DALLAS GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

General Meeting
2017-01-07 10:30 - 12:30 (America/Chicago) | 7th Floor – O’Hara Hall – J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States
Note that this month’s meeting will be held in the O’Hara room on the 7th floor.
Join us starting at 10:30 for hospitality and mingling. The business meeting starts at 11:00, followed by our featured speaker around 11:30.
Brandon Murray, a librarian from the Dallas Public Librarian, will be speaking to us about the collection of materials at the Dallas History & Archives Division. This collection is one of the largest of its kind in the nation: The holdings span many aspects of the diverse history of not only Dallas and the surrounding area, but the entire state of Texas.
After Brandon’s talk, he will take our group on a tour of the newly remodeled floor. Highlights of the collection and floor include the photo lab, the digitized collections and Dallas County records, oral histories, photographs, manuscript collection and finding guide and fine books division.
Brandon Murray has been a librarian at the J Eric Jonssen Library since June, 2015. Before that, from 2012 to 2015, he was at Southern Methodist University, where he created metadata for digitized photographic collections intended for the Central University. He also posted images and metadata to social media sites including Tumblr, Flickr and Reddit, and collaborated with colleagues on creating or modifying cataloging and metadata guidelines. He was also responsible for proofreading and generating content to promote the Central University Library Digital Collections. Brandon Murray holds a Master of Library & Information Science degree from Southern Methodist University.

Technology Special Interest Group
2017-01-05 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
Presenter: Suzan Youger
Topic: Speech Recognition Software

Brown Bag Special Interest Group
2016-12-24 10:30 - 13:00, 2016-11-26 10:30 - 13:00, 2016-10-22 10:30 - 13:00, 2016-09-24 10:30 - 13:00 | 8th Floor – McDermott Room, J. Erik Jonnson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States

Jewish Special Interest Group
2016-12-21 10:00 - 13:00, 2016-11-16 10:00 - 13:00, 2016-10-19 10:00 - 13:00, 2016-09-21 10:00 - 13:00 | 8th Floor – McDermott Room, J. Erik Jonnson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States

African American Genealogical Interest Group
2016-12-17 14:00 - 16:45, 2016-11-19 14:00 - 16:45, 2016-10-15 14:00 - 16:45 | 1st Floor – West Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States

DNA Special Interest Group
2016-12-15 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
Barbara and Mic will provide information from the FTDNA Project Administrator’s Conference.

Roots Magic SIG
2016-12-11 13:30 - 14:30, 2016-09-11 13:30 - 14:30 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States

Annual Awards Luncheon
2016-12-10 11:30 - 14:00 | TX
Please join us in the recently renovated O’Hara Hall on the 7th floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Library for our annual Holiday Awards Luncheon on Saturday, December 10.
This event is free for current DGS members and $15 for guests.
Advance registration is required: Register Online Now or Print and Mail the Registration Form
We could use some help… Volunteer Now!

PROGRAM
11:30 Registration & Hospitality
12:00 Catered Luncheon
1:00 Presentation of Awards
NOMINATIONS
Visit our Awards page. There you can nominate people for any of the awards – as well as see who has received awards in the past!

MacGen Reunion Group
2016-12-03 14:00, 2016-10-08 13:00 | 8th Floor – McDermott Room, J. Erik Jonnson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States

Technology Special Interest Group
2016-12-01 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
Presentor: Suzan Younger
Topic: On-line Educational Opportunities
There are excellent websites which offer high quality, online classes as live presentations or as on-demand viewing. Access to the presentations may be free, by subscription or as a one time fee. We will review and discuss several of these educational programs, beginning with the “Lynda.com” website offered as a free service to holders of Dallas Public Library cards. Other sites to be discussed include the National Archives (NARA), FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, FamilyTreeWebinars.com, and more.

DNA Special Interest Group
2016-11-17 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
We will explore the new DNA book: Genetic Genealogy in Practice by Debbie Parker Wayne and Blaine Bettinger.
This book is available through the National Genealogical Society for $30.06 (members) or $36.05 (non-members).

General Meeting
2016-11-05 10:30 - 13:00 | 1st Floor – Auditorium, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States
Join us starting at 10:30 for hospitality and mingling. The business meeting starts at 11:00, followed by our featured speaker around 11:30.
Our presentation is “Finding German Ancestors: Their Information is Not All on the Internet” by Bernard N. Meisner, Ph.D.
Download The Handout
To locate records about your family in Germany it is essential to determine their home town through an exhaustive search of U.S. records, since most German records are maintained at the local level (town or parish). Also, due to wars and boundary changes your family’s records may now be located in another state or country. In this presentation I will review how to identify the home town, demonstrate the use of finding aids to identify where civil and church records might be located, and provide links to online resources for correspondence and reading/interpreting German printing and handwriting.
Bernard Meisner, Ph.D. is a genealogist and lecturer based in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. He began researching his family over 25 years ago and enjoys sharing lessons learned from those experiences, including his mistakes. Although he knew only one grandparent (his maternal grandfather) he has successfully identified all of his great-great grandparents and several triple- and quadruple-great grandparents. He is the president and social media chair of the Mid-Cities Genealogical Society, and is a member of the National Genealogical Society and the Texas State Genealogical Society.
Bernard recently retired from the National Weather Service Southern Region Headquarters where he was the Acting Chief of the Science & Technology Services Division. He is certified as a consulting meteorologist by the American Meteorological Society and holds a teaching certificate from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He has taught at the Universities of Texas, Oklahoma and St. Thomas (Houston). Bernard earned a B.S. in physics/German from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in meteorology from the University of Hawaii.

