Let's put our hands together and clap for the success of our L-AGS booth at the Alameda County Fair. There are so many wonderful stories our volunteers have told. It would be great if someone might gather them so we could publish the stories in The Roots Tracer. Anyone? Many THANKS go to the Committee of Jon Bryan, Frank Geasa and Leo Vongottfried for bringing this together. An equal amount of applause goes to all the volunteers who gave so much of their time to help in any way.

The next big project for L-AGS is the October 9th Seminar. It will be a one-day seminar with two speakers giving lectures, Leland Meitzler from Heritage Quest and Cath Madden Trindle. Heritage Quest will have a large vendor's table full of genealogy wares. It will be held at the Radisson Hotel in Dublin.

SEATING IS LIMITED! You can download the registration form from our web site. Or call Jolene & David at 447-9386 for a registration form. Cost is $25.00 per person, which includes lunch.

Anyone who’s been in the military knows that trying to get personnel records can be frustrating. The government has tried to simplify things by allowing online record requests.

Answer a few simple questions and print out a signature verification sheet. Fax the sheet to the number listed within 20 days of your request. The hardest part is the wait.

To visit this site, use the following web address:

http://www.archives.gov/research_room/vetrecs/

Need background information, photographs or maps of places in your family history? National Geographic magazine can prove to be a valuable source.

They've written articles about countries, U. S. states, migration routes across the seas and United States, including highways, rivers, and old wagon roads. There is information on military branches and specific wars. Many colorful people such as Buffalo Bill (Col. W. F. Cody), Daniel Boone, and many presidents, possible relatives, are included. There was even an article on the DAR story (Nov. 1951 issue). Sorry, I no longer have this one.

I am dissolving my collection of magazines from 1946-1995, with a few earlier issues. Any of these back issues can be yours for 10 cents an issue. I have an index for all issues from 1888 to 1995, which you're welcome to use to find your area of interest. (Hobbies too! They’ve covered a range of topics.)

If interested, please give Kathleen Young, L-AGS Member, a call at 925-606-7361 to arrange a time to meet or for a topic to look up.

Have you benefited from data that has been posted to the Internet by volunteers in your ancestors' home localities? You can repay those volunteers for their efforts by posting additional data that you yourself might have about those localities.

I, and probably most of you, have high school yearbooks from our teenage days. A list of the names of the students from those ancient - in my case - times is obviously of value to genealogists. Many local sites already carry these lists.

The GenWeb site for Blue Earth County, Minnesota, where Harriet and I grew up, did not have the high school rosters for the years that we attended. So I spent a few hours digitizing them from the yearbooks that we have. I used optical character recognition (OCR) in an attempt to avoid keyboarding, but I am doubtful it saved any time considering the misreadings that had to be corrected.

Since we have a personal Web site, I posted the list there: (http://home.comcast.net/~gwajr/Mankato_HS/mhs_main.html). Then I corresponded with the webmasters for the county and state GenWeb sites and found that both wanted the data. The county webmaster posted a link to our site, and the state webmaster wanted to post the list itself. The editor of a semi-annual newspaper for old-timers from the county said she wanted to announce the posting in the next issue. Having a personal Web site is not a prerequisite for contributing your yearbook lists, because you can always just mail the data to the local historians.

Someday, after our Web site and the GenWeb sites are Googled again, a genealogist looking for, say, Eugene Brinkman, will hit on the list for Mankato High School in 1941, and (if it is the right Eugene) be able to pin him down in time and place, and be able to get a yearbook photo and other information from me or from the Mankato Library.

Once I was sermonizing some new genealogists with the well-known commandment, "Talk to the old people before it is too late." Suddenly it dawned on me: I am an old people. I should pass on what I know to the younger generations, even if they don't realize yet that they will want it someday. Contributing your collected information about a place to the historians and genealogists of that place is one way to pass it on, and at the same time, repay the volunteers in that place for what you have learned from them.

The story handed down in my mother's family is that her grandfather, John Marion Rigdon, died of typhoid fever on January 11, 1886 and was buried at Hansen, Nebraska, a small town across the Platte River, six miles south of Grand Island. After his death, his widow and four children returned to Illinois where they had family ties.

Two months later, the Historical Society found that five gravesites had been purchased in the name of Marion John Rigdon in 1886 - close enough to be the person I was looking for.

