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April 23 2013 - Tour of the Prairie History Room - May Chan
Regina Public Library librarian May Chan provided us with an instructive tour
of the
Prairie History Room and its rich genealogical resources, open every day of the week.
Materials and services include microfilm (with digital reader), digital databases
(with computers), wi-fi connectivity, printers,
reference books,
newspaper clipping files,
and
a "Ready Reference Shelf"
of finding aids for the above.
Specific resources include:
- Digital databases: Ancestry, Heritage Quest, Leader-Post Newspaper Index
- Passenger Lists and Border Entry Records: Canadian ports
- Canadian and Prairie Census Records
- Regina newspapers: Leader, Daily Post, Standard, Leader-Post, Prairie Dog
- City Directories and Telephone Books for major prairie cities
- about 2400 Local History Books and 200 School Year Books
- Maps and Atlases: RMs, topographical maps, historical atlases, gazetteers
- Peel Collection: a bibliography of prairie history
The latter include the Family History Centre, SGS Library, Sask Archives Board,
Regina City Archives, Sask Legislative Library, U of R Library archives section,
the former Plains Museum, and various professional associations.
Each has a different mandate, thus a different mix of resources.
Visit and bookmark the Prairie History Blog or email askphr@reginalibrary.ca.
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Mar 26 2013 - Interviewing a Family Member - Renae Grubb
"To ask or not to ask, that is the question!"
With a hilarious assist from "Aunt Em" (aka Gale Shawcross),
Renae demonstrated how to conduct a genealogy interview with an elderly relative.
Here is a sampling of some of the many tips presented:
- Plan with the 5 W's in mind. "When" is usually "as soon as possible".
- Modern recording devices are convenient, but pen and paper are essential.
- Prepare your notes, questions and equipment ahead of time.
- Ask: who, what, when, where, why and how?
Expect long answers to "why" and "how".
- Ask questions about their childhood, school, youth, marriage, profession, middle age, old age, family history with names and dates of current family and ancestors, historical events, home life, religion, culture, leisure and hobbies, social status, discipline, values, etc.
- Photo albums, scrapbooks and heirlooms may help get the stories flowing.
- Tread lightly around personal privacy and sensitive issues.
- Get written permission to use the material if you plan to publish or distribute parts of the interview.
- Be sure to send a thank you card or make a thank you phone call the next day.
Offer to provide a copy of the interview as well.
- Consult websites, books, magazines and journals for hints on interviewing:
For example: 20 Questions for Interviewing Relatives in Familiy Tree Magazine.
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Feb 26 2013 - In Search of Marriage Records - Gale Shawcross
Gale opened the program with examples from her own family research, highlighting the variety of marriage records in different time periods
and countries, and a variety of strategies for "solving the puzzle" on the way to finding and using those records.
Several other members shared their research as well.
Some of the many helpful observations made:
Don't always assume marriage predates children, or names are spelled consistently,
or the official record is perfectly correct, or the wedding took place in the bride's family church, or the person was married only once, or that the handwriting will be legible.
Some people use different names in different times or circumstances
(e.g. Scandinavian farm names vs patronymics).
Census records often contain errors.
Read marriage records very carefully and completely, including witnesses. All are clues.
Sometimes you find the record via a circuitous route:
If the expected churches don't have the record, examine local records.
Look in neighboring parishes. Get clues from marriage books and wedding photos.
Find out about the marriage(s) from an obituary years later.
Shelley Klozcko stressed the importance of a record search plan.
She told the story of having to go to a local RM office in Saskatchewan for death data
in order to get clues to find a passenger list from more than a generation earlier
in order to find a marriage certificate in Bukovenia from even earlier. |
Jan 22 2013 - Show and Tell - member sharing
Six branch members each brought a family item to share. All were most interesting:
- brass ink well with components made from WWI bomb parts ca 1914
- grandmother's bridal veil with shell headband worn at her wedding on 5 June 1921 in Neudorf SK
- working Santa-Glo electric wall ornament made in the 1930s
- father-in-law's portable Underwood typewriter from 1947
- elaborate ink well featuring two brass monkeys
- five postcards sent to a boy in Campbellcroft ON
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Nov 27 2012 - Annual General Meeting
As is our custom, we began our 2012 AGM with a potluck supper.