Technology Special Interest Group
2016-11-03 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
Presenter: Bruce Moore
When working with large numbers of photos, traditional file system level folders and names can quickly become unwieldy. Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Difikam and Apple Photo are a few of the photo library management tools that make it easy to tag images keywords, add descriptions and captions, and automatically recognize faces in larger numbers of images. This 90-minutes session will provide an overview of Adobe Lightroom and how to use it for three major workflow cases:

Scanning a set of images and identifying people in each image
Correcting exposure, contrast and other problems on a group of images from a single roll of film
Publishing a set of images to Flickr, Facebook and a website

DNA Special Interest Group
2016-10-20 18:00 - 20:00, 2016-09-15 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States
See the DNA Special Interest Group page for more information….

Technology Special Interest Group
2016-10-06 18:00 - 20:00 | 5th Floor – Hamon Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young, Dallas, TX-Texas, 75201, United States

General Meeting
2016-10-01 10:30 - 13:00 | 1st Floor – Auditorium, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States
Join us starting at 10:30 for hospitality and mingling. The business meeting starts at 11:00, followed by our featured speaker around 11:30.
Our speaker will be Glenn Kinkade, who will be discussing the Perils, Paradoxes and Pitfalls in Probate Records.
Whether you ancestor died with a will of without, finding the probate records for the decedent may prove to be the most valuable records you can find; however, these records can be misunderstood, scattered in many books and boxes in a courthouse, and can be confusing to a beginning genealogist. This presentation will help guide you through the challenges of probate records to reap the rewards.
Glenn Kinkade is an experienced genealogical researcher, lecturer, author, and instructor.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wichita State University. After serving as an officer in the United States Air Force, he joined IBM in 1960 in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1990 he retired from IBM in Dallas, Texas, and began pursuing researching his family. Glenn has taught computer genealogy classes at Southern Methodist University, SeniorNet of Dallas, and Brookhaven College, where he currently teaches several different genealogy courses… His hobbies include travel, sailing on tall ships, attending reenactments of Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 battles, photography, and genealogy. Glenn and his wife Ann live in Dallas and have two married sons and six grandchildren.
Glenn’s genealogy presentations focus on “how to” successfully use record collections to solve genealogy problems.
Handout

Fall Seminar featuring Curt Witcher
2016-09-17 10:00 - 16:30 | 1st Floor – West Room, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States
Curt is a member of the Genealogy Committee of the American Library Association, a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society, and the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society. In addition to the more than five hundred record and methodology articles he has penned for local, state, and national genealogical periodicals, Curt has participated in many family history conferences and seminars across the country, presenting ideas and strategies to help individuals find and tell their family stories.
Read More…

North Texas Society Summit
2016-09-16 10:00 - 15:30 | TX
In conjunction of our Fall Seminar, the Dallas Genealogical Society is hosting an invitation-only conference for North Texas genealogical societies. The focus of this event will be on developing strategies for growth and success. Curt Witcher will be the featured speaker at this event.
More Information…

General Meeting
2016-09-10 10:30 - 12:30 | 1st Floor – Auditorium, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young Street, Dallas, TX, 75201, United States
Join us starting at 10:30 for hospitality and mingling. The business meeting starts at 11:00, followed by our featured speaker around 11:30.
Our speaker will be Shirley Sloat. Her presentation is titled “It takes a village…… to produce a book preserving the memories of the only living grandchild of two Georgia slaves who came in a wagon with nine children to Wheelock, Texas, in 1894”.
Shirley met Estelle Mitchell Adams at an aqua exercise class in 2013 and the two formed a friendship. Estelle shared many written documents about the Negro churches, schools, and cemetery in Wheelock. When Estelle showed Shirley that she remembered the names of all but about 12 of the 40 students attending the Wheelock Colored School in 1934, Shirley knew that she had to help to capture Estelle’s voice and memories for the public.
Their collaboration has led to the publication of “Remembering Negro Life in Wheelock, Texas – Churches, Schools, Cemetery, Families in the 1900s” (copies of the new book will be available for sale at the meeting).
The intention of the presentation is to provide a suggested path through some of the intricacies of creating a book in general, to shed some light on the challenges of creating one with a story teller, and to give courage to those who might have been afraid to try publishing their work. It will include a brief talk from Estelle, now 89, followed by Shirley’s account of the various events and help provided along the way by people and organizations like the Texas Portal, University of North Texas, Dallas Public Library, and DGS members, with particular thanks to Ed Millis who just likes to make books and who tells all about things like achieving an ISBN number.

Shirley Remnant Sloat was a computer professional at Texas Instruments and Sun Oil until she retired in 1992. She immediately joined the Dallas Genealogical Society as a Life Member and began working at the Dallas Public Library’s 8th floor volunteer desk.
She joined a small genealogy study group who encouraged her to expand her volunteer work into other areas of DGS. Over the years she chaired the publicity committee, and served on the DGS Board as VP Membership, Executive VP Fundraising, and President in 2005-6.
She received DGS awards for the Writing Contest, Volunteer of the Year, Historical Preservation, and the Award of Merit. She has received the Dallas Public Library Award of Excellence twice, and the A.C. Green Award from the Friends of the Dallas Public Library.
She still volunteers on the 8th floor on Wednesdays, and is a proofreader for DGS publications.
She has spent the past two years organizing, editing and indexing, and posting online and in book format the remembrances of a close friend who is the last living granddaughter of Georgia slaves who came to Wheelock, Texas in 1894.

Estelle is the author of three other publications that are available on the Portal to Texas History:

The History Of Wheelock Afro-American Cemetery, Wheelock, Robertson County, Texas (View on the Portal)
Preserving the History of Wheelock Colored School, Wheelock, Robertson County, Texas (View on the Portal)
The Black Churches in Wheelock, Robertson County, Texas (View on the Portal)