More recently, I found the cemetery in Mt. Pulaski, Illinois where my great-grandmother, John Marion's widow and my grandfather's sister are buried. Guess who's buried there also - John Marion Rigdon.

Was the Hansen, Nebraska grave ever used?

When we started dabbling in genealogy 31 years ago, we did what every beginning researcher of the time did: we subscribed to "The Genealogical Helper" from Everton's. That company was 26 years old even then. The "Helper" was then and for many more years the only popular - as opposed to scholarly - magazine for genealogists in the U. S. As genealogy grew, so did the competition to Everton's. A few years ago, the Everton family lost control of the company and then just recently, the new owners also gave up.

The news went out this month along the genealogical hotlines: "Everton's is dead!", "The Helper, even with its new name, is dead!"

But wait! As Mark Twain said about the story of his own death, "The news is premature."

Dick Eastman, in his weekly e-mail column dated July 19, 2004*, reported:

This drama is still unfolding. Maybe "The Handybook for Genealogists", like the Helper, will also arise from the ashes and resume its regular rollout of new versions. These good, gray standbys of genealogists have served us well for a long time. May they once again do so.

A Guide to Catholic-Related Native American Records in Midwest Repositories can be found at this Marquette University Libraries site.

http://www.marquette.edu/library/collections/archives/NativeGuide/Mguide-intro-main.html

 

If you are wondering which repositories have copies of commercial insurance maps such as the Sanborn maps for a certain town, this site might help you. Courtesy of George Anderson.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/sanbul.html

 

If you would like to see if something of interest to you exists in the various archives of the UK, the A2A database contains catalogues describing archives held throughout England, dating from the 900s to the present day. Search by a surname or keyword and see what comes up.

http://www.a2a.org.uk/default.asp

 

If you are planning a family reunion, you may find this non-profit site affiliated with Brigham Young University of interest. For a modest fee they offer a system that uses your supplied Gedcom file to print up to 80 generations of your family on a single 3.5’ x 6’ page.

http://roots.cs.byu.edu/

 

If your are searching for ancestors in Colorado, you may want to visit this Colorado's Historic Newspaper Collection site which offers digital searching of dozens of Colorado's newspapers of yesteryear.

http://www.cdpheritage.org/newspapers/

 

The following site offers searchable passenger lists of ships going to various places such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa but it focuses primarily on ships going to Canadian ports.

http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/passengerlists/index.htm

 

A site with many search lists of transcribed marriages, primarily USA but also other locations.

http://www.genwed.com/index.htm

 

If your ancestors were from Northeast Vermont you will find many great search lists on this site by Janice Boyko.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nekg3/nekg.htm

 

A site with many good links to death indexes for the Chicago and Cook County Illinois area as well as links to death indexes elsewhere in the USA is at:

http://www.deathindexes.com/illinois/cook.html

 

Do you have a document for one of your Scottish ancestors that has an occupation listed, but still leaves you wondering what he did for a living? Perhaps this site can help you.

http://www.scotroots.com/occupations.htm

 

The Berks County, Pennsylvania Government site has online search lists of birth, death, marriage and estates available at this site:

http://www.berksregofwills.com/search_page.htm

 

The following site has links to many good indexes of individuals participating in wars the USA has been involved in, up to and including the Viet Nam war.

http://www.militaryindexes.com/worldwartwo/index.html

 

This site explains the terminology of the various degrees of cousin relationships. It also has links to other interesting sites focusing on cousin relationships with discussions on such topics as marriage laws, customs, etc.

http://www.sonic.net/~fredd/cousins.html

 

If you find your ancestor's photo in this online archive, the site offers it free for the cost of the postage to send it to you.

http://www.deadfred.com

 

If your genealogy includes ancestors who lived in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York you will find links to numerous genealogy based search lists as well as to interesting informational sites at

http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/

Have you thought of scrapbooking as a way to preserve your family history? We usually think of writing books about our ancestors, but what about your life and the lives of your descendants? What would you give if your ancestors had made a scrapbook about their lives?

I started a scrapbook about 4 years ago and had done a total of 3 pages! Then, I was at a Home and Garden show at the Fairgrounds and saw a Creative Memories booth. I stopped to talk to the representative and was given a free year of lessons, given by our own Connie Pitt. I started the classes last November and have been enjoying them immensely.

