January meeting recap

A bus trip to Fort Wayne, possible cemetery tours, and a new publications committee were on the agenda when the La Porte County, Indiana, Genealogical Society held its monthly meeting January 10th. Forms will be available in February to sign up for April's all-day bus trip to the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. Bus travel will be $21 per person, and the Michigan City Public Library will co-sponsor the trip.

The recommendation to establish an Indexing, Abstracting, and Publications Committee, plus a set of policies for the committee, will be voted on at the next meeting in February. See the previous post on this blog for the details.

Following the business meeting, members shared relics and discoveries including an old grave rubbing from Winchester Cathedral in England, a long-lost family photograph, a collection of vacation pictures of a trip to Sacajawea's grave site in Wyoming, an ancestor's records from an old US veterans' home, some "peacekeepers" for a south county tavern, and a striking photo of a former Michigan City police chief.

Next month, on February 14, Alan Zeller and Harold Henderson will try to make sense of the 1940 census, which will be released to the public on 2 April. It will not be indexed by name. How can you find your ancestors -- or yourself! -- in the census without an index? Come and find out!

The society meets at 7:15 pm on the second Tuesday of each month at the Swanson Center for Older Adults, 910 State Street, La Porte, weather permitting. The public is welcome at all meetings.

Four applications have already been requested for residency certificates. The deadline for submitting application is July 31, so it's not too early to get started. Our web site at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~inlcigs/ has information for those who believe they have La Porte County ancestors (and can prove it!). There's information on how to apply for First Families of La Porte (before December 1840), Pioneer Families (1841-1860), Settler Families (1861-1880), and Civil War Families (1861-1865).

You can also read or search back issues of the society's newsletter, December 2005 through December 2009, including genealogical and historical information from members' research and abstracting work in local records, on our blog at http://lpcgs.blogspot.com.