Meeting postponed to 20 March

CVGA’s meeting has been postponed to next Saturday 20 March at 10 am.

Since this is Women’s History Month, we will have a program on finding female ancestors followed by a discussion on any research techniques any of us have used to find our female ancestors.

RootsTech 25-27 February 2021 Virtual Event

RootsTech Connect is set to begin in two weeks and it is free!  It is a virtual event this year.  190,000 people have already registered for RootsTech Connect.

There will be inspirational keynote speakers, hundreds of on-demand classes and a virtual expo hall where you can purchase numerous genealogy related items.

You must register at rootstech.org and you should have a FamilySearch account.  Just go to FamilySearch and click on “create an account”.  The virtual event is free and so is the account at FamilySearch.

This is a great opportunity to listen and learn from a comfortable seat at home!

Meeting Change Notice

After a discussion at a recent Board meeting, the decision was made to hold meetings on a quarterly, rather than monthly, basis for the year 2021. Please review the meeting dates under the 2021 Meeting Schedule.  All of the meetings will be virtual. This decision will be reviewed in the latter part of 2021.  Hopefully in 2022 we will be able to begin meeting again face to face.

Meeting Information for Saturday, January 9

In lieu of our regular meeting, the Northwest Suburban Genealogy Society is offering a virtual presentation by Tony Burroughs called “The Nature of Genealogy”.  This presentation will cover understanding history, research, repositories, records, theory development, results analysis and publishing findings. It is woven around a case study discovering a new ancestor by an experienced genealogist.

Tony Burroughs has been on the genealogy scene for over thirty-five years. You may have seen him on Oprah’s Roots on PBS with Henry Louis Gates or with Smokey Robinson on Who Do You Think You Are?

The virtual meeting starts at 10 am (our time) and the presentation is at 11 am (our time). You do need to register and you will receive a link once you register.

For more information on this presentation and to register, go to

https://nwsgenealogy.org/tony-burroughs-the-nature-of-genealogy/

Legal Sources and Research Techniques Webinar at Library of Congress – January 14, 2021

The Law Librarians at the Library of Congress have a blog and offer webinars on various legal topics.  This webinar is about legal sources and research techniques regarding U.S. case law.  It states that the focus will be about online resources. There is further information about this webinar and a link to register for the webinar at https://blogs.loc.gov/law/

Central Virginia Heritage Winter 2020 (v.36, no.4) now Available!

Don’t Discard That Receipt: The Use of Ephemera in Genealogical Research, by Andi Cumbo-Floyd: “When I first began researching the people who were enslaved at the Bremo Plantations in Fluvanna County, I found myself buried in tiny slips of paper. Those little pieces of ephemera—a receipt from that trip to buy seed from that man in Tidewater, that ledger page from the store in Scottsville, the random notes about the cost of burlap—were everywhere in the 195 boxes of the Cocke Family Papers at the Small Special Collections Library.

My first instinct was to dismiss these pieces in the interest of efficiency and because, honestly, I didn’t care one hoot how much burlap cost. But when I began looking more closely, I started to find names of enslaved people on some of these pages. I learned that Phil and Billy were the postilions who traveled with their master most everywhere. I saw on a list of charges from the doctor that Champion was treated for “rheumatism” on more than one occasion. I see that Letty was put under the charge of the master’s gardener…”

To see the rest of this article, CVGA members should go to “Members Only” on the menu bar above, and choose “Central Virginia Heritage — Current Issue.” (Note: You have to be logged in to this website in order to see “Members Only.”)

If you have trouble logging in to the site to download your copy, please contact me at the webmaster link at the bottom of this page.

For those who are not members of CVGA, we offer the opportunity to purchase a printed copy of each issue. The Winter 2020 issue is available from Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/Central-Virginia-Heritage-Winter-2020/dp/B08QKY2YD7 for $6.50. Click on the Amazon.com link above or search for “Central Virginia Heritage” on Amazon.com.

Contents of the Winter 2020 issue:

  • Don’t Discard That Receipt: The Use of Ephemera in Genealogical Research, by Andi Cumbo-Floyd
  • African-American Men in the 1867 Fluvanna County (VA) Personal Property Tax Books, Part 3, R-Z, by Sam Towler
  • List of Virginia Cohabitation Registers and Marriage Lists Available Online, by Jean L. Cooper
  • Connecting Pre-1865 Enslaved Families With Entries in the U.S. Federal Census of 1870: A Case Study, by Jean L. Cooper
  • Social Security Numbers, by Diane Inman
  • Finding the Fallen, by Diane Inman
  • Archer Family of Powhatan County, Virginia, by Jean L. Cooper
  • Message from the Present
  • Obituaries: George Edward Vandenhoff Jr. and Sylvia Louise Jones

If you have any articles you’d like to share with CVGA members, please send an email to the editor, eleanordew at gmail dot com — The Editor.

Meeting Saturday, December 12, 2020

“Not all those who wander are lost”. [1] Don’t you think that applies to a genealogist but maybe we need to have a purpose for that wandering.

We will have a business meeting this Saturday followed by a short blog post by Amy Johnson Crow about the WANDER[2] research process.

  • What do you want to find?
  • Analyze what you already have.
  • Note what is missing.
  • Discover new records.
  • Evaluate everything.
  • Repeat as necessary.

The link for the Zoom meeting will be sent out to members on Friday.

[1] “All That Glitters is Not Gold”, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[2] Amy Johnson Crow