Reminder - BC Genealogical Society Meeting June 10 Burnaby BC - Special session Writing Your History

The next British Columbia Genealogical Society General Meeting is -

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 7:30 pm. All interested are welcome to attend.

The Special Interest Groups meeting are:

Irish Group

English Group

Discussion Group - Parish Registers - What is available prior to Civil Registration? Where to find them? How to access them?

Also - Special Session - Writing Your History - presented by Moira Connor - Samples of good, bad and indifferent genealogy related books.
Open forum on what we like, don't like and why. Attendees can bring an example for discussion. Will cover the importance of citing source material and indexing.

This presentation is the start of a four part series by Moira Connor on 'Writing Your History'. The next sessions will be at the September, October and November BCGS meetings.

Moira Connor was born in Scotland and moved to Canada with her family when six years old. The family settled in the Hamilton/Burlington area of
Ontario, then moved to Vancouver in the mid 1960's. Moira began her career in Human Resources, and then moved to Information Technology and Project Management. She, and her husband Terry, have worked on projects across western Canada and the US.

Moira caught the genealogy "bug" after reading some family letters that her mother had from the late 1700's and early 1800's. One of them was written to an ancestor describing the death of his son after being hit with grapeshot while he breached the walls of Montevideo. Who was this ancestor? How was he related? What was a Scottish lad doing in Montevideo..and the questions went on! Moira was determined to get the answers. Ten years later, she just finished a 400 page family history book and is currently having it bound for presentation to her Mum.

While Moira and Terry lived in Seattle, WA, Moira started a business writing and publishing family histories, preparing for and documenting reunions, and scanning/restoring old photographs and textual material. After moving back to Canada in 2003, she decided to return to her career in Information Technology but has retained her passion for genealogy and related research.

Moira volunteered at the Fiske Genealogical Library in Seattle, and was responsible for their quarterly newsletter and for conducting a number of education sessions on topics related to the preparation of family
histories.

Moira will conduct similar sessions for the B.C. Genealogical Society in June, September, October and November 2009. Her pet peeve is genealogical histories that are lacking an index, so she'll be spending one full session on "how to" do this easily using word processing
software.

Please bring examples of family history books that you feel are well done,
not so well done and those that are poorly done. In the first session in
June, Moira will lead an open discussion on the "good, the bad and the
ugly" so that we can learn from each other. This will be an opportunity to share tips and best practices.

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B.C.G.S. General Meetings: the second Wednesday of every month, 7:30 pm at Edmonds Community Centre, 7282 Kingsway (Kingsway & Edmonds), Burnaby V5E 1G3

B.C.G.S. Event Calendar: www.bcgs.ca/Calendar.htm