Minutes of RGS Meetings

Rochester Genealogical Society General Meeting
June 21, 2007
Picnic at the Rochester Historical Society
485 East Avenue

This meeting was the annual outing held each June.

Following a picnic lunch enjoyed in the garden of the Rochester Historical Society, about 30 RGS members were invited inside for a brief tour of the basement area of the Historical Society's home, called "Woodside". It was explained that the main floor and upper floors are not currently being used as museum space, as some of our members remembered from past visits.

Mr. William Keeler, Historical Society librarian, showed us a few of the unique resources held by the society, some of which related to the pioneering families of the area. He also explained the current staffing structure that has only a few employees, some of whom are part-time and performing a multitude of tasks. That explained, in part, the extremely limited accessibility to the large collection of historical documents held by the society. RGS members were also surprised and disturbed by the condition of the building and the precarious nature of the storage of very valuable parts of Rochester's history. It was a sad and eye-opening experience for many.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
May 17, 2007
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

First Vice President Roscoe Hastings reminded everyone that the next RGS meeting is our June picnic, which this year will be on June 21 at the Rochester Historical Society. The picnic will start at 5:30 pm, and there will be a presentation at 7. If you'd like to attend, bring your own meal, and make sure to sign up as they can only have thirty people inside.

Mini workshop
Ross Cooper gave a talk entitled "Pre-Programming Research." Ross explained his philosophy that success in research is not an accident; it requires careful planning and focusing on the work to be done. He presented a series of suggestions for developing a research plan concentrating on life events and locations. He discussed how historical events, natural disasters, and new technologies impacted our ancestors, and also showed a list of resources, such as genealogical periodical indexes, genealogical CDs, and genealogical websites that can help.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by thanking everyone for their support over the last four years. He then formally asked Pat Mims, the Membership Secretary, whether or not we had a quorum. Receiving an affirmative response, he turned the podium over to the nominating committee chair, Barb Koehler, to conduct the annual election of officers.

Officers for next year were unanimously elected as follows: President: Roy Thurston; Second Vice President: Paul Blake; Recording Secretary: Nancy Merzke; Corresponding Secretary: Bob Coomber. The following announcements were made:

Main program
A panel of RGS members composed of Jim Swarts, Roy Thurston, Bob Coomber, Marian Henry, Greg Spacher, Larry Naukam and Ozzie Salyards, took on questions from the audience and provided answers and suggestions for further information. They were ably seconded by diverse members of the audience who spoke up when the themes discussed involved something in their area of expertise. Questions ranged widely and included such varied topics as finding photographs of relatives on the web, and locating records of Canadian border crossings.

Carmen Bush, acting for
Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
April 19, 2007
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

This meeting was the last annual joint meeting with the Kodak Genealogical Society.

RGS President Jim Swarts opened the meeting by welcoming all RGS and KGS members and guests. He introduced Dr. Marian Henry, President of the Kodak Genealogical Society, who conducted a short meeting of that group.

1. Jim extended condolences to Larry Naukam on the death of his mother.
2. He then introduced Barb Koehler, Chair of the RGS Nominating Committee. Barb presented a slate of candidates to be voted on at the May meeting. They are as follows:
   • President - Roy Thurston
   • Second Vice President - Paul Blake
   • Corresponding Secretary - Bob Coomber
   • Recording Secretary - Nancy Merzke
   Barb then opened the floor for further nominations for each office. There were none. The election will be held at the next meeting on May 17, 2007.
3. RGS will sponsor a Spring Research Trip to the Buffalo Library on May 19th. The Library Director will provide an orientation to the group.
4. A letter was received from Anita Hartwig, Coordinator of Retrieval and Special Services at the Rochester Public Library, thanking RGS members who have supported the resource room and her effort to maintain the open hours.
5. First Time Visitors: 2 Attendance: 80

Main program
First Vice President Roscoe Hastings introduced the speaker for the evening, genealogist Dr. Mike Lacopo, author and speaker on genealogical topics, who made many insightful observations in an interesting and humorous manner. Some of the themes he stressed were the need to examine sources carefully, to use common sense in evaluating evidence, to follow the paper trail, to reconstruct entire families, and to be wary of obvious solutions. In discussing erroneous research he drew distinctions between clerical errors, innocent errors and intentional errors, using examples of each. He cautioned that the proper use of the internet is for leads, not proof.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
March 15, 2007
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

Mini-Workshop
First Vice President Roscoe Hastings' presentation was entitled “It was in the Newspaper so it must be True.” Roscoe outlined his research into his gg grandmother whose 100th birthday publicity triggered his search for the facts of her life. After hitting several brick walls he found that an apparent discrepancy in surnames arose because she was not married to the man with whom she lived and who was the father of her children. His research showed that many of the newspaper “facts” about her were incorrect.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by asking for volunteers to continue the work begun by the Retreat organizers and participants.

