Bucks County
Genealogical Society
March 2013 Newsletter
In This Issue
President's Message
April 13, 2013 Meeting
Call for Displays for April 13th Meeting
2013 Membership Fees Are Due Now
Save Yourself! by Cathy Ivins
Genealogy Events Calendar
Old York Road Genealogical Society Annual Dinner April 9, 2013
We have a great Tote Bag!
Two Photographs - an interesting follow-up of a January query - by Ann Kauffman
Genealogy Mystery Book
Inquiry from Indiana
Your Query Here!
2013 Meeting Dates
April 13 - please note the change to the 2nd Saturday! 

May 4

June 1
July - no meeting 
August 3
September tba
October 5
November 2
December 7

Most meetings will be held at the David Library, 1201 River Road, Washington Crossing, PA.  The meetings marked as "tba" will be held at a time and location to be determined; information will be on our website, our Facebook page, and in our monthly newsletter.
Join Our Mailing List
 


God grant me the serenity to accept the ancestors that I cannot find, the courage to find the ones I can, and the wisdom to document thoroughly.



Chris
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Greetings to all BCGS Members and Friends:

 

As we move into our Society's second year,  I continue to be so excited about the enthusiasm for our new organization.  In March of 2012, our first monthly meeting was attended by about twenty new charter members, and our speaker, Charter Member Annette Eubank, spoke to us about Bucks County records and repositories.  Fast forward to March of 2013, when a record number of 39 attended Susan Koelble's presentation titled "Where There's a Will, There's a Way".  The meeting room was at capacity, and the Board is considering renting Stone Hall, the larger room upstairs at the David Library, to accommodate more people at future meetings.  We have come a long way!

 

We are particularly excited about the upcoming April meeting, because it will be held in the library at Council Rock High School North, and students will be invited to attend.  If we can inspire young people to take an interest in family history research, we can be especially proud of the work we are doing to promote genealogy in our community.    

 

The Executive Board sends a heartfelt thank you to all members for your support of BCGS and making it possible for us to continue to grow!  

 

Warm Regards,

Christine Roberts

Bucks County Genealogical Society 

Our April meeting is a special

FAMILY HISTORY FAIR

 
April 13, 2013, Saturday, 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM

at the Council Rock High School North Library
62 Swamp Rd., Newtown, PA  18940 
(Parking on right; enter at main entrance)

10:00 - 10:30 Monthly agenda meeting - open to the public 
10:30  - 11:30 "Researching with FamilySearch" presented            
                          by the Doylestown Family History Library
11:30 -  1:00   Showcase of members' research displays and online
                          researching assistance

Our program will benefit beginning through advanced genealogists and interested family members with learning how to:
  • Research online with FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com & more
  • Save data using programs such as Family Tree Maker from Ancestry.com
  • Preserve and display your family's history.
We have some great door prizes:  a one-year membership to B.C.G.S; our tote bag; Family Tree Maker Program and a one-year World Explorer subscription to Ancestry.com, compliments of Ancestry.com.  
________________________

Admission:  $5 Members / $10 Non-Members 
Free for Bucks County students with ID and their families.

The meeting is open to the public. No registration is required. 
WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOUR DISPLAYS!

Any member willing to display your family research material (print, binders, books, etc.)  during our Family History Fair on April 13, please post on our Yahoo group page by April 7th at:

or send an email to Cathy Ivins, Director of Publicity at

It will be a great way to share ideas with others who appreciate your toils!

2013 Membership Fees   
   
          Individual:  $20          Dual/Household:  $35

Many of our 2012 Charter Members have renewed their memberships for 2013.  Won't you join them in helping us continue to grow?
                       
Join or renew by mail
using our application/renewal form, on line on the Society's website via PayPal or by paying with cash or check at our next meeting.

Your membership dues provide great speakers, a meeting place, a website and more!

Cathy Ivins 2012

 

Save Yourself!  

   

By Cathy Ivins,  

Director of Publicity

 

        It happens always when you are not prepared, and then it's usually too late. You mean to backup your computer but don't because, face it, we are always just too busy! Can you imagine losing everything on your computer, including your family tree information! It happened to me, the tech guru of my building. I saw the ill-fated blue screen of death! Luckily, except for a tremendous inconvenience and stress, it had a happy ending. But think about it. If your pc crashed right now, are you prepared? Here are my life-savers:

 

1 - My HP laptop automatically gave me the option of system restore back to its original state, with another option of saving personal data first: pictures, documents, videos, etc., through its "recovery manager". Of course! I have an external drive (larger than a flashdrive) which I hooked up. It took hours. When the laptop was restored and I re-installed programs, I then put those files back on my laptop.  

 

2 - A problem though is that the recovery manager does not save data of an uncommon file format, such as FTM files from family tree maker, and so forth. Because my family tree is linked to ancestry.com, however, I was able to download the tree back to my family tree maker software! Pfew! Is yours linked?  

 

3 - My Seagate external drive I use periodically to back up my whole pc, including these software-specific file formats, also saved the day. Although I hadn't backed up my pc the past few months, I was able to recover the rest of my data very easily. It's a great thing to have, but only works when you remember to use it! Of course today "cloud" storage is popular as another option, although it can be quite expensive. If my pc hadn't given me the option of saving data before system restore, I would have been able to restore everything from this external drive as up to date as I last backed up.  

