Terrebonne
Genealogical Society
TGS Newsletter
Visit our home page at http://www.rootsweb.com/~laterreb/tgs.htm |
Membership and/or address changes:
Please send by mail to TGS, Station 2 Box 295, Houma, LA 70360-0295
What a lovely home! What a gracious hostess! What an interesting
presentation! We are talking about January’s program, which was most unusual,
in that it was presented before the meeting time and not in the Library.
Mrs. Wanda Gaidry showed us through Residence Plantation in East Houma.
Her talk was filled with references to events and people that were important
to Houma’s history. Robert Ruffin Barrow was one of the early settlers
who saw the growing town’s future. We tried to convince her to submit the
text of the talk for publication, even though it would not be surrounded
by the historic house. Keep watching to see if we succeeded.
Don’t miss the meeting, this month. It will be our election
meeting. Slated to run are all of this year’s officers plus nominations
from the floor, and at least six candidates for the four slots in the Executive
Board. In other words, Phil Chauvin, Jr., Ed Hicks, Nancy L. Wright, Jess
Bergeron, Jr., and Sheila Rodrigue will run again as incumbents for the
offices of President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Corresponding Secretary
and Recording Secretary, respectively. Known to be running for the four
openings in the Board of Directors are Essie Cavalier, Louis Duet, Patty
W. Gravois, Daniel Guidry, Jackie Thibodaux and Wade Usé. We hope
that all of the above-named persons are, in fact, paid-up members of the
Terrebonne Genealogical Society. We hope also that all of those who
plan to vote in the election are paid-up members! (We’re kinda kidding,
but just in case, you might take a moment to see if, perhaps this is the
last newsletter you will ever receive. You wouldn’t like that to happen,
now, would you?)
MEMBERS
Godfrey Olivier is back home recuperating from heart surgery,
and is getting around the house fairly well. Not well enough to start working
actively on his genealogy, however, so don’t take him off your prayer
list. Hurry back, Godfrey, we miss your smiling face at our meetings.
Members Harold Joseph and Elaine Tregre Terracina announce
the birth of their fifth grandchild Desi Marie Lasseigne on 20 December
1999 at 3:15 a.m. She is the daughter of Dale Alan and Dawn Marie Terracina
Lasseigne of Bayou Blue. Desi weighed 7 lb. 11 oz. And was 20 ½
in. long. Welcoming her home was sister Delani Elvidge. Paternal grandparents
are the late Wilton Joseph, Sr. and Elvidge Naquin Lasseigne.
SEMINARS
The National Genealogical Society will present their Regional
Conference on Saturday, 25 March 2000 (which just happens to be the same
date as our meeting in March) in New Orleans. Scheduled to speak are Christine
Rose, author and lecturer who specializes in on-site courthouse research
throughout the United States. She also has experience in evidence analysis,
military records, methodology and writing. Curt B. Witcher, manager of
the Historical Genealogy Department of the Allen County Library in Fort
Wayne, Indiana, specializes in research methodology and the use of library
and government resources. Both are scheduled to speak at four different
times during the day. Registration fees for NGS members is $40 and $50
for non-members. Saturday luncheon is $14.50. Contact NGS Regional Conference,
4527 17th Street North, Arlington, VA 22307-2399 or phone (800) 473-0060
for registration questions. E-mail <conference@ngsgenealogy.org>
A few rooms have been blocked out at the Radisson Inn, New Orleans, 2150
Veterans Blvd. Mention the Conference when you call (504) 467-3111
Good news for those who live in the Houston area and look
forward to the biennial seminar hosted by the Houston Genealogical Forum.
This year’s Spring Seminar will be held on Saturday, April 29, 2000, at
the Scottish Rite Temple, 2900 N Braeswood, Houston, Texas. The featured
speaker will be James L. Hansen, national lecturer recognized for his informative
and entertaining presentations, as well as a noted genealogical instructor.
We received an invitation for our society to reserve space to put up a
table to recruit new members or display their genealogical publications
and/or services at the Seminar. No mention is made of a fee for those attending
the seminar for their own benefit, so we can’t tell you how much it will
be. Perhaps we will get more information later. Watch this space. They
did say that registration was from 8:00 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. No clue as to
the time of the presentations.
COMPUTER CORNER
One of the fun things about working on your genealogy
is discovering relatives you didn’t know you had or restoring communication
with those you haven’t seen or talked to in ages. You might hit it lucky
and find the cousin that inherited the family album, or at least some pictures
of great-grandma and great-grandpa. The computer, and an internet connection,
will help you greatly in that area. If you lost contact with that cousin,
but know the name and state, you will want to try the following search
engines.
http://people.yahoo.com
or http://www. whowhere.lycos.com
If you use a search engine for your research (and who
has not done that?) you may be interested in a site that explains
the purposes and uses of almost all of the common search engines. The second
site is called “Search Super Seek” and will open a browser window for each
of the search engines that you choose, up to 12. That’s some serious searching.
http://www.nni.com/search.html
http://www.gogettem.com/
After you’ve put together your electronic family history,
you can preserve it on your hard drive, save it on disks -- or have it
all transferred to CD-ROM. Family Dimensions is just one of many online
companies that specialize in transferring computer files to CD-ROM. Basically
anything that you can save on your hard drive (that’s digital photographs,
family stories, video or audio recordings) can be stored on a CD. Fees
vary. Try this location: http://cyber-pages.com/fotoscan/
They will label your CD with a thermal transfer
CD printer so that you avoid the amateurish marking pens and the paper
labels that could come off inside your CD drive. If someone you know has
a Recordable CD-ROM drive, that person might be able to transfer the files,
but few individuals have the CD printer. This company will also scan your
photos and documents, even digitally repairing and/or restoring your old
photographs. They will provide a new photo negative from the repaired digital
image and you can store that in a safe place, using it to produce a new
photograph any time you wish.
You may have seen the warning in a popular advice column
in your local newspaper concerning photographs produced by color printers.
As beautiful as these photos are, they do not last as long as photographs
produced by the photographic process on good photo paper. Those color printer
inks are not permanent. So, if you want to preserve your pictures, the
advice column suggested you have a photo negative made at a photo store,
and put it in a safety deposit box or other safe place. I would think that
a CD is almost as good. However, I worry that our technology will advance
so much that the old programs and formats will be superseded and forgotten
in 20 or so years. What do you think?
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