Hello all! It has been a while since my last blog, so we have had many exciting events here at the genealogy library since the last entry. In October at the Stephens County Genealogical Society’s annual meeting, a new board was elected, and Mike Birdsong from the Oklahoma Genealogical Society in Edmond came to speak on DNA searches. The November Brown Bag lunch on searching for that elusive female ancestor was well-attended, but if you missed it, please consider joining us on December 4th for our Brown Bag discussion; this one will be on sharing family stories–in other words, it’s the holidays, and it’s the perfect time to get those family members to open up and tell stories about the past (maybe even some we have not heard about, yet)! As usual, it should be fun and provide everyone with some tips on how gently convince the story-holders–we don’t want to strong-arm relatives at Christmas–to share the family’s history.
On our Facebook page, I share information from other pages we follow, and one of my favorites is Genealogy Just Ask! The other day, they had a good tip for identifying dates of photographs: look at the facial hair on men! While I have used clothing (especially women’s) as a clue before, I did not think about facial hair, but now that I have been reminded of this, I’ll add that all hairstyles of both women and men, not just facial hair, is a good clue as it is usually pretty indicative of the era.
Anyway, I will try to keep sharing these tips as well as helpful sites so that you can follow them; I am trying to keep up since every day, more information is being made available to the public and genealogy libraries are digitizing their collections to make access easier for those who can’t afford to travel.
I plan to keep everyone better informed with my interesting takes and tidbits!
Until next time,