Monday, February 26, 2007

Excellent CVGS Meeting today

Our monthly Chula Vista Genealogical Society meeting was well attended today. It was our annual business meeting, and we presented the "state of the society" with a report of 2006 activities and the 2007 society budget report. CVGS sponsored over 50 events in 2006 - not bad for a small society of 86 members.

The program featured Dona Ritchie presenting "Interpretation of Handwriting." Her talk covered the handwriting peculiarities of early US and English records and German records. She covered the obsolete letter forms (the leading-S, the thorn (not a Y as in Ye), the double-f, the X for Christ, the ampersand, the I's and J's, the U, V, W, etc.) and showed pictures of many documents that had a variety of script types, and provided examples of "look-alike" letters found in the records. Dona also provided helpful techniques for transcribing and translating documents. Her handout included a list of useful web sites and reference books on deciphering handwriting and document translation. I will post her list of web sites, with her permission, in a separate post.

Our tradition is that the President treats the speaker to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Today, five of our board members joined us, and we had a lively discussion about our personal research problems, especially as they related to handwriting and transcribing records.

It was a fun and interesting genealogy day.

1 comment:

Miriam Robbins said...

Wow! 50 events in one year! I'm impressed!