After the business meeting and elections, we enjoyed some fun and games.
A bingo game mixer had us asking each other whether we had visited Salt Lake City,
had ancesters from the Banat, or relatives who had homesteaded, for example.
Another game had us matching branch participants with their childhood photos.
And we shared artifacts and stories of Family Christmas Traditions.
To see the 2013 executive, and a list of volunteers, see the About Us page. |
Oct 23 2012 - Citing Sources - Holly Schick
In her book Evidence, Elizabeth Shown Mills reminds us that genealogy
without proper source citations causes us to "confuse ourselves and mislead others".
We must record the source of every bit of genealogical data we find.
We must cite every source in every family history item we publish,
down to the level of a family record sheet shared with immediate family.
Unsourced data is useless, as it cannot be confirmed or re-analyzed.
Original (primary) sources, from participants or eye-witnesses, are best.
Derivative (secondary) sources may be less reliable if far from the primary source. |
Sep 25 2012 - Don’t let your memories fade
Renae Grubb, Elizabeth Susa and Shelley Kloczko presented many ideas for
the
preservation, storage, organization and presentation of photos.
Renae presented manual methods for organizing photo albums, such as "power layout",
a method for sorting pictures on pieces of cardboard representing pages.
Other advice: use acid-free pages and pencil, and "keep it simple".
Elizabeth recommended a special knife for removing photos glued in old albums.
Shelley emphasized digital methods for organizing photos and making albums.
"Flip-Pal" is a compact mobile scanner from
Legacy Family Tree,
with almost magic "Easystitch" software to recombine a large photo scanned in more than one pass.
Other great products include Creative Memory Manager for cross-referencing files,
and StoryBook Creator for creating an album from photos almost automatically.
Other advice: use consistent file name conventions and folder structure for all files. |
Sep 14 2012 - Government House Tour
See photographs on the Government House page.
On Friday September 14, about ten branch members and friends enjoyed
a guided tour of Government House. Formerly this was the home and office of several
early Lieutenant Governors of the Northwest Territories and later Saskatchewan.
The current Lieutenant Governor still has her offices here.
Much of the property is now a museum, with the furnishings restored
to a style similar to that circa 1910. The tour ended with a special look
'behind the scenes' at the storage facilities and research offices.
Missed the tour? Click on www.governmenthouse.gov.sk.ca for a virtual tour. |
June 3 2012 - Cemetery Reading
On Sunday June 3 a number of branch members and friends read and photographed headstones in several cemeteries
in the RMs of Francis
and Lajord,
in and between the communities of Francis, Davin, Sedley, Lajord, and Kronau.
This data will be compiled in indexes over the next few months. |
May 22 2012 - Researching Women - Celeste Rider
Genealogy research on women faces special challenges:
There were fewer public records of women, and they changed names at marriage.
Celeste provided many strategies to deal with this, providing many specific examples.
Much is good research advice in general: Use home sources. Start with
recent events and work backward in time. Use a timeline. Hone your search skills.
However, to deal with the special issue of name change upon marriage(s), look for
special clues in sources. A brother's surname in an obituary provides a maiden name.
A mother's maiden name may be found on a birth certificate. Census documents
and wills provide relationship information. Focus on witnesses and informants
in documents, as these people may be sisters or other close relatives. |
Apr 24 2012 - A Good/Slipp Family Reunion - Phoebe Banbury & Renae Grubb
Renae and Phoebe gave a slide presention of a well-organized
Good and Slipp family reunion they attended recently in New Brunswick.
The reunion featured a river cruise and three days of events at family locations
dating back to their arrival as United Empire Loyalists in 1783-84.
