Mark Your Calendars - UVTAGG Meeting!!

UTAH VALLEY TECHNOLOGY AND GENEALOGY GROUP MEETING (UVTAGG)


The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group - UVTAGG (Formerly the Utah Valley PAF Users Group - UVPAFUG) will be on Saturday, 14 Apr 2012, from 9 am to noon in the LDS "Red Chapel", 4050 North Timpview Drive (650 East), Provo.  Information about the Group, main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on their website http://uvtagg.org and the press releases are at http://blog.uvtagg.org .

The main presentation for this meeting will be by Stephen Ehat on FIND ALL YOUR RELATIVES IN THE 1940 U.S. FEDERAL CENSUS.  The 1940 US Federal Census was released this week (2 Apr 2012) and digital images are now posted on several sites including the National Archives at http://1940census.archives.gov/ .  Several organizations are coordinating efforts to index the entire census.  These include FamilySearch Indexing and everyone is encouraged to sign up at  https://www.familysearch.org/1940census/   to help.  It will take several months to complete the entire index.  The presentation at the UVTAGG meeting this month will help people get into the census before it is indexed.  Small towns, of course, will be pretty easy; large cities will take more effort, but can still be done, as Steve Ehat will show.  


Stephen Kent Ehat was born in San Francisco in 1951. Baptized a Latter-day Saint as a convert at age 10, he first attempted to do genealogical research at age 11. He knew too little, but at age 17, when he began studies at BYU, he successfully began a lifetime of family history research and discovery. He has served as a Records Examiner (Remember those?), as a Stake Extraction Director (back in the day when that opportunity first existed), and recently as the Director of a six-stake Family History Center serving Orem and Lindon. He has made a number of presentations at recent BYU Family History Conferences and at the BYU Family History Center Sunday classes and is constantly helping people with their research. He has been to Italy twice for family history research on his own Italian line that arrived in San Francisco 45 years before the earthquake and fire in 1906. He is a California attorney who lives with his wife, Jeanine, in Lindon, Utah, and they have five sons and thirteen -- now almost 14 -- grandchildren.

Following the main presentation there will be several classes about family history and technology with something for everyone at any level of expertise. The teachers and classes presently scheduled for this meeting are:  

1. Are Your Ancestors Frozen in Time?, by Claire Brisson-Banks
2. "Where Did That File Go?" - Understanding and Organizing Computer Files, by Susan Maxwell
3. Analyzing Census Records, by Stephen Ehat
4. Personal Help with Family History, by Don Engstrom and Finn Hansen
5. Video of last month's main presentation: Increasing Productivity on FamilySearch with Sharing Time, by Andrea Schnakenburg
6. Everything Mac for Genealogy, by Ron Snowden
7. RootsMagic, by Renee Zamora
8. Ancestral Quest, by Paul Johnson
9. Legacy, by Joel Graham.                          

All meetings of the Group are open to the public whether members of the Group or not. The Group has the goal of helping individuals use technology to further their family history and there are usually 100-125 attending the monthly meetings on the second Saturdays. The officers are Gerhard Ruf, President; Laurie Castillo, 1st VP; Don Snow, 2nd VP; Liz Kennington, Newsletter Editor; Renee Zamora, Secretary; Kay Baker, Gerry Eliason, Don Engstrom, and Rayanne Melick working with finances and membership; and Bruce Merrill and Marie Andersen working with the DVD Library. Several of these will be there to answer questions, help with membership, distribute the current issue of the monthly newsletter TAGGology, and check out DVDs of past presentations and classes to members of the group.  Ancestral QuestInformation about the Group, presentations, classes, and class notes can be found at the websites mentioned above. For further information contact President Gerhard Ruf at pres@uvtagg.org (801-225-6106) or 1st VP Laurie Castillo at laurie@everythingisrelative.net, or 2nd VP Don Snow at snowd@math.byu.edu.