Main program
Anita Hartwig, Coordinator of Retrieval and Special Services at the Rochester Public Library, discussed the large collection of genealogical resources housed in her department. In addition to the NYS Vital Records Index, she has a large collection of indices to various newspapers, scrapbooks, church records and other materials. Particularly important to her are the newspaper accounts of veterans and military service personnel. Her staff is continually indexing new materials to add to the collection.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
February 15, 2007
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

Inclement weather, Meeting Cancelled

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
January 18, 2007
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

Mini-Workshop
First Vice President Roscoe Hastings introduced Marian Henry, current Historian/Genealogist, who traced her investigation of “The Adoption of Baby Edith” Edith was born into the Newell family and adopted by the Woodward family. In attempting to determine the circumstances of the adoption, Marian found that the adoptive family was distantly related to Edith's birth family. A possible reason for the adoption was that Edith's birth family had fifteen children.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by thanking Roscoe Hastings for accepting the position of First Vice President when that office was vacated.

Main program
Barry Hartley's presentation was entitled “Peeling the Onion - The Search for Sadie's History.” Sadie Likens appeared in Denver about 1885. She was rumored to have been a Civil War nurse and went on to to hold several important positions including the first Police Matron for the city of Denver and the Superintendent of the State School for Incorrigible Girls. Although some of Sadie's reported accomplishments were never proved, Mr. Hartley and his daughter found some unexpected sources that helped them to uncover her considerable achievements.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
November 16, 2006
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

Mini-Workshop
Ozzie Salyards, Chair of the Education Committee, introduced Christopher Bensch, Vice President for Collections at the Strong Museum of Play, who spoke on the recent changes at the museum. He showed many slides illustrating the unusual architectural features and discussed the Butterfly Garden, Reading Adventureland, and the National Toy Hall of Fame. The Museum is the second largest children's museum in the United States, and the only one dedicated specifically to the study of play.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by announcing that four new docents have volunteered for the Rundel library and still more are needed.

Main Program
Christopher Bensch returned to present the main program entitled “Pilgrims, Politics, and Pumpkin Pie: The True Story Behind Thanksgiving.” Chris traced the history of early harvest festivals that were brought to the new world by the early English settlers. He discussed how these celebrations were eventually institutionalized with President George Washington making the first Presidential Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. The talk was illustrated by cards and pictures from the Strong museum collection.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
October 19, 2006
Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

Mini-Workshop
Ed Groszewski, VP for Program, introduced long-time RGS member and SAR liaison, Mr. Stephan Clarke, whose brick wall talk was entitled “The Palatines, Hank Jones, the RGS and Me.” Steve described the search for his ancestor that involved many different spellings of the same German name. To achieve his goal of proving his ancestry for acceptance into the Sons of the American Revolution, Steve resorted to writing to Hank Jones, a renowned genealogist, for confirmation of the different spellings.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by introducing the members of the By-laws Revision Committee: Pat Southcombe, Chair, Jim Allen, Peter Bush and Bob Coomber. Pat announced one small change in the by-laws and Pat Mims then verified that a quorum was present. A motion was made and seconded to accept the recommendation of the Board of Directors to approve the adoption of the revised by-laws. Passed unanimously by voice vote.

Main program
The main speaker was Greg Spacher, RGS Publications Chair, whose topic was “Civil War Research: The Cases of John T. Seiler, Edward M. Doran and the 140th New York.” Greg traced the tours of duty of each of the soldiers and discussed some of the conditions under which they lived as soldiers. He spoke at length about the information that can be uncovered by obtaining the pension files of an ancestor. These records may include a list of spouse(s) and children, injury descriptions and medical problems, muster rolls, and prisoner of war records.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary

Rochester Genealogical Society
General Meeting
September 21, 2006
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 23 Westminster St., Rochester, NY

Mini-Workshop
Roy Thurston, long-time RGS member, titled his presentation “Knocking Down Your Brick Wall With Ancestry.com”. Roy detailed the wealth of information available on the website including census images from England, Wales and Scotland as well as the United States; court, land and probate records and many early church and cemetery records.

On a completely different topic, Roy discussed the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation projects for collecting DNA results and corresponding genealogies. He announced that at the October 19th RGS meeting each person will be able to do the saliva (mouthwash) test to determine their DNA. If you are interested in participating it is necessary to bring a pedigree chart with as many generations as possible to the meeting.

Business Meeting
President Jim Swarts opened the business meeting by welcoming everyone to a new year. He thanked St. Paul's Episcopal Church for graciously allowing RGS to use their facility for this meeting.

Main Program
Mr. Edward Groszewski, VP for Program, introduced Kathleen Urbanic, the volunteer archivist and historian for Rochester's Polish-American community whose topic was “The Origins of the Polish Community in Rochester (1890-1909)”. Ms. Urbanic discussed the history of the Polish community in Rochester and in parallel the history of St. Stanislaus' Church on Hudson Avenue. For many Polish-Americans the church was the center of their social and cultural life and a succession of church buildings were built as the community grew and prospered. Ms. Urbanic told many stories and illustrated her talk with slides documenting the life of the people.

Kathryn Heintz
Recording Secretary