July 19, 2025:

June 21, 2025: Guest speaker Nancy Roberson presented an excellent discussion titled "Your Genealogy Legacy." We've spent countless hours on our individual family research and Nancy drove home the point that we need to future-proof our efforts to make sure that it isn't lost after we pass on. She gave many examples of things we can, and should, do to preserve our efforts, including a copy of a personal directive (sort of a genealogical will) that we can leave with our family or a library or any organization that might be interested in our research folllowing our death. Every photo we've scanned, every family group sheet we've prepared, every source we've documented meant something to us, and it will mean something to those who follow us. Nancy provided a copy of a handout that provided excellent resources for making sure our research lives on.

May 17, 2025: Vice-President Johnna Waldon discussed strategies for tackling the daunting research involved with finding the names of our female ancestors. Tracing our female ancestors can be challenging for various reasons. Girls are adopted; women get married; divorces happen. Social norms indicate that married women were often known by their by their husbands' names in newspaper articles, and sometimes in their own obituaries. It can be frustrating at times to trace our female lines, but thanks to a comprehensive handout, Johnna alerted us to many websites and numerous other sources of records that can help us in our research. She pointed out that many of the research records we need might just be available in the homes of our family.

April 19, 2025: A longtime friend of our Society, Beth Shannon, returned for her third visit to our meetings and presented an interesting program on the migration of kinship circles from Europe to the United States, in particular the Tidewater area of Henrico County in eastern Virginia. Focusing on what she called FAN relations (Friends, Associates and Neighbors), Beth walked us through the migration of some of her ancestors as they moved west to Kentucky. She pointed out that many members of the small groups of settlers would intermarry, often through arranged marriages, and this fact would eventually lead to large cousin groups within settlement areas. Her presentation helped many of us understand how and why family groups would prosper in the frontier regions of America.

March 15, 2025: Our March meeting every year is Genealogy Show-and-Tell where members bring in a family artifact and share it with others, explaining what it is and a story about how it was used and how it was obtained. We had several interesting items on the table this year, including a piece of vintage wallpaper; pasted to the back of the wallpaper was a newspaper clipping that mentioned people and events in the Finnel vicinity of northern Scott County. Also shared was an old pocket watch that belonged to an ancestor; an interesting story about a leather water pouch from early California, and several tintypes from the mid-1800s. Other members shared stories about family ancestors. We had a good turnout, both in-person and on Zoom.

February 15, 2025: Kassidy Cobb, owner of History for the Ages, made a return appearance as our guest speaker, and presented an interesting program titled, "American Civil War Stories: United States Colored Troops." Using many fact-filled graphics, Kassidy talked about the valuable role that African American soldiers played during the Civil War, and the great strides they made in breaking the bonds of slavery to become valuable soldiers for the Union. These soldiers earned their freedom but still had to suffer the attitudes of a predominately white military environment. It was an eye-opening program and a great start to another year of exploring our genealogy connections.