Saturday and Aloha

Remember our program this upcoming Saturday with Tresa Tatyrek. The topic is researching church records. Library doors open at 10:00. Program begins at 10:30 and lasts about and hour. We'll be in the Dulaney Meeting room of the Roy and Helen Hall Library as usual.

Aloha. I have just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. This trip is a "must do before you die"!. I stopped in at the Hawaii State Library which is the headquarters of the Hawaii State Public Library System. All the public libraries on each island are a part of this system. The one in Honolulu on the island of Oahu is where the records are kept you might want for genealogy research. The original Hawaiian people are the Menehune and they didn't have a written language so forget tracing your ancestry to them. In fact, there was no written language at all until the Europeans came along in the 1700s. Starting with records in the 1800s you can find lots of British and Scottish. To trace your ancestry to Hawaiian is the equivalent of tracing to American Indian in the mainland states. There are certain rights and priviledges afforded to those people, including owning some land that can only be sold to them. The islanders now are a mix of all the polynesian islands - Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Hawaii, and what is now New Zealand. Hawaii has a USGenWeb page so go on line and start searching.

Dallas County History from the Ground Up

That's the title of a new two-volume set of books in our collection. It is written by Frances James who has been leading bus tours for the Dallas Historical Society for years. While giving these tours and telling stories about the cemeteries and monuments she was often asked if there was a book with these stories in them. Since there wasn't one Frances wrote one - or two. Actually there's a third volume in the works too. These are terrific historical narratives about a piece of our nearby county, accompanied by some beautiful photographs taken at each cemetery. Come learn about these pioneer Texas cemeteries and some of the interesting people buried there. This source can be found on our new items shelf for the next couple of months. After that it's at R Gen 929.3764281 JAM

A reminder that I will be out of the office October 14-25.

A second reminder of our genealogy program with Tresa Tatyrek on October 30 at 10:30am in The Dulaney Room. No pre-registration required.

A few important items

Our new fiscal year has begun so watch for new books to begin arriving again soon.

October 11 the libraries will be closed for staff training day.

October 14-24 I will be on vacation. While my co-workers would like to be able to help you, they just aren't genealogy librarians. Come use the collection, but hold your advice questions for my return please.

October 30 is our next public program. Tresa Tatyrek will be our guest speaker again. Her topic is Researching Church Records. The doors of the Dulaney Room will open at 10:00. The program will start at 10:30 and will last until 11:30 or 11:45. No pre-registration is required.

Our collection is on the move. Due to several recent changes at the Roy and Helen Hall Memorial Library we now have twice as much space for the genealogy collection as before. I am slowly shifting to spread out the collection. The scope of our collection will not change, but now we can keep growing.

If you ever have any questions from anything I post on this blog please do not send it to me by replying to this message. Send me your email at tluscombe@mckinneytexas.org.