Practical advice on organizing a successful reunion includes:
decide what type of event it is, allow lots of planning time, use many volunteers, communicate regularly, plan for kids and teens, and choose accommodation carefully. |
Mar 27 2012 - Discovering My Welsh Ancestry - Trevor Powell
Archivist Trevor Powell described his quest for the stories of his grandparents who emigrated to Canada in the early 1900s. They came from four different
communities in Wales, all related in some way to the coal and iron industry:
the Powell family from Rhos in the north, Jones from company town Ebbw Vale,
Williams from Blaenavon (another southern coal town) and the Hill family from Cardiff.
Trevor is particularly interested in their livelihoods and social conditions,
not simply the BMD records that are the starting point of genealogy.
Beyond the basic archival records, he makes great use
of personal contact
with relatives in Wales, books that provide historical background,
and the wealth of data that can now be found on line. |
Feb 28 2012 - SGS Library Tour - Megan Ashcroft
At the regular branch meeting for February 2012, SGS Librarian Megan Ashcroft
gave a tour of one of the best-stocked genealogical libraries in Canada.
She
emphasized the benefits of value-added membership, which allows access to
the Sask Records Index (SRI), burial index, obituary index, Cummins maps, and
remote services such as Ancestry.com, Find My Past and Godfrey Memorial collection.
Regular library collections include Henderson's Directories, family histories,
research guides, genealogical resources organized geographically,
journals, atlases, maps, school year books, and cemetery files. |
Jan 24 2012 - Show and Tell
Always popular, the Show and Tell program attracted good attendance.
The theme for this meeting became nineteenth century photos and huge albums.
click here for photos
Some of the artifacts and/or stories presented:
- a photo of a great great grandmother enlarged and developed on cloth
- two tea tins and a book about the Mazawattee Tea company, founded ca 1865
- photo of an elderly woman who had been married 20 Oct 1808
- large framed and glassed oval photos of a couple married 21 Jan 1837
- a pillow case edging of cut work embroidery fashioned before emigration in 1911
- a 0.5K woman's diamond ring, old mining cut, engraved S.L. 1862
- two quite different photos of great grandfather b:1848 d:1909
- three photos showing three generations of one family, earliest from 1882
- large album featuring a new family every two pages
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Nov 22 2011 - Annual General Meeting
Pot luck dinner and AGM.
program - In Search of Private Cyril Grubb -
Renae Grubb
for photos of artifacts, see the Cyril Grubb page
Renae Grubb told of a rewarding research project which began with one sentence about her husband's uncle Cyril, growing to two huge binders of information,
and an intimate knowledge of a young man who gave his life for his country.
In 2004 she knew only that Cyril Grubb of Balcarres, Sask, was born Feb 9 1922 and was shot dead by a sniper Oct 2 1944. Much of the source data was already in the family, but Renae had to work hard to determine where it was, collect it, and put the pieces together. Over the next few years, she collected from ...
- a cousin: 33 letters from Cyril to his sister Gertrude while he was in the army
- two other relatives: photos of Cyril
- Doug Chisholm www.woodlandaerialphoto.com: aerial photos of Grubb Lake
- Bill Barry's book Age Shall Not Weary Them: basic info about Cyril the soldier
- the Veterans Affairs Canada website: Cyril's service data such as service number, age, regiment, cemetery, war medals
- she also checked several other websites for various types of information
- the Saskatchewan War Memorial at lists Cyril Grubb among 5000 Sask war dead
- an aunt: Cyril's six war medals,
and the blood-stained prayer book he was carrying at the time of his death!
- Library and Archives Canada: a genealogy package Cyril's service file
- the Sask Geographic Names Board at ISC: a certificate and map of Grubb Lake
- friends: a map, brochures and photos of Cyril's grave from a trip to Holland
- the House of Commons: a copy of the Book of Remembrance page listing Cyril
- another aunt: two certificates in honour of sent to his parents
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Oct 25 2011 - Scottish Research - David Wessel
Dave led a brainstorming session where members suggested many ideas for
Scottish special interest group activities. We learned that a majority of branch members have some Scottish ancestry, and most are interested in the special interest group.