I am now working on my third scrapbook. The first one was about my grandson, Jesse, who is now 29 years old. I started it with the marriage of his parents and his birth. There are many pictures about his first day home from the hospital, with all the relatives there to welcome him. In the journaling, I told about how my dad, who was a strong man who rarely showed emotions, with tears in his eyes because he never thought he would live to be a Great Granddad. Everyone in the family took turns holding him and having their pictures taken with Jesse.

There are stories about Jesse from Grandma's viewpoint. I remember the early years of his life, which he doesn't. Making this scrapbook was a real adventure for me because it was like reliving his growing up. It is priceless to him, since he did not have any of his childhood pictures.

I also made a scrapbook about a trip that Jesse and I took when he was 12 years old. Every once in awhile, he will mention something we did on that trip and it is all included in his scrapbook – from the train ride at Fort Bragg, through Oregon seeing the aquarium at Depoe Bay (where the "Free Willy" whale was later taken to recuperate), watching the fish climb the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam, watching a bicycle race through Virginia City, exploring the Bodie ghost town, marveling at the Devil's Postpile and getting held up on a stagecoach ride at Columbia.

Now, I'm working on a scrapbook about my life. I hope my descendants will value it for the look back at how my life was before TV, computers, etc. Much of the time, we lived without electricity or running water, which they can't begin to imagine. I'm including scanned copies of my important papers – birth certificate; grade school, high school and college diplomas; marriage license; etc., so they won't have to search for them.

Now, I will also have to do scrapbooks for my daughter and my other two grandsons. Then, I can start on books about my ancestral families.

I think scrapbooks are a wonderful way to give my family the fun of looking at all the pictures and reading the journaling. My daughter says that I usually remember the most embarrassing things that have happened. Well, I think it gives human interest to the information. Where else will they see stories about themselves when they were kids and did funny stuff? I’m having a great time, reliving my life and the lives of my family.

I have now also bought a film scanner and am scanning all the photos into my computer in Photoshop Elements. This will give me tons of photos to use in future scrapbooks. I also intend to put the photos on CDs and put them in pockets in the back of each scrapbook.

Incidentally, Connie is also holding lessons at the Heritage senior apartments in Livermore. She is also showing the residents how to find information on the Internet. They are absolutely thrilled when she finds information about their ancestors.

Scrapbooking is now the number one hobby in the United States, and genealogy is number two. Isn't it great that both of the most popular hobbies fit together so well?

If you haven't tried scrapbooking, I highly recommend it. You will enjoy it and will be giving your family something to enjoy for years to come.

I recently had a very scary experience and I think it may be something that has happened in my family before.

The day before Thanksgiving, I bought a Turkey Dinner from Safeway and put it in my refrigerator. On Thanksgiving Day, I went to a movie with my daughter, grandson and his fiancée. The plan was that my daughter and I would return to my apartment and get the food, which would be taken to her house to be heated up for dinner.

While at the movie, I went to the bathroom and returned to my seat. That is the last thing I remember for 6 ½ hours!

They tell me that when I returned to the seat, I started laughing – to the point that people in the surrounding seats glared at me. On the way home, I told them stories from my childhood and cried. I told the same stories over and over and they wondered what was wrong with me.

When we got to my apartment, I opened the refrigerator door and started to cry. I said "some bad people sneaked into my apartment and left a turkey in my refrigerator!" At this point, my daughter thought maybe I had fallen in the theater bathroom and hit my head. So, she took me to the Emergency Room at Kaiser, Walnut Creek. They did a bunch of blood tests and a CAT scan of my head (to rule out an injury or tumor). All of the tests were negative. The doctor said it was probably Transient Global Amnesia, possibly due to a migraine headache. My daughter said that I had intermittently complained that my head hurt and a few minutes later would say I didn't have a headache.

The first thing I was aware of was being on the gurney going for the CAT scan, but I wasn't aware of the scan itself. Evidently, I asked the same questions over and over, without remembering the answer. My daughter would finally tell me "You’ve asked that question 3 times already." They gave me an IV of migraine medications (the name of which I don't remember!) and I was able to go home. Obviously, we did not have Thanksgiving that day, but we did have it on the next day.

This is frighteningly like the short-term memory loss that my mother suffered after several strokes and like her sister who has Alzheimer's.

My great-great grandfather had some sort of malady that we have been trying to diagnose for years. He would disappear and would generally be brought home by someone in town who knew him. He did not know where he had been or what he had done. After they came to Oregon on a wagon train in 1843, they lived on a farm and the neighbors were not close. When he disappeared, they would have to have a search party go out to find him. He was once found lying under a bush and crying.

