Notes from the President
7 May 2011
NERGC 2011
The Eleventh New England Regional Genealogical Conference (NERGC) www.nergc.org held in Springfield, Massachusetts was a huge success, with reports of over 830 attendees. The GSV booth in the Exhibit Hall did quite well and signed up several new members. Thank you to all of those who volunteered on GSV’s behalf at NERGC, including: Jane Belcher, Bob Clark, Judy Goss, John Leppman, Bob Murphy and Joann Nichols. A personal thank you to Mary Pat Brigham for covering the GSV booth, for me during David Allen’s excellent, interesting and very informative talk entitled “Mapping Vermont in the 1850s.” All who attended his talk learned something about the maps and the men behind them. As an exhibitor at NERGC, GSV contributed to the door prize raffle and we congratulate, GSV member, Judy Smuda of Marlborough, Connecticut who was our winner, of a copy Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont. The door prize was generously donated by Joann Nichols, and had been signed by one of the authors, Michael Sherman. We just happened to draw a member as the winner. GSV also provided a quart of 2011 maple syrup for the volunteer raffle. Finally, NERGC will be returning to Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Manchester, New Hampshire, on April 17-21, 2013. So be sure to mark your calendars.
A thank you both to Randy Brown, newsletter coordinator, and his wife for their continued effort in labeling and mailing the GSV newsletter to make sure it is delivered to our members. Also thank you to Tom Record, GSV sales person, for sending publication orders. It is all the volunteers that help the wheels of GSV continue to turn.
A major development in the members’ only section of this website is the ability to search the surnames being researched by other GSV members. This is major leap forward, over the now very much out of date GSV membership directory from back in 1998. Thank you to Diantha Howard, our web mistress for this and all the improvements to this website
Special Publication No. 13 Vital Records of Springfield
The Spring 2011 issue of Vermont Genealogy, will be in members’ mailboxes very soon. This issue has been designated as Special Publication No. 13 and consists of the early vital records of Springfield, transcribed by VG editor Scott Andrew Bartley. Owing to the special nature of this issue, it is much larger than usual, amounting to 260 pages as compared to the customary double issue size of 96 pages. These transcriptions were proofed line to line, by my mother and me against the original records in the town office vault. The volumes that were transcribed that are included are: Simon Stevens Marriage Records [marriages, 1767-1790], Births & Deaths, Vol. 3 [births and deaths, 1730-1854], Town Acts, Vol. 1 [births, marriages, and deaths, 1757-1812], Town Acts, Vol. 2 [births, marriages, and deaths, 1790-1820],Town Acts, Vol. 3 [marriages, 1817-1843] and Births & Deaths, Vol. 4 [births and deaths, 1764-1870].
Vermont Records (1760-1954) on Family Search
If you have not visited www.familysearch.org recently you might want to pay the site a visit. A recent addition to the ever expanding databases on the website is the name index with images (of the state vital record index cards) of transcriptions of births, marriages and deaths, 1760-1954. This collection is complete with images for the years 1871-1908, though a lot more images of earlier material are up, it is not complete as of this date. According to the website “as more data is received, the remaining year ranges will be incrementally updated.” While this is a great asset to genealogists, especially those outside Vermont, who cannot always get to the original material. I have noticed that some of the cards can be quite hard to read and consequently the information has been indexed incorrectly. In several cases the dates and (or) names have been misread, resulting in some spellings and dates which were clearly in error. However, for the most part this can be a very helpful database to use.
Jonathan W. Stevens, President
stevens@vermontel.net
Page last updated 7 May 2011