Genealogy seminar scheduled for March in Moultrie

AJC file photo

AJC file photo

The Georgia Genealogical Society will hold its spring seminar in Moultrie on March 16.

Registration and check-in for the event, at the Ellen Payne Odom Genealogy Library, will be from 9:30 a.m.-10 a.m. The first speaker, at 10:15 a.m., will be Donna Weathers, discussing “Planning Your Research Trip and Strategies for Planning Research Trips to the Old Hometown.” At 11:30 a.m., Rosemary Cantrell will give a talk called, “Put Some Meat on them Bones: Telling the Story of an Ancestor.” Participants are on their own for lunch. Then, at 2:15 p.m., Larry W. Thomas will speak on “Researching in Rural Georgia Courthouses.” After a break, the final talk, at 3:30 p.m., will be given by members of the Odom Genealogy Library staff, with a presentation on the library and a tour of the newly renovated facility. A question and answer session rounds out the program.

The library is located at 204 5th Street SE in Moultrie. Cost is $25 for GGS members, $35 for nonmembers. Checks to the GGS sent by mail should be postmarked by March 10 and addressed to the Georgia Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 550247, Atlanta, Ga., 30355-2747. Reservations paid for using PayPal can be made on the GGS website gagensociety.org by March 12. For further information, check the website, or call Maggie Thomas, 678-800-8456. For more on the Odom Library and its collection, see mccls.org/odom.gen.htm. Moultrie is about 200 miles south of Atlanta, via I-75.

The London Gazette

The London Gazette, founded in 1665, has been digitized and is online free at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/. There you can search historical issues for free under “notices.” Search by a proper name, or a topic. It’s a great site for historians and genealogists. It’s also good for teachers. Options for searching for wills and insolvencies are limited to 20th century and later. If you find something, it’s easy to convert to PDF, save and print out. Other historical British newspapers can be found online at subscription sites. You can find information repeated in Colonial newspapers, then find the original in the British papers.

More about checking through old books

After I suggested last week to check what items related to family history might have placed among the pages of a valuable book, such as the Bible, other readers suggested that they had found information written on pages in the Bible, or other books. By carefully studying a book, you might find some great notations. Calendars are another great source if your family saved them, as well as address books.