The Great Falls Genealogy Society will be hosting its monthly meeting on Thursday, March 14th to encourage people to organize their research on their own genealogy.
This event will feature “What Do I Do With All My Stuff?! Organizing to Preserve & Pass Down.” The presentation will include advice and tips for organizing what you have spent a lifetime gathering so that it can be appreciated and preserved for your descendants and interested others.
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Janet Thomson, vice president of the Great Falls Genealogy Society, said most people don’t really think about their genealogy until later in life, and when they do they aren’t sure what to do with it.
“If they’re not in a pivotal time in their life, like late forties or early fifties, coming into that time where they begin to think about their past life and their great friends and their family, [or] once they've lost parents or they've lost loved ones, they do begin to think a little more about genealogy and what it is,” Thomson said. “But if aunt Sally saved it and didn't organize it, then there might be 15 big boxes of stuff that they're trying to get rid of, and I mean ‘rid of’ in a nice way, just say, well, ‘I'd like her work to go someplace, but frankly, I don't understand it.’”
That’s what guest speaker Curt Witcher will be discussing in this month’s program.
“Curt is the head of the second largest genealogy library in the United States, and he frequently does pretty neat programs for people to help them really get with the idea of what they are going to be doing with their genealogy when they're gone,” Thomson said.
Along with Witcher, the Great Falls Genealogy Society will also be presenting at the Montana History Conference in the fall on topics more specific to Montana, such as indigenous studies.
Thomson added, “He will be speaking on indigenous kinds of things to do with genealogy because it's a huge field, it's a burgeoning field, and you only have to look at the various books that are coming out that are really factually well done with regard to indigenous studies, to realize how important that is here.”
The event will be from 6pm until 7:30pm at the Great Falls Public Library (301 Second Avenue North, third floor).
For more information, call 406-727-3922, or click here to visit the website.
