Virginia Group Meeting, Saturday, December 1, 10am

Join the Virginia Group for two special presentations on Saturday, December 1, from 10:00-12:00. Duane Funk will show us the ports our early ancestors came from, the type of ships they sailed on and describe what life was like for them as they crossed the ocean. In the second hour, Winnifred Herrscraft will share holiday customs of her parents' native Scotland. Members who wish to, may bring snacks for the second hour.

Saturday, November 3, 10 am Transcribing old documents

Ginger Christmas-Beattie will present "Transcribing old documents”, a lecture on reading the English handwriting of America in the 16th and 17th centuries. This can be applied to any document once one has an understanding of the old grammatical forms. Ginger has over 40 years of practical genealogical research experience, and has been involved with the Genealogical Society of Washington County, as well as other genealogical societies throughout The United States. As author and publisher, she has produced 13 books and 7 CD's of historic documents, census and court records and a book on the Christmas Family history through her business, Ancestral Tracks.

If you have documents you need help with please bring them and we can work on them together. Carol and I will bring some examples to practice on as well.

The following is an outline of Ginger's presentation. A four page hand-out will be available at the meeting.

Transcribing Old Documents
Key points to transcribing
Poor Condition of Microfilm and Original Documents
Bleeding Through on Pages from Writing on Other Pages
Errors in Copying Old Documents
Old Terminology
Ink and Paper
Spelling Standards of the Time
Lack of Punctuation
Poor Quality of the Environment
Development of skills
Things to watch for
The basic mechanics of transcribing
Transcription:
Extract:
Abstract:
Documents
Census Reports:
Deeds:
Marriage Records:
Birth and Death records:
Wills
Suggested Reading
Tips

Virginia Group Meeting: October 6, 10 am

Come join us for our October meeting. We have had requests to discuss the history and settlement of Virginia as we have many new members since our very first meeting so that will be this month’s discussion, with some additional information.

We'll talk about the Roanoke Colony, Jamestown, geographical regions and how they affected settlement, Cavaliers, who owns the Ohio River, land records and other factors of the settlement of Virginia.

We’ll also have show and tell for those of you who made some discoveries this summer. Please share.

Carol and I would like to implement our plan to provide individual assistance with your research project. First come, first served. We’ll need some very specific information from you.

• Name 
• Location 
• Time Period 
• What is the specific problem or goal. For example: I’m looking for the parents of John Smith of Lunenburg County, or where did he live before he migrated to Kentucky in 1890, etc. 
• What records have you already researched. Be very specific. 

For the November 3rd meeting Ginger Christmas-Beattie will present "Transcribing old documents”, a lecture on reading the English handwriting of America in the 16th and 17th centuries. This can be applied to any document once one has an understanding of the old grammatical forms.

Ginger has over 40 years of practical genealogical research experience, and has been involved with the Genealogical Society of Washington County, as well as other genealogical societies throughout the United States. As author and publisher, she has produced 13 books and 7 CD's of historic documents, census and court records and a book on the Christmas Family history through her business, Ancestral Tracks.

Original Land Grants-Loudoun County, Virginia

The Loudoun County Mapping Office has several historical maps online, including one showing the original land grants in the area.

Loudoun County Land Grants.

There is a also link to a table of the owners of the land here.

Virginia Circuit Court Preservation Program

In a message dated 8/31/2012 12:26:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
Bari.Helms@LVA.VIRGINIA.GOV writes:

"The Virginia Circuit Court Preservation Program (CCRP) is celebrating its
20th anniversary this year. Part of the Library of Virginia's Local Records
Services branch, the program was created in 1992 to address the
preservation needs of some of the most important records in the state - the records of Virginia's 120 circuit courts. ...

Twenty years later, access to Virginia's historic court records has never
been wider with more than 7 million digital chancery court images from
fifty-seven counties and cities now available online through the Chancery
Records Index (CRI), created to increase access to Virginia's historic equity
cases."

http://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryofVa/LibraryofVa>

GFO Virginia Group Meeting, Saturday, September 1, 10:00-12:00.

It's that time again! Come join the Virginia Group for our first fall meeting. Carol Surrency will be speaking about Dunmore's War and we will be planning our fall and winter schedule.

• Come and learn about Virginia's relationship with Great Britain in the years leading up to the American Revolution.
• Find out why Dunmore County changed its name and the last colonial governor was chased out of Virginia to live on a ship.
• Discover how "Dunmore's little war" influenced the Southern campaign during the Revolution impacting Kings Mountain and other major battles.

We meet at the Genealogical Forum of Oregon,
2505 S.E. 11th Ave., Portland , OR, Suite B-18
http://gfo.org/

New Records at the Library of Virginia

See the Quarterly Report of Newly Available Archival Accessions (April-June 2012) at the Library of Virginiaon at: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/news/index.htm#new.