We set a time and topic for the first SIG meeting in January. |
| Sep 27 2011 - Eastern European Research - Holly Schick |
May 24 2011 - SGS Conference Review
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April 26 2011 - Special Interest Groups
Members discussed setting up special interest study groups within the branch.
They suggested groups based on individual countries, on information sources such as passenger lists, and technical topics such as computer applications.
Existing on-line interest groups such as those at GenealogyWise were recommended.
We decided to create one group and see how it goes.
A group on Scottish genealogy with 9 initial members will be chaired by David Wessel. |
Mar 22 2011 - Preparing for a Research Trip - Colleen Slater-Smith
Colleen began by informing us that her first genealogy trip was accidental.
A planned 3 month trip to Europe with a friend morphed into
a genealogical trip to Europe with her English-born mother.
She entertained us with both the successes and misadventures of her more recent trips.
Her primary advice is to go as well-prepared as possible,
but be prepared for serendipitous detours.
Take maps and cameras with many batteries and memory cards.
Phone ahead to pre-book readers and anything else you may need.
Above all, don't be afraid to ask lots of questions.
Members became very involved
in the discussion,
relating many of their own stories of what to do and what not to do.
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Feb 22 2011 - Show and Tell
Like the show and tell meeting of last March, this was a great success.
Branch members brought family artefacts and told the story of each.
Some of the items and/or stories:
click here for photos
- a very large photograph of a Saskatchewan barnraising in 1910
- a 1914 wedding announcement, photo and news report, and the bridal sash
- an Orange Lodge medal and old watch along with a photo of its owner
- a 1943 diary and 2 of 7 large scrapbook albums from a police chief in Burma
- a 19th century crucifix with skull and crossbones from the Banat (Serbia)
- a much-used glass coffee sealer from the 1920s, in apparent mint condition
- a pre-1918 scrapbook, obtained from a relative discovered via the internet
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Jan 25 2011 - The Genealogy Game
Four members of the program committee developed a series of questions in the categories of general knowledge, Saskatchewan, Canada and international.
The rest of us formed teams and attempted to answer the questions.
This was the first time we tried this idea. A sampling of questions and answers will be shared in future issues of the branch newsletter.
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Nov 23 2010 - Annual General Meeting
The 2010 AGM was held
at
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on a snowy November 23.
Those present enjoyed a delicious pot luck supper before getting down to business.
President Marian Powell, assisted by executive members
and committee chairpersons, reported on the activities of a busy 2010.
In addition to the regular monthly meetings and ongoing projects, there are some new initiatives. For example, the 1891 Census Index for the Northwest Territory is virtually ready for publication, and the Branch has drafted a new policy for archiving its records.
A new executive was elected and most volunteer positions filled.
We have had a very productive year, but as usual can use even more volunteers. |
Oct 26 2010 - British Home Children
19 brave people came out to the Regina Public Library Tuesday evening
during the city’s first nasty blast of winter.
Holly Schick detailed the conditions in the United Kingdom
that led to the child migration to Canada.
Most historians and researchers would agree that it was a misguided attempt
to help some 100,000 destitute children. There were dozens of different agencies.
Dr. Thomas Barnardo, one of the more well known humanitarians,
sent the largest group of approximately 30,000 children to Canada.
In researching a Home Child, Holly suggested the first place to search is
the Library and Archives Canada website
She also recommended the book The Golden Bridge (2003) by Marjorie Kohli.
Or check Marj Kohli's website. |
Sept 28 2010 - Getting on the Genealogy Track
Shelley Kloczko's top piece of advice is to define specific objectives in your
family research and follow them through. Have a checklist of sources and
a research calendar of what you searched when and with what result.
This will help you use your research time wisely and productively.