Now I wonder, was he also suffering from Transient Global Amnesia? There is no record of his having migraines or "sick headaches" as my grandmother called them. But, in his time, there was no medication for migraines.

It's really frightening to think that, had I been alone, I might have wandered away and who knows where I could have wound up. It's bad enough to know that I talked to my family about things that I have probably not told them in the past. I told my sister that I had probably told all my secrets and she said "Yes and probably everyone else's, too!"

The Neurologist tells me that Transient Global Amnesia rarely happens twice to the same person. I hope he is right, but twice since then I have had intermittent headaches that were on the way to being migraines and I have quickly taken my medication to stave them off.

I can't help but wonder if anyone else in my family has had an episode like this. I have been interested for some time in medical pedigrees, and this episode has sharpened my interest. About the only information we usually have for an ancestor's medical history is what is written on their death certificate, but something like this is not likely to show up there, since it's not a cause of death. We are lucky in my family to have a book that was written by my great-grandfather's niece in which she told about his episodes.

There is an article on family health histories in the New England Ancestors magazine, Summer 2004, Vol. 5, No. 3.

NARA Puts Databases on the Internet

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently launched Access to Archival Databases (AAD), a new research tool that makes a selection of the Archives' most popular electronic records available to the public, over the Internet. The URL is http://www.archives.gov/aad .

AAD provides researchers with online access to more than 350 databases, which over 20 Federal agencies created, and NARA plans to expand the system to more than 500 databases. In addition, this tool provides the ability to search, retrieve, print out, and download records. Another plus is one of providing important contextual information to help researchers understand the records better, including code list, explanatory notes, and for some series or files, related documents.

Notable databases in the initial release of AAD include:

• Combat casualties from the Vietnam and Korean Wars
• POWs from WWII and Korean War
• Japanese-American Internee Files from WWII
• Port of New York ship passenger lists, 1846-1851 (Irish Famine database)
• Death records from the Gorgas Hospital Mortuary in Panama, 1906-1991
• Indexes to black and white and color NASA photographs, 1958-1991
• After action combat and air sortie reports from the Vietnam War
• Military Prime Contracts in excess of $10,000, 1965-1975
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC Ownership Reporting System, 1978-1998)
• SEC Proposed Sales of Securities System insider trading, 1972-1993

Since the launch of AAD, thousands have flocked to the site; therefore, expect to experience a wait time.
NARA Press Release, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC 20406, phone 1-86-NARA-NARA.

From the Root Digger, April 2004

Veterans' Benefits

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched an online database of more than 3 million records of burials in its 120 national cemeteries.

The Nationwide Gravesite Locator, accessible at http://www.cem.va.gov contains records of interred veterans and their dependents dating to the establishment of the first national cemeteries during the Civil War. Also listed are burial records since 1999 from some state veterans cemeteries and from Arlington National Cemetery (operated by the US Army rather than the VA). The VA will update the gravesite locator nightly with the previous day's burials.

The basic search is by first and/or last name. You also can enter a first and last initial, or the last name plus a partial first name. The advanced search adds options for a middle name, birth and death dates, and cemetery.

Results show the interred person's name, rank and branch of service (if available), service dates, birth and death dates, burial date, the cemetery and its contact information, and the grave's exact location.

Before 1994, each cemetery kept its burial records on paper. Records for four cemeteries - Long Island, Los Angeles, Fort Rosencrans and the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific - are incomplete, so some burials may not be listed.

My paternal grandmother, Hannah, died in 1907 when my father was 7 years old. My aunt said my grandfather, Lars Sogaard, was corresponding with someone. On the morning of June 2, 1908 he got all dressed up and left, returning later in the day with Caroline (Petersen), announcing "This is your new mother."

How did he meet Caroline? Did he know her in Denmark before he immigrated to Minnesota in 1891 at the age of 21? Perhaps she was his first love in Denmark. Marriage and census records indicated they were the same age (38), but nowhere do the records indicate where Caroline lived in Denmark before emigrating in 1907. Or did he advertise for someone in the Den Danske Pioneer, the oldest Danish-American newspaper in the United States?

