Terrebonne Genealogical Society

TGS Newsletter
Vol. 24 No. 3 May 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, May 28, 2005     Main Branch Library, Houma, LA 1:00 p.m.
   
HELP - PLEASE - HELP
We will be collating the quarterly on Thursday, 26 May 2005 at the North Branch Library from 12:00 noon to 3:00
   
     How many uses can you think of for a pair of old denim jeans? Did you list using the seams for tying tomato plants to their stakes? Patty WHITNEY mentioned that one as well as many others when she read her mother’s essay on “Grandfather’s Denim Jeans” at the April meeting on the 30th. This was the second  meeting in a row where the weather was terrible, so attendance was sparse. The DVD “Writing a Compelling Family History” was shown during the break and it was well received. The main thing I got from it was to chop up your family story into little bites so that you won’t feel like you have to write the whole thing in one sitting. The essay from Patty’s mother was a good example of a small but interesting piece of her life long ago. It doesn’t even have to be that long ago. Who remembers how we did things in the fifties? The forties? I bet someone could come up with a short description of their Prom night, or Chemistry class or whatnot. Come on, give it a try. You might be surprised. If you don’t mind sharing, you could bring it to the next meeting and we will get someone to read it. You may want to write about someone in your family; their speech or habits or secrets or clothing. Their likes and dislikes, their beliefs or behaviors. If you have internet access, you could try this site: http://www.geneoalgy.com/74_sharon.html [Notice the spelling of genealogy? That is how it is, so spell it the way they spelled it.] The article is by Sharon DeBARTOLO, one of the authors of the DVD we saw. Here is another site you may want to try: http://www.genwriters.com/write.html [This one contains some links to other sites with help for you.] Do you remember anything about the clothing we used to wear? Forms of lighting we had? Modes of transportation? Types of entertainment? http://www.triggers.com/index.html gives some triggers to start the memories flowing. Click on A Sample of Memory Triggers.
  
BRICK WALL PUZZLERS: Next meeting (May 28) we will start something new. Patty WHITNEY gets the credit for thinking it up, and it sounds original to me. For this meeting, we are asking everyone who attends to bring one “brick” out of their “brick wall” puzzles. Every genealogist loves a puzzle, right? So when we get to the meeting, we will put all the bricks in a brick box and scramble them up and pull one out of the box. Everyone who attends the meeting will have a month to search for the solution to that puzzle, and will bring it back to the next meeting. At that time we will read all the solutions and discuss them. After that we will put all the unsolved bricks back in the brick box and pull again.
    To make this work, we will each write down on a small piece of paper or index card (about 3 in. X 5 in.) all you know about a person or couple. Then tell us what information you would like to know. (For example; names of parents, birth date or location, marriage date or location, etc. Just like you do for a Query.) You will get the card back after the meeting if it is not the one pulled. Then you can bring it back to the next meeting. To give our shut-in members a chance to participate, we will publish the puzzler in the newsletter that comes out about two or three weeks after the meeting, so those who can attend will have an advantage, but in some cases it won’t matter. Suppose someone’s brick wall is your pasture. Something that is puzzling to one person may be a piece of cake to another. Right? I’m ready to start. In fact I can’t wait. How about you? Why not come to our Brick Wall Party?
  
THE ECONOMY: Some of our members are painfully aware of the condition of our economy in the state and in the nation. I can’t find anything funny about it. When the members of our Executive Board were discussing the problem of dwindling members and rising costs, we determined that we would do all we could to keep supplying all our services as long as we could. We are not discontinuing the publishing of our quarterly, Terrebonne Life Lines, yet. (Some genealogical societies have stopped theirs already.) We will continue publishing books and selling them at a fair price, with discounts for members. The newsletter will not be cut to one page. However, we will cut back on the Book List that used to be included in every quarterly. We will only publish it once a year, probably in the Winter issue. That’s just one page, but multiply it times the number of copies and it adds up. Also, we will reduce the size of the print in the quarterly an insignificant amount so that it will only take 60 or so pages to print, instead of the 80 or more that we were printing. This will make a significant difference in the cost of printing. Hopefully it is one change we can live with. Let us hear your comments. Don’t just quit because you can’t read the print. Buy a magnifying glass, if you have that much trouble, but I’m willing to bet you can’t tell the difference. In fact, I started to delay this announcement until we heard from you. Not every article is affected, also. It wouldn’t surprise me if the members who do the collating and stapling would notice the difference. Come help us Thursday, May 26 and get your new quarterly before your friends get theirs.
  
MEMBERS: Please pray for our ailing members: Doris Mae NAQUIN, Dot SMITH, Audrey WESTERMAN, and Godfrey OLIVIER, who are either recovering from illness or trying to live with it. Call them and tell them you miss them and are thinking about them and praying for them. It has been proven to be helpful in many ways. While you are at it, why not ask if there is any thing they need to have done for them?
  
HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOKS: When you do your spring cleaning this year, please don’t throw away your old high school yearbooks. Somebody will want them. Audrey WESTERMAN had some she wanted to get rid of and posted a notice on Rootsweb (http://boards.ancestry.com/mb exec?htx=board&r=rw&p=localities.northam.usa.states just pick your state and county and post a query.) When Audrey posted hers, she got three responses in one day.
  
SAINT DOMINGUE WORKSHOP: Right now is none too soon to plan to attend the Seventh Annual Genealogy Workshop Researching Your Saint Domingue Ancestors sponsored by The Historic New Orleans Collection. It will be held at the Williams Research Center at 410 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA, on Saturday August 13, 2005, from 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Registration fee: $35 by August 1; $40 at the door. Special rates for seniors, students and groups. Call (504) 598-7171 or email elsa@hnoc.org or online at http://www.hnoc.org Do it today!
  
INTERESTING WEBSITE: Said to include more than 100,000 images from the rare book collections of the Library of Congress and the French National Library, this bilingual website explores the history of the French presence in North America from the 16th to early 19th centuries. “In developing this web presentation both national libraries have done what they do best — sift through an exhaustive amount of material in order to make our common histories comprehensible and accessible to the public,” said Jean-Noel Jeanneney, president of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Try it at http://international.loc.gov.intldl/ and when it comes up, click on Collaborative Digital Libraries and  choose France in America or La France en Amérique, depending on your native tongue. When that page comes up, look up at the top for further links. Enjoy!

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