January 18

Today I went to my local genealogy society meeting. The annual fee is only $15.00 per member for a year. This is by far the best deal around. Even though I could attend monthly meetings for free, why would I not join the society? My small fee helps pay for services the genealogy society library offers. They now have WorldVitalRecords and Fold3 for patrons to use. I already subscribe to WVR but I wasn’t going to renew, because I don’t find enough records on this site to justify my subscription fee. Now I can use that subscription fee towards another site if I wish.

The monthly program was about Divorce in your family research and the special challenges that it offers. The program was presented nicely and entertaining because the speaker shared her own family divorce stories in process. I think this makes the program more memoriable.

January 18 – Use holiday cards and family newsletters to update your relatives’ contact information. Make sure everyone knows how to reach you too.

This is how I have always updated my relatives contact information. If your relative has their mail forwarding, you won’t know their address changed until their mail comes back to you. I always check the return address label to make sure it is the same address I send the holiday card to.

I use to hate family newsletters until I realized all the valuable information that it contained. The best newsletters will include dates for births and marriages. Sometimes they include death dates, but I hate those parts of the family newsletters. Saying goodbye to family is always hard. Even if you don’t know the person that well, I feel for the close family members.