A couple of years ago I contacted Den Danske Pioneer headquarters in Chicago. They informed me they did not have any archival newspapers for the years 1907-1908. Perhaps we would never know. Then this spring while reading the mail on DENMARK-D@ rootsweb. I found out that there were archival copies on microfilm of the Den Danske Pioneer newspapers at the Nebraska Historical Society, which were available for interlibrary loan. I ordered them through the Pleasanton Library and waited for what seemed an eternity for them to arrive. I went to the library the afternoon they arrived. I knew they were written in Danish, but to my dismay, the type was Gothic! It was not an easy read! I started "reading/scanning" the newspapers from July 1907, not knowing what they said, but hoping the name of my grandfather, Lars Sogaard, was unique enough to jump out at me. After a couple of hours, my eyes were glazing over and the sun was coming in through the skylight, hitting the computer screen, making it difficult to see. I decided I would read through the December 1907 issues and then come back another day. I was now down to December 19, 1907 and I was beginning to feel this was really stupid, maybe I was obsessed! Suddenly my eyes were drawn to a line which said Clements, Minn. On closer inspection, the name of my grandfather appeared - hyphenated, So- on one line and gaard on the next!

The translation to English is: Housekeeper Wanted An older girl or younger widow wanted as housekeeper for a small family in a well-to-do home. No small children. Write Lars So- gaard R.F.D. 1 Clements, Minn.

Much about Caroline still remains a mystery to me. I wonder how she adjusted to the harsh Minnesota winters. A few years later, Lars bought a farm in Northern Minnesota where the winters were more severe. Perhaps that is why they moved to the Danish settlement in Junction City, Oregon in 1920.

"In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage – to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness."

Alex Haley

If we had a contest among L-AGS members about who has relatives in the farthest-flung corner of the world from here, I might win. Mine are in Tasmania, the island-state of Australia south of the mainland.

In the Roots Tracer for Winter 1985 I described a trip that George and I made to Tasmania in the spring of that year, searching for the home my great-uncle Niels Peter Nielsen built after he immigrated from Denmark in 1885. Niels Peter had settled in Eaglehawk Neck at the south end of Tasmania, married Isabelle Mary Jane Batchelor, raised seven children, then about 1900 had pulled up stakes and taken his family to New Zealand. As far as we knew, there were no living relatives still in Tasmania. Before Tasmania on that same trip, we had been in New Zealand and met a number of Niels Peter's descendants living there.

After enjoyably exploring the area around Eaglehawk Neck in our rental car, we pulled into a motel in the small town of Nubeena. While eating in the motel's restaurant, George idly looked at the matchbooks placed in the ashtrays on the table. Imprinted on the matches was the logo, "Nubeena Motel, Colin Batchelor, proprietor." Could he be a relative? We asked to talk to Colin and he said, yes, he was related to Isabelle, and he would ask his father to bring some of his family papers around the next morning.

Among the most interesting papers the father showed us was a typed transcript of the diary written by Isabelle's great grandfather, Samuel Elliott, during his sea voyage from England to Tasmania in 1836. Many "immigrants" to Australia were convicts sent there against their will, but Samuel was not: he was classified as a professional. We recognized the historic value of Samuel's diary, but had no way to copy all 11 pages then. When we got home, we asked a professional genealogist in Tasmania to locate a full copy of the transcript for us, and she did. She learned that the transcript is not rare, although the original handwritten diary has apparently disappeared.

When I corresponded with my newfound cousins in New Zealand, none of them knew of the existence of the diary, so I sent all of them copies. Samuel Elliott was their ancestor, although not mine.

The diary is much too long to print in the Roots Tracer. For those interested in reading it, we have put the full text on our Web site at:

http://gwajr.home.comcast.net/Elliott_diary.html   (case sensitive)

It is heart wrenching to read of the many deaths at sea. One of those was Samuel's own daughter, as he writes on Tuesday, the 3rd of January, 1837:

The old proverb says "Accidents seldom happen alone" and so we found it.

This morning my wife left the berth to get a little coffee I had prepared for her. The ship rolled so much that scarce anyone could keep their feet and my sweet little Betsy about 5 months old was actually tossed from the top berth on to the floor. She was apparently uninjured, but what we could not see she felt so that she died soon after our landing. About 8 p.m. the wind was blowing a gale, on a sudden the wheel broke and we were in an awful state for about an hour and a half, but through mercy we were preserved once more.

First, let us say "Thank you very much" to our nearly 60 genealogy volunteers who served at Alameda County Fair 2004 at our Genealogy Booth! This effort would not have been possible without all of you. We had the Genealogy Booth staffed from 11 AM to 8 PM for all of the 17 days of the Fair.