Henrico Parish Vestry Book

The Vestry Book of Henrico Parish, Virginia, 1730-'73: Comprising a History ... edited by Robert Alonzo Brock online at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=zH4FAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=henrico+parish+vestry+book&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gfy0T_ruEsSqiAKxzoCeAg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=henrico%20parish%20vestry%20book&f=false

Petersburg Chancery Digital Project Now Complete

News from the Library of Virginia

"The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the completion of the Petersburg chancery causes digital project. The scanning project was funded by the Circuit Court Records Preservation Program along with a $155,071 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The collection has been digitized from 1787 through 1912 and the images added to the Chancery Records Index. The most recently added suits cover the years 1889-1912."

http://www.virginiamemory.com/blogs/out_of_the_box/2012/05/16/petersburg-chancery-digital-project-now-complete/

News from the Library of Virginia e newsletter May 2012

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/news/newsletter/stories/2012_05-may.asp#warwick   Early Warwick County Court Records Returned to Virginia The Library of Virginia recently recovered seven documents that had been removed from the Warwick County (now city of Newport News) courthouse by a Massachusetts soldier during the Peninsula Campaign in April 1862. The court records, dated 1688–1751, include wills, a bond, and other legal documents and were discovered by Richard Trask, town archivist of Danvers, Massachusetts, among the Putnam family papers in the Danvers Archival Center at the Peabody Institute Library. The documents were returned to Carl Childs, director of the Library's Local Records Services Branch in a ceremony held in the Gordon Room of the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers on April 30.

May 2012 Meeting

Saturday, May 5 10 am

GFO Meeting Room

Virginia Land Records:

From the Beginning

Types, Terms

Where to Find Them

     and

 How to Use Them

Judi Scott

Southern Campaign

  You're invited to register for the October 12-13, 2012:
10th Francis Marion / Swamp Fox Symposium: "Explore the Southern Campaign with General Marion"
Immerse yourself in Francis Marion's world and the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.
Approx. Times: Friday, Oct. 12, 2012: 2 PM - 9 PM and Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012: 9 AM - 10 PM
Site: FE DuBose Campus of Central Carolina Technical College, I-95, Exit 122, ½ mi E on US 521, Manning, SC.
Details on www.francismarionsymposium.com
as schedule is developed
Agenda framework for Presentations:
Friday, October 12, 2012 2 PM Sign-in
2:30 (starts with 2 presentations)
Reception Dinner in Manning
Saturday, October 13, 2012
9 AM Opening, Drinks & Breakfast Snacks
9:30 AM (continues with 6 presentations)
Displays/ Book Signings
An Evening in Rev. History Dinner Theater With Our Historian:
Joe Stukes as Harry Lee

Francis Marion Advocates: Pushing back the frontier of ignorance.
Swamp Fox Murals Trail Society
PO Box 667
Manning, SC 29102
803-478-2645
cells: 803-460-9626, 803-460-7416
Next: www.francismarionsymposium.com Oct 12-13, 2012 Plans coming.
www.francismarioncountry.com - Living History Encampment - Feb. 23-25, 2012 - Very Best Ever.
www.clarendonmurals.com www.francismariontrail.com www.swampfoxtrail.com www.swampfoxcountry.com

1940 Census

On April 2, 2012, digital images of the 1940 U.S. census will be available, for free, at http://1940census.archives.gov. ..There are no indexes as yet; that will come later, ut there are ways to access the pages for the people you want to find and you can prepare now.

The NARA website has lots of good census information and suggestions to prepare for the arrival of the census. Without an index you need to know the address and enumeration district (ED) of the families you want to find. If you don’t know the address you might look in city directories, the 1930 census, or other records available to you that would have an address. You can find enumeration maps at http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids.html#mapsor.

Better yet, visit the Stephen Morse website. You can locate the ED by address and locations or convert a 1930 ED to 1940 here.  If you haven’t visited this site you should check it out. He has an amazing selection of “One-Step” searches, but we’ll focus on the 1940 census now. If you know where your family lived you can use this website to determine where to look in the census, even without the index. For the 1940 census go to Unified 1940 Census ED Finder. Once the census pages are online you can access the first page of the enumeration district and look through the pages for the people you are looking for.

You can also watch the Legacy webinar “Navigating the 1940 U.S. census” presented by Thomas MacEntee. It is available to view for free until March 19, 2012.

 There are opportunities for volunteers to help with indexing the census through local genealogy organizations or FamilySearch. The more volunteers, the quicker we have an index. It’s not difficult and is good experience. Get more information or sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/1940census.

Get your list ready.

April Meeting

For our April 7, 2012 meeting we will be discussing the digital archives of the Library of Virginia. We ask everyone to explore the archives for family information . After a short presentation we will share our finds with the group.  See you all in April!

Welcome

Hi everyone.

 Welcome to our Virginia Group Blog. I hope we can use this blog as a way to share information about our group and collaborate on our Virginia research.  The blog is for the group, and we will use it for the group. Everyone will be able to post research and family information and messages. For now, until we get things going the blog will be private, just for group members who choose to join. Eventually we will be posting all Virginia Group information here, instead of the Google group list we've been using.

Don't forget our Saturday, March 3 rd meeting at 10 am. Peggy Baldwin will be discussing using tax records for your research. This is an extremely valuable tool for genealogists. I hope you can all attend.

See you Saturday

Judi Scott