Be Sure to Visit my new 1900 Galveston Storm Website at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootseb.com/~barnette 

JEWISH GENEALOGY MONTH

 Jewish Genealogy Month has been designated as running from April 6 to May 5. One of the best places to conduct Jewish genealogy is on the Internet and one of the best Jewish websites is JewishGen. JewishGen was founded in 1985 by, Houstonian, Susan E. King. The site may be accessed on the Internet at http://www.jewishgen.org/.

 JewishGen has web pages and links to Jewish discussion groups, Jewish genealogical societies all over the world, libraries with Jewish collections and Jewish research organizations.

 JewishGen sponsors and participates in a number of online projects including the JewishGen Family finder, a database of over 180,000 surnames and towns, ShtetLinks for over 200 communities, ShtetlSeeker and Jewish Records Indexing-Poland. In addition, JewishGen has joined with Yad Vashem to record the missing names of Jews who died in the Holocaust.

JEWISH GENEALOGY IN HOUSTON

 Houstonians interested in joining with other Houstonians tracing their Jewish ancestry should contact the Greater Houston Jewish Genealogical Society. The society meets monthly with informative speakers addressing the society. For more information, contact the society president, Jeff Olderman,  at jeffel55@aol.com.

INTERNATIONAL JEWISH CONFERENCE

 Sponsored by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), the 20th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held in Salt Lake City July 9 through July 14. The conference will feature more than eighty lectures and meetings.

 For more information, contact the IAJGS website at http://www.iajgs.org. The IAJGS coordinates the activities of 60 local Jewish genealogical societies around the world.

  NATIONAL ARCHIVES FIRE INTENTIONAL

 An Associated Press report quotes Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigators as saying the fire that occurred on February 29 at National Archives II in Suitland Maryland was intentionally set. Several people are being investigated. At press time no one had been charged nor a motive for the fire determined.

 Archives officials initially feared as many as 700,000 pages were damaged. It now appears fewer than 40,000 pages were actually destroyed. The records maintained in the area where the fire occurred were inactive files of deceased war veterans from the Department of Veterans Affairs, records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Labor Department's Hour and Wage division, the US Patent and Trademark Office; and the District of Columbia government office.

GENEALOGICAL SEMINAR

 Jim Hansen, genealogical reference librarian at the Library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, will be the featured speaker at the Houston Genealogical Forum's Spring Seminar. The seminar will be held from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday, April 29 at the Scottish Rite Temple, 2900 North Braeswood.

 Hansen's topics will include Getting The Most From All Types Of Indexes; Special Sources And Techniques For Tracing Your Pioneer Ancestors; Getting The Most From Newspaper Research; and Research In the States Of The Old Northwest-Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

 For more information and a downloadable registration form go to the Forum's website at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txharri2, or, call the Forum's Informational Genealine at 713-827-4440, or, email plpm@ix.netcom.com.

NEWS FROM THE BOOK SHELF

 A classic and one of the first reference guides used by genealogists conducting Jewish genealogical research is again in print. Dan Rottenberg's FINDING OUR FATHERS: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy is available for $23.90, postpaid from the Genealogical Publishing Company, 1001 North Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202.

 According to Rottenberg, as recently as 1700, there were two million Jews in the world. Today there are approximately fourteen million. In theory, according to Rottenberg, if the fourteen million are descended from the two million, there would be two ways to trace one's Jewish ancestry.

 The first and best method would be for one to attempt to trace one's own ancestry backward. Should that method fail, one might, then, try to trace the families of others and hope to find a connection.

 In addition, the genealogies of over 1500 Eastern European rabbis have been preserved with their scholarly writings. If one were to descend from one of the rabbis, it might be possible to trace one's own ancestry back to the Middle Ages.

 About half of the book describes how to conduct Jewish genealogical research. It includes a short lesson on genealogically related Judaica, Jewish history, the Diaspora, Hebrew dates, marriage ages, consanguinity, family size, naming of children and adoption of family names. It also gives the names and locations of major libraries and other facilities with Jewish related records.

 The second half of the book contains an alphabetical index of over 800 Jewish family names and their origins. Included is a bibliography of published Jewish family histories and reference books.