We gave away about a 1,000 copies of our genealogy handout (also found under Genealogy for Students on our website) and about 500 copies of our L-AGS brochure! For visitors living outside our Valley, we offered a list of Bay Area Genealogical Societies.

Our special "Thank you" goes to Technology (Adventure) Building Coordinator Steve Perich and his fine crew including Jennifer and Rene. Every time we needed help from them, this crew provided it.

The organizations that were involved with volunteers included: The Josefa Higuera Livermore Chapter of The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Tracy Area Genealogical Society (TAGS), San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society (SRVGS), Tri-Valley Macintosh Users Group (TMUG) and Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society (L-AGS).

This year we widened our Genealogy Booth by adding screens to hold information behind our two tables. We had two PCs plus two Mac computers, which we used to "live access" various genealogy databases on the Internet with DSL connections. We added two printers, so each computer had its own printer. The Genealogy Booth added 50 % to the number of volunteer time slots at Alameda County Fair 2004 to cover from 11 AM through 8 PM during the 17 days.

In 2004, we had four different maps at our Genealogy Booth where visitors could place a pushpin to indicate their place of their birth - World, USA, California and Bay Area. We have had similar maps in recent years at the fair. For the first year our maps showed decreases in the total number of pushpins both for the foreign countries and the USA. Last year our pushpin count for foreign counties were down, but in the total count they were more than made up for by USA increases. This year the total number of pushpins was down about 19 %.

The pushpin count shows at least one pin for each of the 50 states. This was our second year in a row at the Fair for us to have all 50 states show birth representation. In 2002, we were close with 49 states, but failed to show a birth representative from Rhode Island.

California had 866 birth representatives in 2004 (1,108 in 2003), down by about 14 %. After California, our next ten States in 2004 were: New York (49), Illinois (47), Texas (43), Pennsylvania (36), Ohio (36), Colorado (34), Washington (33), New Jersey (32), Michigan (31) and Massachusetts (26).

We were nearly 25 percent down for birth representatives in foreign countries when 2004 (280) was compared with 2003 (371). The ten next largest birth counts for 2004 were Canada (44), Mexico (17), England (14), India (14), Russian (13), China (12), Germany (11), Philippine Republic (11), Australia (6) and Japan (6).

At the Fair in 2004, our volunteers tried to give more visitors a customized printout with their name and/or their ancestor's name on it using databases including the California Birth Index (CABI), California Death Index (CADI), Social Security (SSDI) and Census Records. I was using our VitalSearch subscription for CABI and Godfrey.org for census records. Our thinking was that visitors might retain this longer than one of our generic handout sheets as in previous years. This year I think some of our most treasured handouts were copies from census records.

At our Genealogy Booth in 2004, I thought some visitors were better prepared for us based on our four previous fair years. Some came with more information. Others said something like I intended to bring data about my ancestor, but I forgot. Can I come by your booth later during the fair? We certainly said, "Yes," unless it was the last day of the fair.

When I encouraged visitors to input their own data into the computer, I sometimes was amazed. Some could "type circles around me operating the computer." Youngsters barely old enough to be in the CABI (1905-1995) database would catch on so quickly.

One pair I helped was a daughter-mother couple, each using one of our computers. I first showed the daughter how to find her own name in CABI. Next I showed her that a surname and Mother's maiden name might show siblings. She immediately began inputting names of cousins born in CA. Then I showed mother how to use CABI with an unusual Italian name. We found several names, but she didn't recognize one older lady born in the 1920s among them. She asked if we could look up this person in the in CADI. It turned out this person was her Aunt and only lived two days after birth. This probably explains why her now deceased father never mentioned this older sister. He may not have known about her because it may not have been mentioned to him. I hope both this daughter and mother will continue their genealogy with this curiosity and wonderful problem-solving abilities.

Our favorite comment that we heard from the 2003 Fair was a compliment from one satisfied visitor who said, "This Genealogy Booth is the best booth at the Fair!" In 2004, we heard similar comments on several occasions. Please plan to join us at the Fair in 2005 and beyond as a Genealogy Booth volunteer.

Architect's rendering of Congregation Beth Emek's new home in Pleasanton

This drawing was found on Congregation Beth Emek web site located at http://uahc.org/ca/ca010

The new address for Beth Emek is:

3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton

Located on the east side of Bernal Avenue

Across from McDonalds