VGS Reminders: 12-16 December, 2016

Coming Events:

Monday: December 12, 2016

Family Tree Maker Uses SIG Meeting

1:00 PM in the Patriot Room at the Mulberry Grove Recreation Center

Tuesday: December 13, 2016

Mid-Atlantic States SIG Meeting

9:30 AM in the Defender Room at the Lake Miona Recreation Center

Topic: "Maryland Research"

Tuesday: December 13, 2016

Genealogy Writers SIG Meeting

2:30 PM in the Churchill Downs Room in the Pimlico Recreation Center

Wednesday: December 14, 2016

Irish Genealogy SIG Meeting

10:00 AM in the Osceola Room at the Chula Vista Recreation Center

Thursday: December 15, 2016

New England Genealogy SIG Meeting

Noon in the New Smyrna Room at the Sea Breeze Recreation Center

Friday: December 16, 2016

Scandinavian Genealogy SIG Meeting

10:00 AM in the Clearwater Room Sea Breeze Recreation Center
Topic: "How Scandinavian countries celebrate Christmas"

Annual Seminar Update:

With a little over 10 weeks before our annual seminar, there are only 12 seats remaining to attend our 17th Annual All-Day Seminar. This is the fastest we have sold tickets to this event.

Note: As of December 15, seats will also be available to non-member residents of The Villages.
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Time: 9:00 am to 3:30 pm
Location: La Hacienda Recreational Center
Guest speaker: Cyndi's List very own Cyndi Ingle!

An Open Letter on RootsMagic’s Sync with Ancestry"

RootsMagic
"I mentioned in a previous email that I was writing a blog post with the latest status of RootsMagic's upcoming sync with Ancestry.  Only a handful of our newsletter subscribers follow our blog, so here's a link to my "open letter" about our sync with Ancestry. It gives a good overview of where we are at and how you can become involved in testing."
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Turn Your Photo Collection from Chaos to Order with These Simple Tips:

FamilySearch
"Your family photo collection is a treasure box of your personal history and legacy. Those photos stored in basements, attics, and faded albums are a testimony to all the love, laughter, and traditions that make a family. All too often, we are lulled into thinking that our photos will always be available to us and that someday we will get to the job of organizing our collections, but all too often that isn’t the case."
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Beckery Chapel Near Glastonbury "Earliest Known UK Monastic Life":

BBC
"Skeletons found at a site, said in legend to have been visited by King Arthur, are the oldest example of monks found in the UK, archaeologists say."
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Tips on Archiving Family History, Part 1:

The New York Times
"Readers sent dozens of questions about archiving and preserving family history and stories to Bertram Lyons, an archivist at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress in Washington. He manages digital archives relating to folklife, including StoryCorps, which records and collects oral histories."
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How to Remove Viruses and Malware on Your Windows PC:

How-to-Geek
"Whether you saw a message saying a virus was detected, or your computer just seems slow and unreliable, you’ll want to scan for malware on your PC and remove any you find."
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This Day In History: 10 December

1862: The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill creating the state of West Virginia.

1869: Governor John Campbell signs the bill that grants women in Wyoming Territory the right to vote as well as hold public office.

18988: The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris, ceding Spanish possessions, including the Philippines, to the United States.

1830 Birthday: Emily Dickinson, American poet of more than 1,000 poems, seven published in her lifetime.

State Timelines:

Even though it is hard to tell what made people move or disappear, these are just a few possibilities.
Massachusetts:

1822: Lowell established as factory town
1872: Boston fire: 13 dead, 800 buildings destroyed, 20,000 left jobless
1911: First minimum wage law passed
1914: Canal linked Buzzards Bay & Cape Cod