Shelley is currently working towards a certificate in Genealogical Studies with the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, affiliated with the University of Toronto.
They have offered online courses since 1999. |
MGS/SGS joint conference 2010 - Dianne Romphf Wins Heritage Award
SGS presented the 2010 Saskatchewan Genealogical Heritage Award to Regina Branch member
Dianne Romphf at the MGS/SGS joint conference in Yorkton Sept 17-19.
Since joining the branch in 1996, Dianne has served in numerous capacities.
These include, but are not limited to, executive member, cemetery coordinator,
census index coordinator, and Now and Then newsletter editor.
As a SGS Certified Saskatchewan Record Searcher, Researcher and Instructor,
she has performed family history research for many clients over the years.
She capably coordinated two SGS provincial seminars on behalf of the branch.
This award is richly deserved. Congratulations Dianne. |
June 13 2010 - Edenwold Cemetery Recording
On Sunday June 13, a beautiful day enabled six hardworking branch members
to record and photograph every headstone in twelve small cemeteries
within the Rural Municipality of Edenwold.
All of the data and photographs are currently being indexed by Shelley Kloczko,
and several have already been submitted to the SGS for inclusion in their database. |
May 25 2010 - Cemetery Records at SGS
Linda Neely and Norm Stetner are the volunteers who coordinate the Saskatchewan Cemetery and Burial Index for SGS. To date about 3,500 cemeteries have been located, and 2,500 recorded. This includes 440,000 burial records. Regina Branch participates in this process every year, and its members use the resulting data in their research.
Linda and Norm discussed the process of locating cemeteries, recording and photographing them, and organizing and indexing the resulting burial records. They indicated where the physical records are located in the library, and showed us examples of the material, including maps, photographs and indexed data for each cemetery. |
Apr 27 2010 - Genealogy and the Internet
This was a multifaceted introduction to using the internet for family history research.
Dave Wessel gave general tips on internet research and answered technical questions.
Gale Shawcross provided advice on using the pay site Find My Past.
Dianne Romphf and Jean Ashcroft discussed the pay site Ancestry.com
and several free sites such as AutomatedGenealogy.com, FamilySearch.org,
Library and Archives Canada, the Peel Collection and provinical Vital Statistics. |
March 23 2010 - Show and Tell
Like most member sharing meetings, this was a great success.
Branch members brought family artefacts and told the story of each.
Some of the items and/or stories:
- military service medals from the Boer War and WW I, with a photo of the soldier
- a century-old German baptismal certificate from the Banat in present-day Serbia
- a large trunk brought to Canada from Poland or Russia via Hamburg in 1892
- a will dated 1849 from Quebec, containing the maiden name of the widow
- a ladies ring from Ontario in 1868
- a huge family bible from 1834 with a braided lock of hair in it
- another 19th century family bible containing 6 pages of handwritten genealogy
- a foot stool in fine condition, from a shipwreck on the Scilly Isles circa 1840
- a pendant with photos of grandmother and grandfather from WW I
- 78 rpm recordings of father-in-law's first radio broadcast in 1948
- an 1887 German prayer book containing a birthday list of surviving children
- a trial transcript from a 1912 murder near West Bend Saskatchewan
- framed photos of a northern Saskatchewan lake and the soldier it is named for
- a family scrapbook from the Bruceville district near Pense Saskatchewan
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November 24 2009 - Annual General Meeting
The Annual Meeting of the Regina Branch was held on November 24, 2009 at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church with 23 members attending. After a potluck supper the meeting was called to order and executive and committee reports presented.
In 2009 the branch moved meetings from Knox Metropolitan United Church to the new Saskatchewan Genealogical Society library location at #110-1514 11th Avenue.
The move has allowed members to make use of the SGS library resources before the meeting starts. Doors open at 6:00.
At the conclusion of the business meeting, members enjoyed a fascinating program on “Genealogy Research and War” presented by Brian Brodie. |
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