UVTAGG Meeting - April 14 - Come Join Me!

The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group - UVTAGG (Formerly the Utah Valley PAF Users Group - UVPAFUG) will be on Saturday, 14 Apr 2012, from 9 am to noon in the LDS "Red Chapel", 4050 North Timpview Drive (650 East), Provo.  Information about the Group, main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on their website http://uvtagg.org.

The main presentation for this meeting will be by Stephen Ehat on FIND ALL YOUR RELATIVES IN THE 1940 U.S. FEDERAL CENSUS.  The 1940 US Federal Census was released on 2 Apr 2012 and digital images are now posted on several sites including the National Archives at http://1940census.archives.gov .  Several organizations are coordinating efforts to index the entire census.  These include FamilySearch Indexing and everyone is encouraged to sign up at  https://www.familysearch.org/1940census/   to help.  It will take several months to complete the entire index.  The presentation at the UVTAGG meeting this month will help people get into the census before it is indexed.  Small towns, of course, will be pretty easy; large cities will take more effort, but can still be done, as Steve Ehat will show.  

Stephen Kent Ehat was born in San Francisco in 1951. Baptized a Latter-day Saint as a convert at age 10, he first attempted to do genealogical research at age 11. He knew too little, but at age 17, when he began studies at BYU, he successfully began a lifetime of family history research and discovery. He has served as a Records Examiner (Remember those?), as a Stake Extraction Director (back in the day when that opportunity first existed), and recently as the Director of a six-stake Family History Center serving Orem and Lindon. He has made a number of presentations at recent BYU Family History Conferences and at the BYU Family History Center Sunday classes and is constantly helping people with their research. He has been to Italy twice for family history research on his own Italian line that arrived in San Francisco 45 years before the earthquake and fire in 1906. He is a California attorney who lives with his wife, Jeanine, in Lindon, Utah, and they have five sons and thirteen -- now almost 14 -- grandchildren.

Following the main presentation there will be several classes about family history and technology with something for everyone at any level of expertise. The teachers and classes presently scheduled for this meeting are:  

1. Are Your Ancestors Frozen in Time?, by Claire Brisson-Banks
2. "Where Did That File Go?" - Understanding and Organizing Computer Files, by Sue Maxwell
3. Analyzing Census Records, by Stephen Ehat
4. Personal Help with Family History, by Don Engstrom and Finn Hansen
5. Video of last month's main presentation: Increasing Productivity on FamilySearch with Sharing Time, by Andrea Schnakenburg
6. Everything Mac for Genealogy, by Ron Snowden
7. RootsMagic, by Renee Zamora
8. Ancestral Quest, by Paul Johnson
9. Legacy, by Joel Graham.                          

All meetings of the Group are open to the public whether members of the Group or not. The Group has the goal of helping individuals use technology to further their family history and there are usually 100-125 attending the monthly meetings on the second Saturdays. 

WWII Records FREE on Ancestry.com thru April 30!

I received a notice from our friends at Ancestry.com. What a great opportunity for those of you who do not have full access to Ancestry's wealth of records.

In 1940, Americans were recovering from the Great Depression and on the brink of entering a world war. The recently released 1940 U.S. Census gives us data snapshots of people and families poised between two of the most devastating world-wide events of the 20th century.

After you locate someone in the 1940 Census (on Ancestry.com), use that information to find records on Fold3, especially within the World War II Collection. Then build their personal histories with images and other details you've discovered.

Examples of what you might find include:

• "Old Man's Draft" Registration Cards. Any man between the ages of 43 and 62 in 1940 would be required to register in 1942. It's called the "Old Man's" draft because it was a registration of an older generation with skills that would be useful on the home front, not in military action. (Hint: You can also use the addresses on these cards to help you search for people on the census before the index has been created.)
• Missing Air Crew Reports recount riveting tales of planes shot down with and without survivors. Some of these reports include names and addresses of family members back home, as in this example for the men in this crash report.
• War Diaries are official Navy accounts of command units' strategies and actions in battles on land, sea, and air, as well as between engagements.
• European Theater Army Records. Shortly after the 1940 census, millions of Americans were serving in Great Britain and Europe. These records include virtually all administrative and strategic documents relating to U.S. operations in the European Theater during World War II.

There are also many compelling records and images within WWII Photos, the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial, WWII Hero Pages, and Holocaust Records. Pair the people you find in the 1940 Census to their service in World War II through documents, pages, and photos in Fold3's World War II Collection.

UGA Virtual Chapter-Indexing the 1940 U.S. Census