Terrebonne Genealogical Society

TGS Newsletter
Vol. 24 No. 4 June 2005

Visit our home page at http://www.rootsweb.com/~laterreb/tgs.htm

Membership, book orders and/or 
     address changes, contact: 
      Corresponding Secretary: Jess Bergeron 
      Email:  jessndot at juno.com
      Phone (985) 876–2348 
      TGS, Station 2 Box 295, Houma, LA 70360-0295 
News items or events, contact: 
     Newsletter Editor  Ed Hicks
      5306 Hwy 1, Raceland, LA 70394-2033 
      E-mail: edhicks at mobiletel.com
      Phone: (985) 532–3586 
NEXT MEETING:  
   Saturday, June 25, 2005
   Main Branch Library, Houma, LA 1:00 p.m.
 
     It became clear to us, about halfway through her talk, that our guest speaker was not the kind of person to have a lot of spare time to sit around watching the soaps. Ruby GUIDRY HOTARD, author of A Life Gone By, gave us an informal talk about how she came to write a book about her great-grandmother. She (Ruby) did not include any genealogy in her book, but based her novel on stories told to her by her mother. What our members seemed to enjoy most was the discovery that Ruby was related to board member Daniel "Chuck" GUIDRY. She said that Chuck's grandfather was her favorite uncle. So that broke the ice, right there. She stayed for the whole meeting, even though she had to hurry back to New Orleans for a granddaughter's birthday party. She also told us that she has started writing a sequel.
    Later in the meeting, Blanche BROWN read us a short excerpt from her family history which she started as a result of last month's meeting. It was an exciting description of her parents’ first meeting.
    Toward the end of the meeting, Patty WHITNEY conducted a unique "door prize" drawing. She had given the members time to write down one of the "bricks" from their brick wall (see last month's newsletter) at the start of the meeting, so when she was ready for the drawing, most of us had contributed to the brick box. The lucky winner was Catherine PIERPONT DOMANGUE. So when Patty read her “brick” we found that Catherine needs help in finding the parents of Adolph CARPENTER, born 1836 in Alsace-Lorraine. He came to this country aboard the ship Hubalt, arriving 4 Feb. 1850, at 14 years of age. He became a citizen of the U.S. in 1865, after fighting on the Confederate side in the War Between the States. He may have attained the office of Colonel. He was buried in Chalmette National Cemetery after his death April 7, 1891. His wife was Marie Antoinette JUNER, born 1841 in Alsace-Lorraine. The family, including five children, all girls, is found in the 1880 census located in New Orleans. Catherine gave us more details about the children which is not included in this article. If you want more information, or if you have some information to give Catherine, she can be reached through her email: catherined52 at msn.com1 or write to Mrs. Catherine P. Domangue, 311 Hawthorne Drive, Houma, LA 70360. 
  
BOOKS: Some of the first of our books were the “obituary books” that Phil CHAUVIN put together from clippings of obituaries from the local newspapers, The Houma Courier and The Daily Comet (Lafourche Parish). They proved to be very valuable and somewhat popular. Not popular enough to make any money by printing them in volume, but enough to continue producing them for libraries and for our members who needed them. If you had family members who died in that year, and were doing research that needed the detail provided by an obituary, you probably signed up for one or two over a few years’ time. Please understand, these are not abstracts, but photocopies of the original obituary. They often include family members, especially deceased ones and many times name the grandchildren of the subject person. If you are lucky, the obituary provides insight into the personality of the deceased: his or her clubs or societies, military experience, honors and titles.
    We will be reprinting these books on order. If we have only a few orders, we will produce them for you. We have the “masters” for all of the obituary books from 1985 forward. These are especially valuable for public (and private) libraries. Be sure you complete your collection. This is a one time offer. Send your order to Jess BERGERON, as usual, and specify the newspaper title and the year. For instance Obituary Book: Houma Courier, 1998. Please include $30.00 for each book and $3.00 for shipping. Sorry, but no member discount will be available for this special printing.
    Your new book, Assumption Marriages 1890-1905 (Vol. 3) should be in your possession by now. It was mailed June 11, 2005, so if you don’t have it by now, we have a problem. Please contact Jess BERGERON immediately. This notice is for those who sent in their pre-publication order. However, if you would like a copy, it is available for the regular price of $30.00 plus shipping and handling ($3.00)
    In our April 2005 newsletter we had a notice of a TWO-FOR-ONE sale of some of our quarterly years. Only Volumes 9 through 23 (that’s years 1990 through 2004) are included in the sale, but what a terrific bargain: if you buy one volume at the regular price, you can get a second one free. FREE! Postage must be paid for both books, but that’s just $3.00 for the first book and $1.00 for each additional book. As always, the usual member discount does not apply to sales. The sale continues while supplies last. Get yours NOW.
  
EMAIL ADDRESSES: Have you changed your email address lately, or since you last sent us your address? If so, would you please give Jess BERGERON your new address? His email address is given on our masthead. Just please read the footnote at the end of this page.
  
COLLATING: We put together the quarterlies with a skeleton staff, this time. Only ten members showed up, but they really got down to business. They did the whole thing in about two hours. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Beverly ALFORD, James AVET, Julia BENOIT, Dorothy and Jess BERGERON, Marcie and Essie CAVALIER, Jane and Phil CHAUVIN, and Nancy WRIGHT. Where would our organization be without the help of all our faithful members?
  
GENEALOGY CONFERENCE: Angelina College in Nacogdoches, Texas, always puts on a humdinger of a conference, and their 9th Annual Angelina College Genealogy Conference is no exception. Attendees may choose the Thursday workshop, or the whole conference on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, July 21-23, 2005. If you have access to a computer, go to http://www.angelina.cc.tx.us/ genealogy.htm where you will find the conference schedule and contact information, etc. Even two kinds of registration forms, printable and electronic. Otherwise, you may write Melvin C. Johnson, 408 Esther Blvd., Nacogdoches, TX 75964, or phone 1-936-559-9784. Enjoy!
  
BRICK WALL: Don’t forget to bring your brick wall to put in the brick wall box at the next meeting. We will be pulling a new one out for our members’ consideration and research. And, if you have some help for Catherine DOMANGUE on her brick wall, be sure you bring it to the meeting. See you there!!!

Why are email addresses written this way? Some months ago I started writing email addresses without using the symbol @ because robots use that symbol to pick up addresses from webpages for spammers to use to send people more spam. Our newsletter does appear on our webpage (see URL on masthead).

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