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

NGS LIBRARY MOVES TO ST LOUIS

Beginning in February 2002 the National Genealogical Society's circulating book collection will be administered by the St. Louis County Library in St Louis, Missouri. The over 20,000 volume collection will be available in its entirety to anyone requesting a book through the interlibrary loan system. The non-circulating NGS book collection will remain at the NGS Library in Arlington, Virginia.

The strategic partnership between NGS and the St. Louis County Library is expected to be good for all parties concerned. It allows NGS librarians and volunteers to focus on providing programs, projects and access to other important materials such as the NGS manuscript collection housed in Arlington. At the same time the experience of the staff of the St Louis Public Library will speed up the fulfillment of orders in a more timely manner and be less expensive for researchers.

For more information about the NGS, the NGS Library, the St Louis County Special Collections and the partnership between the two organizations, visit their websites at http://www.NGSGenealogy.org and

http://www.slcl.lib.mo.us/slcl/sc/sc-genpg.htm .

GENEALOGICAL COURSE OFFERED

Offered by Leisure Learning, Mic Barnette will teach an introductory course in family history. Roots of Genealogy-How To Research Your Family Tree will be held from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. Tuesday November 6 at Leisure Learning's 2990 Richmond Ave campus. The following week the class will tour Clayton Genealogical Library and conduct on-site census research. For more information and to register, contact Leisure Learning at 713-529-4414.

CHURCH RECORDS AND DENOMINATIONAL NEWSPAPERS

Paula Perkins Parke will discuss religious denominations, their newspapers, their records of genealogical value and how to locate and access the information buried within them. Her course Soul Searching: Church Records and Denominational Newspaper Research will be taught from 5:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. Tuesday November 13 at Grace Presbyterian Church, 10221 Ella Lee near Sam Houston Tollway in West Houston. For more information and to register contact Becky Morris at 713-267-5091.

FAMILY TREE MAKER SOFTWARE CLASS

Paula Perkins Parke will teach an Organizing Your Family Research With Family Tree Maker Software class from 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. Wednesday November 14. This one-time class will be held at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, 11612 Memorial Drive.

Through demonstrations, students will learn step by step instructions to organize, document family information and sources, create charts and reports and produce family books. For more information and to register, contact MDPC at 713-782-1710.

MILAM COUNTY SEMINAR

The Milam County Genealogical Society will host their Fall Seminar Saturday November 10 from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. The seminar will be held at the Chamber of Commerce office, 102 E. 1st Street in Cameron. The featured speaker will be genealogical columnist, Lynna Kay Shuffield.

Shuffield's topics will include: Basic Research Methods and Sources; 20th Century Military research and War Dead Projects; Computers and Genealogy; and Cemetery Indexing and Preservation.

For more information visit the MCGS website at http://geocities.datacellar.net/milamco/ or call Charles Hubert at 512-446-3937.

NEWS FROM THE BOOKSHELF

Former Oktibbeha County, Mississippi librarian and museum director Judy Jacobson has compiled a book about some of the early settler families along the Tombigbee River region. Her book, Alabama and Mississippi Connections: Historical and Biographical Sketches of Families Who Settled on Both Sides of the Tombigbee River, is available for $33.45, postpaid, from Clearfield Publishing Co, 200 East Eager, Baltimore, MD 21202.

As suggested by the title, the focus of the book is upon families who settled along the Tombigbee River. Today this area occupies all or part of the Alabama counties of Marion, Fayette, Lamar, Tuscaloosa, Greene, Pickens, and Sumter; and the Mississippi counties of Lee, Itawamba, Monroe, Webster, Clay, Choctaw, Oktibbeha, Lowndes, Winston, and Noxubee. Aided by a variety of maps depicting settlement patterns, the book commences with a history of settlement in the Mississippi Territory. Here Mrs. Jacobson zeroes in on the founding of each of the seventeen counties comprising the Tombigbee River area, with references to the region's indigenous Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Cherokees; the phases of French, Spanish and British settlement; and the consolidation of the region under U.S. control following the War of 1812. Doubtless of greatest interest to researchers will be the author's genealogical and biographical essays on a number of early families that settled the region.

Rounding out the volume are several appendices (including an abridged copy of the Choctaw Treaty of 1816), a lengthy bibliography, and a name and subject index containing 3,500 entries.