Our September society meeting will be the Workshop with Maureen Taylor on September 15th at Vasa Park. This event is Free to members who register before September 1st in honor of our 40th anniversary. See the “Save the Date” page for more information.
Thursday, March 8th, 2018
The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, March 8, 2018 in the Bellevue Regional Library (Room 1), 1111 – 110th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 at 7 pm, with doors opening at 6:30 pm for networking.
Topic: This meeting will feature the streaming video from RootsTech 2018’s keynote speaker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or co-authored twenty-two books and created eighteen documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Faces of America, Black in Latin America, Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise, Africa’s Great Civilizations, and Finding Your Roots, his groundbreaking genealogy series now in its fourth season on PBS. His six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted, earned the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program—Long Form, as well as the Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and NAACP Image Award.
Also see our website for FREE genealogical help and other Special Interest Group meetings. Visitors are always welcome at all meetings. https://eastsidegenealogicalsociety.com/
Thursday, February 8th, 2018
Topic: “What I Wish I Had Known . . .” – This session is an interactive exchange of ideas, experience and recommendation by society members. The audience will share their experiences and lessons learned in researching their ancestors, citing their sources, the importance of locating original documentation, the confusion with multiple marriages, the importance of location, the need for continuous learning, researching extended family, the importance of law, the importance of technology and public or private sharing of our efforts Come learn from experienced genealogists sharing their adventures.
Speaker: Janet O’Conor Camarata is active in the South King County Genealogical Society as Technology User Group leader and publicity chairman and in the Eastside Genealogical Society as presenter and program chairman of the German Interest Group. She is also an instructor in a six-week course in genealogy and technology at Pierce College. She is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and a graduate of the University of Washington Genealogy and Family History program. She is an experienced instructor who taught at the University of Phoenix and in The Boeing Company.
Thursday, January 11th, 2018
The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, January 11, 2018 at a different location (which is noted below) with doors opening at 6:30 pm for networking.
Topic: Catching Your Ancestors in the Act, Using Newspapers to Track Your Ancestors in Time and Place — The daily activities of our ancestors are often captured by the ubiquitous local newspapers — human interest, comedy, tragedy — it is all there whether or not our ancestors wanted to appear in print or not. Even better the number of historic newspapers available for research just keeps growing and many are available online for free. We will discuss both free and subscription sites as well as the many state archives and demonstrating the Chronicling America website through my favorite backdoor at Stanford University. Come, learn and have fun!
Speaker: Bob Barnes is a past president of the EGS and currently chairs it education program. He teaches genealogy classes for the King County Library System and has been a genealogy instructor at the Bellevue College Telos Program for a number of years. He also provides genealogy assistance at both at the Bellevue Regional Library and the Bellevue Family History Center.
This meeting will be held in the Emerald Room at Emerald Heights Retirement Community at 10901 176th Circle NE, Redmond, WA 98052. Proceed east on WA-520 to the highway’s end. Continue forward through the intersection onto Avondale Road NE, and proceed north about 1.5 miles. Turn left onto NE 104th Street and proceed about .4 mile up the hill. Turn right onto 179th Avenue NE and continue about .3 mile until you see Emerald Heights’ guard station on your left. Tell the guard you are attending the genealogy meeting and you will be directed to the main parking lot and the lobby.
Also see our website for FREE genealogical help and other Special Interest Group meetings. Visitors are always welcome at all meetings. https://eastsidegenealogicalsociety.com/
Thursday, November 9th, 2017
The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, November 9, 2017 in the Bellevue Regional Library (Room 1), 1111 – 110th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 at 7 pm, with doors opening at 6:30 pm for networking.
Topic: Adoptions and DNA – Finding Long Lost Family
We will . . .
. review two adoptee’s stories of how we found living biological relatives.
. learn about DNA basics, DNA search tips and understanding DNA testing results.
. learn how to build a DNA Match’s family tree with documented resources only to discover potential relatives.
. learn how to ask questions and find answers using on-line resources that will lead you to discovering your own family tree and finding remaining biological relatives.
There is enough content, technique and intrigue here to interest every family historian.
Speaker: Leslie Edmunds is an expert-level family historian and consultant trainer. She has been developing skills over the last 40 years and enjoys sharing tips and techniques to mine a resource to its fullest potential. She is often heard saying” It’s crazy but true; when I look, I find.” Leslie is known for starting with the vaguest of clues to discover entire family lines for other people. Her regions of expertise include Canada, the US, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, Slovakia and Northern Europe. Her time periods of expertise include 1940 to present, 1860 to 1940, and 1700 to 1860. Leslie has recently completed projects in compiling surname family units over three centuries in ancestral locations, finding living biological relatives of adoptees, creating biographical stories/timelines from newspapers, creating sourced only family trees, tracing Quaker immigrants, researching civil war participation and using government-sponsored digital archives and demographic databases to hone her skills and develop new resource knowledge. Leslie is all about doing family history on a budget and has an incredible arsenal of free on-line and off-line resources at her finger tips.
October 12th
Topic: Go West, Young Man: Online Resources for the Western United States. Cowboys, ranchers, miners, & pioneers with wanderlust led to colorful history and lifestyles. Learn about traditional & unique records found in the Wild West.
Speaker: Cyndi Ingle is owner & webmaster of Cyndi’s List, a categorized list of over 336,000 online genealogical resources. She is also a seminar presenter & an author.
September 14th
Celia McNay will present a class on using the FamilySearch Research Wiki.
May 11, 7 pm
The representative from Gorham Printing is coming to talk to us about self-publishing our family histories and memoirs; a great idea as a gift or for the summer family reunion.
April 13, 7 pm
The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, April 13, 2017 in the Bellevue Regional Library (Room 1), 1111 – 110th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 at 7 pm, with doors opening at 6:30 pm for networking.
Janice Lovelace, “Is Great-Grandmother Really Native American? An introduction to Native American Genealogical Research”
Many families have the oral history that an ancestor was Native American. How does a family researcher begin to discover if this is true? What federal, state and tribal records are available? the presenter will guide you through these specialized resources.
March 9th
Mary Kircher Roddy – The Westward Migration
February 9th meeting
The Eastside Genealogical Society will meet on Thursday, February 9, 2017 in the Bellevue Regional Library (Room 1), 1111 – 110th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 at 7 pm, with doors opening at 6:30 pm for networking.
Topic: WikiTree is a free, shared social networking genealogy website that allows users individually to research and contribute to their own personal family trees, while building and collaborating on a singular worldwide family tree within the same system. Come learn about this useful website.
January 12th meeting:
Topic: Maps and Genealogy
Genealogists have many tools to describe what our ancestors did. Maps allow us to describe where they did it. This presentation will demonstrate how to build a custom ancestral map in Google Earth. Resources to build a custom map, like the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries and U.S. Geological Survey, will be discussed. Other online mapping resources, some directly applicable to Google Earth and some not, will also be discussed.
Presenter: Joe Flint
Joe has been doing Genealogy for about 16 years. He is a retired computer programmer and has a Bachelor degree in History from the University of Washington. (Go Dawgs!) He has been fascinated with maps since childhood and is eager to share the wonders of Maps and Genealogy.
Eastside Genealogical Society 