British Interest Group of Wisconsin and Illinois
Upcoming events of regional interest (in Wisconsin, Illinois & nearby portions of neighboring states):If you need to have larger text for ease of reading, nearly all web browsers have a feature to increase (or decrease) the size of the text. This control is usually located somewhere in the View menu of the browser, with a sub-menu name such as “Zoom” or “Text size.”
Be sure also to check the listing of upcoming BIGWILL meetings! You may also want to check out the various cultural events (Highland Games, Irish Fests, etc.) listed on the Upcoming events of British Isles interest web page.
29 -31 May 2009 - 2009 Ontario Genealogical Society Conference
14 June 2008
2009 Ontario Genealogical Society Conference.
Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
2 June 2009 - “Using Non-population Census Schedules”
8 November 2008
Monthly morning meeting of the Elgin Genealogical Society.
Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, Illinois (Community Room A). Matt Rutherford will be the speaker. Meeting starts at 9:30 am. See the Event Calendar of the Elgin Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
3 June 2009 - Cemetery Walk
3 July 2008
Regular monthly meeting of the Stevens Point Area Genealogical Society.
St. Peter’s Cemetery off of Old Wausau Road. Donna Hanson will lead a walk through this old cemetery and tell us about some interesting people from earlier days in Stevens Point. Meeting starts at 7 pm. (?) See the SPAGS home page for further information.
6 June 2009 - “Your Irish Roots: Successful Strategies for Bridging the Atlantic to Ireland”
6 April 2009
Regular monthly meeting of the Chicago Genealogical Society.
Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St., Chicago. The speaker will be Ted Bartlett. Whether your family came from Ireland or Germany or France, Ted will give ideas and strategies to locate your ancestor’s place of origin. His examples will be Irish and Scots Irish, but many of the sources he will show will be U.S. sources and applicable for many in the audience. The meeting starts at 1:30 pm. For further information, including details concerning limited parking and public transportation, see the calendar web page of the CGS.
9 June 2009 - “Gmail and Google Reader for the Genealogist”
27 May 2009
Regular monthly meeting of the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society.
Fremont Public Library, 1170 N. Midlothian Rd., Mundelein, Illinois (Meeting Rooms A & B, on the second floor). Beverly Smallwood will be the speaker. Learn about Google Gmail and Google Reader. Gmail is Google’s free webmail service with built in Google search technology. Google Reader tool manages RSS feeds of all types – including podcasts. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. See the meetings page of the Lake County Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
13 June 2009 - “Cemetery Art – Museums on the Lawns”
23 April 2009
Sponsored by the Green County Genealogical Society.
Union Presbyterian Church, 2707 5th St., Monroe, Wisconsin. Minda Powers-Douglas, author of Cemetery Walk and Life in Parts: An Interpretation from the Cemetery and founder and editor of Epitaphs Magazine, will be the featured speaker. Discover the art of cemeteries. This class will cover general gravestone symbolism, monument materials, cemetery styles and mourning practices, especially those of the Victorian era. Cemetery and monument images from areas throughout America and beyond will be discussed. A tombstone rubbing class will follow the workshop. Rain date is 27 June. For further information and a registration form, view the workshop webpage. Questions can be directed to <green_ancestors@hotmail.com> or to 608-363-0554. Registration deadline is 1 June.
14 July 2009 - “Finding Online Newspapers”
27 May 2009
Regular monthly meeting of the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society.
Fremont Public Library, 1170 N. Midlothian Rd., Mundelein, Illinois (Meeting Rooms A & B, on the second floor). Sarah A.V. Kirby will be the speaker. In the last five years, the number of newspaper archives available online has mushroomed from a few dozen major papers to many thousands of local and international papers. While focusing on American newspapers, this talk will review some of the major databases where newspapers may be found, some individual titles, and the web and print resources that can help you locate the paper you are interested in searching. Most of this information will be applicable to non-American papers as well. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. See the meetings page of the Lake County Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
16 July 2009 - “Genlighten”
8 November 2008
Monthly evening meeting of the Elgin Genealogical Society.
Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, Illinois (Community Room A). Dean Richardson will be the speaker. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. See the Event Calendar of the Elgin Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
1 August 2009 - “Southwest Wisconsin Graveyard Tour”
21 May 2009
Sponsored by Wisconsin Union Mini Courses, a program of the Wisconsin Union Directorate. The trip will start near the UW-Madison Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St., Madison, Wisconsin. The highlight of this tour will be a cemetery walk at Michael’s Cemetery in the town of Cadiz near Browntown, Wisconsin. Unlike similar cemetery walks, relatives of the deceased will be playing out the parts of their long ago passed ancestors. Each year the Michael family holds a family reunion picnic at the cemetery and spends the afternoon cleaning the cemetery. In addition to the Michael Cemetery we will also be visiting Shooks Prairie Cemetery holding the grave of the only Revolutionary War veteran buried in Green County.Other probable stops will be the Lewis Cemetery and a cemetery near South Wayne where several victims of the Blackhawk War of 1832 are buried. Course fee includes transportation. Participation is restricted to Wisconsin Union members, UW-Madison students, and UW-Madison faculty/staff. Persons who belong to one of these groups may bring non-affiliated guests. For further information visit the Wisconsin Union Mini Courses online catalog (use the keyword “graveyard” in a search on the web page which follows the introductory “warning”) or contact them by writing to Wisconsin Union Mini Courses, 800 Langdon St. Box 301, Madison WI 53706, by phoning (608)262-3156, or sending e-mail to wumini@union.wisc.edu.
20 August 2009 - “Adoption Searches”
8 November 2008
Monthly evening meeting of the Elgin Genealogical Society.
Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, Illinois (Community Room A). Matt Rutherford will be the speaker. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. See the Event Calendar of the Elgin Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
17 September 2009 - “Getting the Most Out of HeritageQuest”
8 November 2008
Monthly evening meeting of the Elgin Genealogical Society.
Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, Illinois (Community Room A). Kristen Newton Smith will be the speaker. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm. See the Event Calendar of the Elgin Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
18-19 September 2009 - “Unraveling the Mysteries”
22 April 2009
31st annual conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America.
Chicago Marriott Schaumburg, 50 N. Martingale Rd., Schaumburg, Illinois. See other details on the Upcoming national and international society meetings and courses page.
2-3 October 2009 - WSGS Fall Seminar
9 November 2008
Fall 2009 seminar of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society.
Best Western Bridgewood Resort Hotel & Conference Center, 1000 Cameron Way, Neenah, Wisconsin. The featured speaker for the Saturday seminar will be Michael John Neill. The Friday event will be a “Back to Basics” workshop. Periodically visit the WSGS website for further information as the plans develop for this workshop and seminar.
6 October 2009 - “Passage Express”
8 November 2008
Monthly morning meeting of the Elgin Genealogical Society.
Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, Illinois (Community Room A). Carol Magnuson will be the speaker. Meeting starts at 9:30 am. See the Event Calendar of the Elgin Genealogical Society’s web site for further information.
24 October 2009 - 2009 ISGS Fall Conference
22 March 2009
Fall 2009 conference of the Illinois State Genealogical Society.
Elgin Community College Business Center, Elgin, Illinois. The featured speaker will be Michael John Niell.
There have been
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How does this list get assembled? Well, it’s partly automated, but mostly manual. The automated part is that I have tools in place which alert me whenever a web page which contains a particular society’s calendar of events has changed. Not every society’s calendar of events, mind you – just the ones which I have already found. (An exception is any calendar web page containing extraneous material which changes daily – I have found it impractical to monitor such web pages.) I also monitor several other event calendars, such as the one maintained by FGS, for new listings. A few societies whose web sites aren’t always kept up-to-date regularly send me press releases by email. There are two manual parts. One is obvious – the actual listings in this listed are “hand edited” by me, mostly to achieve greater consistency, but also to put as much information about the talks as I can into a relatively small number of words. The other is perhaps less obvious – the selection of what meetings actually get added to the list. My “rules” aren’t hard and fast, but I follow them pretty closely. I’d like to see:
- The event is sponsored by a non-profit society
- The event includes a lecture and has a title which describes the lecture topic
- The topic is relevant to the study of family history
- There is contact information usable for getting more information than I can include here, preferably via the internet (i.e., a web site or an email address)
- The name of the speaker(s), the location and the starting time are clearly identified
So what can a society do to get its meetings listed here? Let me know how I can easily keep track of them! If the problem is simply that I didn’t find the time to include some particular meeting, I’ll fess up to that (privately) – it certainly happens from time to time. And, oh yes – if you see a mistake in a listing, please let me know.
Note: Another extensive listing of genealogical events is maintained by the Computer-Assisted Genealogy Group of Northern Illinois at <www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilcaggni/calendar/>. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, try that list.
What’s the problem with “frames technology”? Frames technology is a web page coding technology which dedicates different parts (“frames”) of the browser window for different purposes, such as a header, a list of menu choices, a display of data, etc.There are several reasons why this coding technology is not ideal, but the one which bothers this webmaster the most has to do with printing. In many situations, only one frame is printed when the viewer asks for a printout of the web page – invariably NOT the one the viewer is most interested in. If viewing a website which uses frames technology, make sure the cursor is active in the area (i.e., having been clicked while located in the area) you are most interested in when you ask for a printout.
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This page was last modified on 27 May 2009