Founded 1991
1500 Shenandoah Road
Alexandria, Virginia 22308
Telephone: (703) 768-4101 |
MVGS August Monthly Meeting
 The August MVGS meeting hosted Char McCargo Bah CEO/Owner of FindingThingsforU, LLC, Professional Genealogist, Historian and Author. Her lecture discussed records that are seldom used in researching Virginia families. She discussed the following records and where they could be found, as well as how these records can be used to gain additional information on your pre and post-civil war ancestors and their plantation. She demonstrated ancestry examples found in church and bible records, personal property tax lists, U.S. Southern claims, Civil War pension records, deeds, probate records and court house chancery cases.
Our Research Center is Brighter
The last week of May 2017 found the MVGS Research Center (RC) getting a new view on the world. We had new windows installed; along with the rest of Hollin Hall Senior Center that is.
.JPG) Those of you who have been to our RC know that we have windows along the northwest side of the room. Not a big thing unless you also know that we have tables with seven computers, their peripheral equipment, connecting cables and a very heavy safe all under those windows. Hollin Hall did have movers to assist, but we wanted to ensure our computers were carefully relocated. Thanks to our members Leo Dougherty and Larry Dempsey we made sure that our computer equipment was cared for and .JPG) properly reconnected. I believe the heavy safe stayed in its original location, under the windows, during replacement.
Hollin Hall is not a new building. It housed school classes beginning in the fall of 1949 as part of a national response to the post-World War II baby boom. By 1981, the baby boom was over, and the Mount Vernon community population had matured. The school was closed and on 31 Jan 1983, the building surged back to life as the Hollin Hall Senior Center, with 35 seniors using three rooms. Today, that daily population averages over 200, with diverse activities in 17 rooms and even a child care center.
We now have white vinyl trim, double pane windows to look out onto the central courtyard of the building, that is until our computer users close the blinds because it will make it easier to view the computer screens. They do make the room cleaner and brighter looking; should also help the heating and cooling bill.
Library Catalog Now Online!
 The Mount Vernon Genealogical Society library catalog has now been ported to the website as a fully functional interactive on-line application. The cataloging system software in the Research Center was no longer supported by the developer.
You now have access to all the information in our library holdings from anywhere you have internet connectivity. A number of features, not found in the index system previously online, are now available to members and the public. Searches by “Subject”, “Location” and “Media Type” can now be made on almost 2800 holdings in the library. Further searches can then be done on “Title”, “Author” and “Call Number”. Once the desired list of records is found they can be “printed” to a PDF document by clicking on the “PDF List” icon. Additionally, each record can be viewed and printed by clicking on the “eye” icon. Clicking on the “Broom” icon will clear the information in the selection or search box. In addition to searching the database for individual records by "Call Number", "Title", and "Author", the entire database or any filtered selections can be sorted by "Call Number", "Title", or "Author" by clicking on the word at the top of each column.
Clicking on the “View Categories” icon provides another method of search for desired material. Categories of holdings can also be filtered by “Subject”, “Location”, and “Media Type”
The library catalog will always be current now because library accessions are available for viewing as soon as they are put into the online system. Previously the indexes were only updated periodically.
This additional Society benefit would never have been possible without the hard work of volunteers who planned and executed the library database conversion; thank you Jeanne Wilson, Anne Barber, and Gerry Ward.
You can find the library catalog HERE
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September 6
Using Fold3 in your Genealogy Research
Instructor: Sharon MacInnes NOTE 2nd ROOM CHANGE Fold3 provides convenient access to US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served. Additional types of records on Fold3 are: Naturalization ...
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September 11
Everything FTM
Moderator: Charles Gearhart CLASS REOPENED AS OF 15 AUGUST. NOTE NEW ROOM CHANGE This Family Tree Maker study group meeting will concentrate on the windows version. Users may bring their laptops, and issues, to a round ...
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September 11
Using and Evaluating Mug Books for Family History Research
Webinar Moderator: Linda MacLachlan NOTE DATE CHANGE What are “mug books?” These were county histories published in the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. They are called mug books because people submitted information and pictures (their ...
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September 18
Writing Family History
Instructor: Paul Phelps Participants will learn that writing family history is a different and equally challenging proposition, but one with satisfactions and discoveries of its own. The idea is to get something on paper, even if it's just a ...
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September 19
A Christmas Flight: Aviation Pioneer, Dr. William Christmas.
Presenter: Mary Lipsey Description: Mary wrote "A Christmas Flight: Aviation Pioneer Dr. William Christmas" a story that chronicles her research of Dr. William Wallace Whitney Christmas, who was born in North Carolina in 1865. Dr. Christmas became the ...
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