 

4 - My other lifesaver was Excedrin extra-strength!

 

So please do yourself a favor, and SAVE YOURSELF!


COMPREHENSIVE EVENTS CALENDAR




Click below for a listing of upcoming genealogy events for our organization and others in our area:

Calendar of Events
 
OLD YORK ROAD GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY 
is inviting members of the  
Bucks County Genealogical Society  
to the annual dinner meeting

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Williamson Banquet & Event Center 
Easton (Rt.611) & Blair Mill Rds., Horsham, PA

$35 per person  
Reservations must be made by March 27, 2013.  
Please click below:


The program is entitled "The Defining Moments of Lincoln's Presidency" and will be presented by Hugh Boyle, President and Co-Founder of the Delaware Valley Civil War Rountable and President of the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Library. 
 

Tote Bag LOGO TOTE BAG
     
Our Tote Bag is canvas and a great size...12" x 18" with a gusseted 5" bottom and 10" handle drop height.  Our logo is on one side.  It is a terrific bag to use for the beach, for groceries, or for carrying your research to a genealogy meeting! 

The bag is available at our meetings for $15.

If you would like it shipped to you, the cost is $20 ($15 plus $5 postage/handling).   Just send your name and address along with a check to Bucks County Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 826, Washington Crossing, PA 18977.  Please allow 3 - 4 weeks for delivery.

Two Photographs

 

by Ann Kauffman  (Joined BCGS January 2013)

 

A query from Carol Jacobs Norwood about a set of photographs in antique frames, that likely dated to the 1860s, appeared in the January BCGS newsletter. The photos/frames were found in the attic of the Plumsteadville, PA, home where Carol's grandparents had lived in the late 1940s. She asked if any BCGS members knew the identities of the people in the photo. Due to technical difficulties, the photographic images did not appear in the newsletter issue that my husband, Jack, and I received. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the request.

 

I sent Carol an e-mail suggesting that if the house where her grandparents lived was of the same vintage as the photos, she might be able to identify who lived in the house at that time or until the time that her grandparents occupied it. I volunteered my time and that of my husband to search records in Bucks County if she was unable to find any information on-line.

 

In her reply, Carol thanked me for my suggestion and the offer of research help. She continued that she and her husband lived only two hours away in Myerstown, Lebanon County, PA, and she could, therefore, do research when they visited her mother who still lived in Bucks County. They would drive her mother to Plumsteadville so she could identify the correct house. I, in turn, acknowledged her response and replied that I knew Myerstown where she now lived, quite well. I was originally from that area and, in fact, my brother and sister-in-law had only two months earlier moved from Myerstown to a retirement community in a near-by town. I added that I had extended family living on a farm in Plumsteadville.

 

Carol replied that she was originally from Gardenville and had then lived in Doylestown. She and her husband had retired to Myerstown but she still maintained her membership in the Plumsteadville Historical Society. She asked about my extended family in the Plumsteadville area and when I said the name, Carol replied that she knew the family very well. In fact, one of her best friends in high school is a daughter of my late, second cousin and her husband. Carol often went to their farm after school or work and still kept in touch with her high school friend. A few days later she sent another e-mail with an attached photo of her friend and her friend's father taken on one of Carol's more recent visits to their farm. Although I never did see the photographic images of the people that spurred my response to Carol's query, I now have a photo of two members of my own extended family from an unexpected source.

 

 

Mary Butash, Secretary of ourMary2013 Society, suggested this book as a fun read.

 

In the Blood
by Steve Robinson

 

Amazon.com describes the book:  When American genealogist, Jefferson Tayte, accepted his latest assignment he had no idea it might kill him. But while murder was never part of the curriculum he is kidding himself if he thinks he can walk away from this one.

Driven by the irony of being a genealogist who doesn't know who his own parents are, Tayte soon finds that the assignment shares a stark similarity to his own struggle. Someone has gone to great lengths to erase an entire family bloodline from recorded history and he's not going home until he's found out why. After all, if he's not good enough to find this family, how can he ever expect to be good enough to someday find his own?


Set in Cornwall, England, past and present, Tayte's research centres around the tragic life of a young Cornish girl, a writing box, and the discovery of a dark family secret that he believes will lead him to the family he is looking for. Trouble is, someone else is looking for the same answers and they will stop at nothing to find them.

 

 

INQUIRY FROM INDIANA

I'm looking for genealogy records on Matthias Nehs, born 1673 in Germany and died 31 Jan 1740/41.  Buried Indianfield Lutheran Church Cemetery, Telford, Bucks Co., PA.  Please send any information to:  kraftykaykat@frontier.com  

YOUR INQUIRY HERE

Would you like your research query posted in our newsletter?  Just send your query to membership@buckscountygenealogicalsociety.org and we will include it next month.
 
More information about us:
  
Members only...join our Yahoo Group for Bucks County Genealogical Society.  Please go to the following link and click "Join this Group":   

Not a member and want more information?  Check our website www.buckscountygenealogicalsociety.org
and our Facebook page www.facebook.com/buckscountygenealogicalsociety.