrilli. View or download seminar information: * Speaker Biographies, Publicity Information (PDF file, 266,705 bytes) http://www.l-ags.org/seminar/flyer.pdf * Seminar Agenda (PDF file, 167,062 bytes) http://www.l-ags.org/seminar/agenda.pdf * Mail-in Registration (PDF file, 177,185 bytes) http://www.l-ags.org/seminar/bymail.pdf * Web Registration Page (Online Registration Link) http://www.l-ags.org/seminar/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Leader: Dick Finn at mailto:XXXX@wecare.net Date and Time: NO MEETING IN APRIL Please avail yourself of the L-AGS FTM e-mail forum at mailto:ftm.group@L-AGS.org to post questions, answers and comments. The e-mail forum is always open. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MONTHLY GENERAL MEETING Arleen Wood, Program Chairperson Tuesday, April 10, at 7:30 p.m. Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton. Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Pls-BethEmek.html Presentation: "Weaving Personal Histories of the Past Into Fiction" Presenter: Ann Parker Author of award-winning historical mysteries Ann Parker will discuss how her personal journey into her family's history led her to write a mystery series set during the Colorado Silver Rush of 1880 ---with the goal of making the past "come alive" on the page. Visitors are welcome, no charge. Ann Parker earned degrees in Physics and English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, before falling into a career as a science writer nearly 30 years ago. The only thing more fun for her than slipping oblique William Butler Yeats references into a fluid dynamics article is delving into the past. Her ancestors include a Leadville blacksmith, a Colorado School of Mines professor, and a gandy dancer on the Colorado railroads. Her critically-acclaimed, award-winning Silver Rush historical mystery series, Silver Lies and Iron Ties, is set in the silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, in the early 1880s. Ann is a member of the National Association of Science Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Western Writers of America. Ann, her husband, and their two children reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, whence she has observed numerous high tech boom- and-bust cycles. More information can be found on her Web site, http://annparker.net/ In case you missed it, Ann Parker was featured in the Tri-Valley Herald on March 30, 2007: http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5555589 Visitors are welcome. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ L-AGS BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Time: 7:30 PM Location: 458 Tyler Avenue, Livermore, CA Members are invited to attend meetings of the Board of Directors. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STUDY GROUP MEETING Date: Thursday, April 26, 2007 Time: 7:30 p.m. - 9 p.m. Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Co-Chairs: Kay Speaks & Dick Finn For a formatted version of this announcement, go to: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/SG_Apr07.doc Topic: Steve Morse's One-Step Web Pages As a follow-up for the L-AGS-sponsored genealogy seminar on April 21, our Study Group will review Steve Morse's One-Step Web Pages, http://www.stevemorse.org There are more than 140 applications on his Web site, many more than will be discussed at our seminar. Why use the One-Step site to search Ancestry, Ellis Island, FamilySearch, and other existing databases when these sites already have their own search engines? Dr. Morse notes, "I have developed some of my own applications to facilitate doing genealogical research... . They provide some powerful interfaces for searching existing databases." What would you expect from the architect of the Intel 8086, predecessor to today's Pentium processor? Have a genealogy brick wall? Bring your problem to a meeting and let the Study Group help you brainstorm your research options. Don't forget to use our L-AGS Study Group forum for questions on any genealogy or computer topic. L-AGS is blessed with people willing to share their knowledge! E-mail the forum at mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org. You can also post any suggestions for future Study Group topics. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP Leader: Kay Speaks, mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org Instructors: Kay Speaks & Sue Johnston For a formatted version of this announcement, go to: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/TMG_Apr07.doc Date: Saturday, April 28, 2007 NOTE THE CHANGE FROM THE REGULAR MEETING DATE! Time: 9:00 a.m. - Noon (each meeting is like a mini- workshop) Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html Future Meeting Date Changes: May, no meeting June 9, second Saturday of the month April 28 meeting: Topic: Using Roles to Control Sentences Structures http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Roles.htm We continue to base our workshops on Terry's TMG Tips website located at http://tmg.reigelridge.com/index.htm Roles are a powerful and flexible tool within TMG used to control Sentence Structures in narrative reports. They can be used to define the role of each participant in an event. Thus, in a marriage tag (event), you might have persons in the roles of Bride, Groom, Minister, Maid of Honor, Best Man, etc. Roles allow the user to create a "library" of Sentence Structures within a specific Tag Type. Each Tag Type (Birth, Anecdote, Census, Marriage, College, and so forth) has its own Sentence Structures to generate text appropriate for the event being recorded. About our meetings: With the aid of a digital projector, Kay and Sue work as an instructional team. We discuss, demonstrate, and brainstorm best practices of the software. We use a hands-on method, thus you learn TMG's features by actually entering samples of the lesson into a class TMG database. Each monthly session is like a mini three-hour TMG workshop. Guests are always welcome at our meetings. Accommodations for laptops are available. If you can't stay for the entire 3 hours, come and leave early. TMG questions not specific to all attendees will be addressed in the later part of our meeting. Please bring samples of your problem if possible. A free demo version of the software can be downloaded at http://www.whollygenes.com. For additional information, contact mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. ======================================================= FUTURE GENERAL MEETINGS Arleen Wood, Program Chairperson mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org ** April 10 - Ann Parker - "Weaving Personal Histories of the Past Into Fiction" - Historical mystery author discusses how her personal journey into her family's history led her to write a mystery series set during the Colorado Silver Rush of 1880 - with the goal of making the past "come alive" on the page. (See extended description below in this bulletin.) ** Saturday, April 21, 2007 - All-day free seminar with featured speakers Steve Morse and Susan Johnston. A special event jointly hosted by L-AGS and the Livermore LDS Church. ** Tuesday, May 8, at 7:30 p.m. Barbara Leak, guest speaker: "Searching for Soldier Ancestors". Designed to stimulate ideas, this presentation reviews a variety of sources for military information and clues to military service, from colonial times to the present. Visitors are welcome, no charge. Barbara Leak has more than 20 years experience as a genealogy researcher and educator. A member of the Genealogical Speakers Guild, she has lectured at conferences and workshops sponsored by the National Genealogical Society, Federation of Genealogical Societies, California State Archives, and numerous libraries and societies throughout northern California. A former president of PCGS, she is currently president of the Genealogical & Historical Council of Sacramento Valley and a California State Genealogical Alliance Distinguished Service Award recipient. ** Tuesday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m. Beth Twogood, L-AGS Corresponding Secretary, will give a slide presentation on her trip to England to attend a family reunion. ** July 10 - Jane Lindsey - California Genealogical Society Library - Slide presentation of the new space of the CGS library, available resources and website for on-line research ** August 14 - Marge Bell - "Churches and Cemeteries" ** September 11 - Chuck Knuthson - "Newspaper Research: A Window to the Past" - Newspapers provide a window on the lives of our ancestors, including vital statistics, death notices and obituaries, news, photographs and illustrations, legal notices, and social events and "gossip." They are also a rich source of information on individual and community lifestyle. Do not overlook this valuable family history resource ** October 9 -Cath Madden Trindle - "But It's My Family: Copyright Issues for 21st Century" - This lecture offers a discussion of current US copyright law, international copyright, pending legislation and court actions and ethical issues of copying and sharing genealogical information electronically or in print. ** December 11 - Mary Dillon - "101 Ranch Genealogy" - The 101 Ranch, considered to be the largest diversified ranch of the early 1900s, played a major part in her father's childhood in Oklahoma. Oil, Wild West shows, currency, and much more interesting "stuff" were part of the 101. =======================================================