Beginners

Submitted by: Host GFS Kate

 

Beginners' Center Happenings

by Host GFS Kate

Beginners' Center Manager

April 2003

Beginners' Center Objective

The Beginners' Center is dedicated to providing resources devoted to beginning genealogy research, including clean, friendly chat rooms.

Beginner's Star of the Month

April 2003

Our April star is Host GFS Pilgrim. Look for Pilgrim all over the place in Beginners. You just never know where she will pop up! She is one of our most faithful substitutes, as well as hosting her own chats. While one of our hosts has pressing work commitments and is temporarily unavailable to host her regular chat, Pilgrim has jumped in to help out and has adopted that chat as her own until the regular host can return.

Pilgrim is a member of the Beginners' Guide Review Team. She is one of the people that makes sure that your Guide is kept up to date and revisions are made as necessary and in a timely manner.

Please join me in congratulating Pilgrim. If you see her in a chat, give her an "attagal."

As I sit here in my home office in Arizona, enjoying a 75º afternoon, I think of what spring means to a genealogist who has been cooped up for months by winter weather. I see my lilac bushes in full bloom and think of the spring flowers in family graveyards. I think of getting back out and doing field trips. This is the perfect time of year to get outside and find that elusive ancestor.

Do your background work.....decide where you're going to go, what you're going to do while you're there. Are you going to do "walkabouts" to find family homesteads, family graveyards? Are you going to check the county's vital records office?

If it's not yet spring in your neck of the woods, this is the time to organize and do that data entry that you've been putting off. That way, when you're ready to take your trip, you have up to date information and don't take a chance on duplicating what you've already done.

Spring? To me, it's a renewal.......a time to get a fresh start on this year's research. Maybe our paths will cross this year.....

Here is a contribution to the newsletter from Host GFS Pilgrim....

Demographers have studied the phenomenon by which people round off their age in the census enumeration to 5 and 10 year intervals. The tendency to round off is related to age, education and gender among other things: Older people round off more (thus the graphed age distribution looks increasingly peaked (heaped)); less educated people round off more; both men and women round off, but men round upward, to seem older, and women round downward, to appear younger.

The point of the foregoing is to suggest why you might want to take the age of some ancestor told the census-taker with a few grains of salt. Grandma or Grandpa might have been fibbing a little.---by Robert W. King

On Monday, March 17, the Beginners' chats took on a "green" hue. Starting at 8 P.M. ET till the close at midnight ET, the Beginners chats had an Irish theme. Our resident Forum experts in Irish research, Host GFS Linda, Host GFS Lin and GFS Grace, were special guests. But.....we made them work by answering questions on Irish research!

I pronounce the evening a grand success and am thinking about making this an annual affair in Beginners.

 

© 2003 GFNEWS, a monthly publication of the Golden Gate Genealogy Forum, Inc. of Franklin, MA.
(America Online Keyword: roots.) The Editors welcome your ideas and articles,
success stories, favorite genealogy research tips, comments and suggestions.

© 2003 Graphics By Carol, All Rights Reserved