Ancestral Endeavors A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF LAFAYETTE GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY www.nettally.com/lgsla Volume 2004 Issue 8 August 2004 The Minutes of the August 19, 2004 Meeting Board meeting called to order 5:30p.m. The events committee asked for help from our members for the Lafayette Genealogical conference being held in October. Regina English has a list of duties she has prepared for members to do. And has asked for volunteers to sign up. Please meet with her to put your name on the list. Earl Gates offered to see about posters and banners for the conference. And will work on getting the brown bag lunches taken care of. He is also in need of help. Cindy Hofmeister has several different speakers coming to speak at the conference. And it has been designed to have five tracks of four classes each. These tracks are African American; LDS; Internet and Technology; Basics and Beyond; Misc. Cindy Hofmeister has been working on our new web site. And has been having a difficult time trying to put "buttons" on the pages. She has asked that if anyone knows how this can be done? To please email her hofsearch@aol.com. Our regular scheduled meeting was held at the Lafayette Public Library and was called to order at 6:30 p.m. By President Earl Gates. The meeting consisted of a general Welcome, Moment of Silence for our military and Eula. Followed by the Pledge. For those of you who missed our meeting, Eula has been very ill and due to her illness, Earl Gates has taken over the presidency of our society. We ask that our members please keep Eula and her family in your prayers. Our guest speaker for the August meeting was "Lauren Smith" from the Lafayette Public Library. And as many of you know, Lauren used to be over the genealogical area of the library. However, she is now in charge of computers and education. During our class Lauren taught us several different items that are available to us as genealogist. Such as Ancestry Plus, paid sites the library has that are available to library patrons, Lafayette Libraries Library catalog, as well as many other of Lauren's favorite sites. In addition, We met the new genealogical librarian "Cassandra Fedrick " who is now over the genealogical area. She is from Baton Rouge, where she worked at the Blue Bonnet library in the genealogical division. Cassandra talked to us about the genealogical goals of the library. Explaining some of their plans. Which include redoing the genealogy section of the library, Moving tables to give researchers more room, a plan for moving ALL genealogically related books back to the genealogy section. And if they have room, they will move the other sets of Father Hebert's books back. In addition, Cassandra stated the library is working on having programs that would teach computer classes for seniors as well as children, which would help promote genealogy. She also said there has been discussions about putting a computer in the genealogical area, dedicated to genealogy. Cassandra asked that everyone please sign in whenever using the genealogical area. This will help her keep track of the number of people using the genealogical area. As well as help her be able to do more for us as genealogist. Possibly making the collection and area a whole lot better. So remember to please sign in when using the Library. Please note Cassandra has changed her schedule to be available during the day. In order to work one on one with anyone who needs help with his or her genealogy. Old Business - Rayne's Genealogy Conference seminar September 25, 2004 with volunteers Brenda, Cindy, Regina and Earl. We would like to be able to sell our vital record CDs at this conference. And Earl Gates has burned some of the records already on CDs for this purpose. We would like to personally thank all the members who give willingly of their time each week for the Vital record CD project. If it was not for these members and their desire to serve, we would not have such a wonderful society. Thank you! New Business "Preserving Your Past For The Future" genealogical conference will be held Saturday October 16th 2004. Registration begins at 8:00 am at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 116 Bluebird Dr. Lafayette, LA. 70508. The price for this conference is $10. The fee will cover a brown bag lunch and the syllabus. Please mark your calendars, as we would like to have all our members of our society attend. This will be an event you won't want to miss. For those of you who missed the post online. Our Society now has it's own email account Lafgensoc@aol.com . This account will make it so individuals who would like to make contact with the society or would like further information about our society can have easy contact. Please place this email address in your address book and share it with your genealogical friends, neighbors and family. We are trying to help our society grow. As well as offer more to our members. Such as more genealogical classes and work shops. We need your ideas for what you would like to learn more about. Some of the ideas that have been mentioned, are Using different genealogical programs for Computers; Scanning Genealogical documents; Brick wall problem solving; What to look for in a court house; are just some of the classes we are thinking of having in the year 2005. We are in need of genealogical items of interest for our early publication. If you have been involved with any individual projects that you may be willing to share. We would truly appreciate you allowing us to use your work. We also would like to have ALL members submit a Biography of their favorite ancestor that they have researched. (Note: This does not have to be a huge biography. However, it would be nice if you show documented sources.) Meaning what sources did you use to gather your information. Many of you already have this information in your genealogical database. <G> For those of you who don't have information about a favorite ancestor. Please provide two generations of a deceased family you are working on and the information you have found so far. We will be starting a section on our website, called "Braking Down Brick Walls" and including this information in "Les Memories." If you have a Query that you would like to have published in "Les Memories" please send it to Cindy Hofmeister hofsearch@aol.com or send to Lafgensoc@aol.com so a member of our society board can make sure it will be published. In addition, in 2005 we will be offering one free Query a year to members to be placed in "Les Memories" and Queries to non-members for a small fee. Members will be able to place 6 queries a year on our website and non-members will have to pay for this service. If you have any questions or concerns please contact Earl Gates or Cindy Hofmeister Please let Earl Gates or Cindy Hofmeister know if you have any suggestions or ideas you would like to see done in the future with our society. As always we are in need of Saturday volunteers for the library. If you have not volunteered, Please put your name on the list!! (This is one of the ways we pay the library back for having a facility to host our meetings.)