NUMEROUS CHANGES AT NGS
(Please be aware this post was written in 2004 and published at that time in the Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas) newspaper. Some of the news in this post, therefore, may not be current. Current and future posts on this blog may revisit and update news on this and other posts on this blog. If you have questions and/or suggestions, please send Mic a note using the comment page -Don’t forget to use the orange “subscribe” button to receive new posts-Thanks, Mic)
In January this column reported the devastating financial losses at the National Genealogical Society and subsequent change in leadership. Those financial losses have had a profound affect on NGS programs and expenditures.
NGS recently announced they will combine the 2005 GENTECH Genealogy and Technology Conference with the 2005 NGS Conference in the States. The combined conferences will be held in Nashville, Tennessee June 1-4, 2005.
News releases further state NGS anticipates holding future GENTECH conferences separate from the Conference in the States beginning in 2006. A lack of sufficient planning time was given as the reason for combining the two conferences in 2005.
GENTECH has had a sporadic history since becoming a part of NGS. Three years ago the directors of GENTECH and the officers of NGS agreed to merge GENTECH with NGS. As a part of that merger NGS agreed to continue holding the GENTECH conference. However, the 2003 conference was cancelled. The following year, 2004, the conference was held as scheduled this past January. It is hoped GENTECH can remain a separate conference.
In another money saving move NGS has decided to place their headquarters, the historic Glebe House, on the market and move into rented quarters in the Arlington, Virginia area. Books in the NGS Library at Glebe House will be moved to the Saint Louis Public Library where the NGS circulating library was placed a year ago.
GENEALOGISTS GET LOCKED-IN MILAM CO CLERK’S OFFICE
The Milam County Genealogical Society, MCGS, will host a lock-in in the Milam County Clerk’s office on Saturday May 1 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The cost is $15 prior to April 24 and $20 thereafter.
Researchers will be able to conduct research in the clerk’s office which houses many of the records vital to genealogical research such as deeds, cattle marks & brands books, school censuses, marriage, birth, death, probate/estate, guardianship, veteran, Justice of the Peace, Commissioner Court records, election records, oil & gas records, land plat maps, and much more . Unfortunately a courthouse fire on April 9, 1874 destroyed all earlier records except a few case records and one volume of surveyor’s records
For more information contact MCGS, c/o Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library 201 Ackerman St., Rockdale, Texas 76567 or visit the society website at http://www.geocities.com/milamco/ . All proceeds benefit records preservation at the Milam County Clerk’s Office.
NEW BOOK ON TEXAS REVOLUTION
Anyone interested in the early history of Texas, its early settlements, its settlers and its emergence as a republic and ultimately as a state will enjoy reading William C. Davis’ Lone Star Rising. Published by Free Press this 368 page book may be found in most book stores for $27.
Rather than retelling the story of the Texas Revolution beginning in the 1830’s with the usual Anglo American point of view Davis carefully steps back in time and explains each event of Texas history from its birth on the frontier of New Spain in the late 1600’s to the time Texas became a state.
Davis skillfully combines the history of Mexico, Northern Mexico and Texas with the personalities of the Spanish and Mexican leaders, the Tejanos who settled Texas in the early days and the Anglos who followed them. The book is not a history of one group, but all three.
From Davis one will learn Texas history from the point of view of a Mexican province struggling to get by, not from the point of view of an American or Mexican nearly two hundred years later. Traditional Texas researchers will learn Texas independence was a chain of events not a goal. Advocates of the return of Texas to Mexico will learn Texans, including the Tejanos, were unhappy with the mother country and sought more self dertermination from the central government in Mexico City and the provincial government in Monclova.
From Lone Star Rising readers will learn Texas’ history is much more diverse than what they have read in the past and that it was a hodge-podge collage of people, culture, events and a whole lot more.
