WINDHAM COUNTY, Vt. – The next meeting of the Windham County Genealogy Interest Group (WCGIG) will focus on “Navigating your Family History at the Vermont State Archives and Exploring the Digital Public Library of America” on Saturday, Dec. 2, from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., on Zoom only. This program is free and open to all. Please register at www.bit.ly/wcgigdec23. A Zoom link will be sent to you at least one week before the meeting. Pose any questions that you may have for the presenters when you register.
Reference archivist Mariessa Dobrick at the Vermont State Archives will share genealogy resources through stories in her prerecorded presentation, “Navigating your Family History at the Vermont State Archives.”
The Vermont State Archives consist of records that have continuing value to the State of Vermont and its citizens. The holdings document Vermont state government from crown colony to the present. Because many of these records reflect the interactions of individual citizens with their government, the state archives is a useful resource for genealogists and family historians with Vermont connections.
Records often used by genealogists include vital records, court records, and the records of state institutions and newspapers. The Manuscript Vermont State Papers documents the names of thousands of Vermonters between 1777-1865 that had interactions with government, from petitions to grand lists and beyond.
Wayne Blanchard, co-founder of Windham County Genealogy Interest Group and genealogy volunteer at Rockingham Public Library, will take us on a virtual tour of The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), online at http://dp.la, through his talk “Exploring the Digital Public Library of America.”
The DPLA provides a way to search the collections of a wide range of partner institutions – libraries, archives, and government offices. This online library does not have its own collection, but gives a way to search across many other collections in one place. Although not focused specifically on genealogy, many of its free materials are helpful for doing family research. The website contains links to photographs, family bibles, correspondence (for example, from the Civil War letters), local maps, yearbooks, military records, oral histories, family history, and genealogy books. As its website proclaims, the DPLA is totally free to use and open to all – no library card, subscription, or sign up is required.
The WCGIG is an informal organization whose members are dedicated to genealogy education, research, and best practices. Meetings are held every other month on Zoom. Many of these sessions were recorded and are available on the WCGIG YouTube channel, www.bit.ly/wcgigvideo,which cover topics such as improving your search results in www.familysearch.org and www.ancestry.com; using family tree software; navigating the crowd sourced cemetery database Find A Grave; using land records for genealogy research; using www.americanancestors.org, the database of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; and finding people in the newly released 1950 U.S. Census.
WCGIG is also supported by Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, Vt., and Rockingham Free Library in Bellows Falls, Vt., with use of their Zoom accounts, publicity, and use of their facilities.
For more information, contact Wayne Blanchard or Jerry Carbone of the Windham County Genealogy Interest Group at windhamcountygig@gmail.com