California Family History Expo - October 8-9, 2010

The California Genealogical Society and Library will be a local sponsor of the upcoming California Family History Expo at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, 4501 Pleasanton Avenue, Pleasanton, California, Friday and Saturday, October 8-9, 2010.

Come join us for two days of Genealogy! Learn about all aspects of researching your family history from our expert speakers. Try out the latest in genealogical tools in our Exhibit Hall. Whether you are new to tracing your family tree or are a professional genealogist, spend time with us learning the tech to trace your roots!

CGS will have Booth #57 in the Exhibit Hall and adjoining Booth #56 has been assigned to local Bay Area genealogical societies to share.

I'll have more information in the coming days about Expo and about the CGS members who will be speaking.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Clues in Correspondence: Using California Letters to Reconstruct a Family

One of the common misconceptions about the CGS is that the library and society are "only about California." In fact, the library holds resources from all fifty states and members' ancestors come from all over the world. Members have published articles about far-flung family in the NGS Magazine and in state genealogical journals in Louisiana and Missouri. Now Jane Hufft tells how a cache of letters revealed an ancestor's roots in North Carolina.

"Clues in Correspondence: Using California Letters to Reconstruct an Edwards Family in Polk and Rutherford Counties in North Carolina" by Jane Hufft is the first article in the May 2010 issue of the North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal.

Jane outlines the information found in eight letters written between 1860 and 1877 to Joseph Green Edwards (1825-1906) who left his native North Carolina for Georgia and eventually California when he answered the call of the Gold Rush. The letters were carefully secured in the Edwards family bible and provide "the only evidence for the North Carolina ancestry of Joseph Green Edwards."


Edwards was the son of Smith and Mira (Green) Edwards, both natives of North Carolina. The earliest surviving letter was written by them in 1860. The other letters were written by Joseph's siblings and all are lengthy missives full of news of the family he had left behind. Hufft quotes liberally from the letters and provides biographical information about each of the letter writers and how they relate to Joseph. The letters also include details of how the Civil War years impacted the family.

Hufft concludes, "Researchers should always make sure that their prospecting is persistent and thorough, in case there is a similar mine of evidence in any branch of their own family." We should all be so lucky!

Jane Hufft is the editor of the California Nugget and serves on the Publications/ Marketing Committee. She has thirty-six years of experience in education as a teacher, project manager and administrator.

"Clues in Correspondence: Using California Letters to Reconstruct an Edwards Family in Polk and Rutherford Counties in North Carolina" by Jane Hufft.   
North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal 36 (May 2010): 101-118.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Member Book - Letters From the Storm: Civil War Letters of Lt. J.A.H. Foster

One of the member authors who will be with us at our upcoming Autumn Book Launch is Linda Foster Arden. Arden recently published Letters from the Storm: The Intimate Civil War Letters of Lt. J.A.H. Foster, 155th Pennsylvania Volunteers about her great-great grandparents, Mary Jane Strain and John Alexander Hastings Foster. Married in 1858, they lived in Rural Valley, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania.

The book features one hundred transcribed letters written from 1862 through 1865 by Lieutenant Foster, mostly to his wife Mary Jane, set against the background of all the major Civil War battles involving the Army of the Potomac, 5th Corp.

Skillfully interspersed with Linda Arden's commentary about the events and situations of the era, these letters are a time capsule of the mid-nineteenth century. In many respects, Foster's letters mirror the comments made by soldiers on both sides: their efforts to seek comfort with news from home, their litany of complaints about the rigors of camp and battle, and their descriptions of men and events on the front lines.

Linda Foster Arden holds a B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from Eastern Michigan University and California State University-Hayward. For thirty-five years, Ms. Arden worked for major corporations as an information technology consultant, responsible for project management and acquisition negotiations. She lives with her husband, Ted Arden, a retired American history teacher, who helped her conceive the idea for this book. While doing much of the research and writing, they lived for two summers on a 150-year-old farm in Western Pennsylvania. Currently she lives in Clayton, California, at the foot of Mt. Diablo, where she enjoys reading, camping, working on family history and genealogy, and being a grandmother to Samantha. 

Letters from the Storm: The Intimate Civil War Letters of Lt. J.A.H. Foster, 155th Pennsylvania Volunteers
2010 by Linda Foster Arden; Edited by Dr. Walter L. Powell.  
Indexed, 53 illustrations and photos 365 pages, 7 x 10 soft cover
Price: $29.95


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

San Francisco Bay Area Genealogy Calendar: September 2010 Published

September 2010 events have been published on the San Francisco Bay Area Genealogy Calendar – a collection of local genealogical society classes, workshops and meetings within a 75 mile radius of San Francisco.

The monthly list of Bay Area genealogy programs continues to grow as more societies submit their items to the calendar. The September calendar lists 35 events and classes to help you further your family history research.

If you would like your group's events added to the calendar, please email the information by the 20th of each month for publication on the 25th. (Please put "SFBA Calendar" in the subject line.)


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Wordless Wednesday

 Thursday Evening Discussion: NewEnglandAncestors.org

Tom Gesner, Facilitator

July 29, 2010

Photographs courtesy of Tim Cox, Oakland, California.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library