Spring 2010 Workshop Flyer available for download

The flyer for the upcoming 2010 Spring Workshop is now available for downloading. On the flyer is a registration form you can fill out and mail in. Go to the blue download box in the sidebar to the right. The flyer is the first form at the top of the download box. The first click will give you several options, one of which is to download the flyer/registration form. Your filled out form should be postmarked on or before March 31 of this year.

As those of you who attended last year’s Spring Conference know, our guest speaker was very approachable. Between lectures, a line would form of folks who had questions for him. Most guest speakers we’ve had in the past have requested quite time alone between their lectures. Last year’s speaker did not require that, stating that being a college professor, he was used to questions. This year’s speaker should be just as approachable, since he teaches at the same university as last years speaker. It was last years speaker who recommended our upcoming speaker, in fact.

Anyway, mark your calendar, post a note on the fridge, tie a string around the dog’s tail, and do whatever it takes to remind yourself to COME TO THE CONFERENCE on April 10th!

See you there!

Spring 2010 Workshop News

Okay…we’re three months away yet (the conference will take place on April 10th, 2010), but here’s a little information to whet your genealogy appetite:

Our speaker will be Dr. Gerald M. Haslam from Brigham Young University in Utah. His topics will include:

1) Danish Family History Research

2) Reading the Old Scripts (abbreviated version)

3) Norwegian Family History Research

4) Crossing the Pond back to Germany

Dr. Haslam was recommended to us by our Spring Workshop speaker from last year, Dr. Minert, also from BYU. After last year’s conference, we received glowing accolades about Dr. Minert from attendees at the conference. We expect that Dr. Haslam will be just a popular.

Class Schedule for 2010 Posted

The schedule for the 2010 beginning genealogy classes, held at the Mormon Trail Center, has been posted (see the schedule on the side bar to the right).  Note that most of the classes are held, as in the past, on the 3rd Saturday of the month, January thru June. The only exception is the April 2010 class, which will be held a week later on the 4th Saturday.

Going Live: Sarpy County, NE, Marriages

Going live on December 18, 2009, is the new Sarpy County, Nebraska, marriages web site. Sponsored by GOGS (Greater Omaha Genealogical Society), the site will be maintained by society member Karen Tippets, who also runs the Thurston County, NE, Marriages site, the Omaha Marriages site, the Omaha Births site, and the Hall County, NE, Marriages site. The new Sarpy County Marriages site is an index to marriage licenses at the W. Dale Clark library on microfilm for Sarpy co, NE. Karen says that she has been “totally amazed at the number of people marrying in Sarpy county that are from other parts of the area, and even elsewhere in the country.”

With the addition of the Sarpy Marriages site, our society now offers six web sites of interest to genealogy researchers who may have had ancestors in Nebraska at some point in time.

Westward Into Nebraska Expands Reading Pleasure

Our newsletter, Westward Into Nebraska, recently expanded from it’s original 8 pages in length to 10 pages. The additional pages were added so that we could include extractions from our newest web site, Omaha Births, and yet still have the usual amout of space left in the newsletter for other articles and items of interest to society members and readers in general.

“Omaha Births” Website Premieres

First, there was Omaha Obits. Then came Omaha Marriages. Now, comes Omaha Births, featuring births from Douglas County, NE, records and old Omaha newspapers. The birth information is pulled from newspapers as we extract obits for our OmahaObits web site.  In many instances, there is no indication what the person’s name was going to be, but it is one way of locating the possibility of a child that may have been born and died between census records.  In some instances, the names are taken from early Omaha birth certificates collected prior to 1910 when it became state mandated to collect such information.  Registration of births in that time period was not mandatory.

The new site was activated on Sunday, March 22, 2009, which means that it currently sports the smallest number of listings–just over 1,300–of the three sites. As the number of listings grows, however, we expect the site to become as popular as the first two.

New Feature: “Coming Up…”

No, the new feature is not “coming up” (as in, look for it to appear soon). The new feature is titled “Coming Up…” and is here now (see the clickable tabs at the top of this page). “Coming Up…” will give news of up-coming meeting topics and speakers, and will be posted on this site as soon as we receive the information. No more waiting for the newsletter to find out.

Also posted will be other up-coming events deemed of interest to GOGS members. The Genealogy & Land Records Symposium to be held in Lincoln, NE, is an example of the kind of events we will be informing members of. If anyone knows of an event they think would be of interest to society members, please post your information in the comments section at the bottom of this page. After your information has been approved, it should appear on the page within a few days. Naturally, once an event has occured, information for that event will be removed from this site.

NARA “Request Pertaining to Military Records” form

NARA standard form 180, “Request Pertaining to Military Records”, is available for downloading on this site. Go to the blue download box in the right-hand side bar.

Omaha Marriages now online

Click [here] to visit our new site, Omaha Marriages and Anniversaries. This will probably be a slow work-in-progress, as we will be giving priority to our Omaha Obits site. However, there are currently over 11,000 listings on the site. The number of newlyweds is about half that, however, because each couple is listed twice. Example: John Doe married Jane Smith. You would find the couple under “D” and under “S”. Helpful if you only know the last name of one of them. 

Colorful “Omaha Newspapers” Chart

Now Available for Download

Society member Karen Tippets, whose microfilm extraction work is responsible for most of the almost 120,000 listings that appear on the Omaha Obits  web site, has put together and made available for download, a colorful ”Omaha Newspapers” chart. This horizontal bar chart is in PDF format, and lists all 48 newspapers that have been published in Omaha since 1852 to the present. The chart also shows the years that each of the 48 papers were in publication. (Trivia: Omaha’s first newspaper, the “Western Bugle”, was in business from 1852 to 1853.)

To download this chart, go to the blue download box at the bottom of the sidebar on this page.