Saturday - January 17, 2009

President Connie Stewart welcomed all members, noting we had several new members in attendance. Opening prayer was given by Helen Lenz.
Ron Coleman, Treasurer was set up at the back of the room and accepting membership dues.
Everyone was reminded to be sure to give Ron and new address', phone numbers and/or new email changes.
It was noted that the monthly newsletter was ready to go, but will be sent out upon the return of Curt and Denece Larsen from Salt Lake City.
A change in today's presentation has been made. Becky Carroll is ill, but will be presenting our February class on February 21, 2009 on Blogs. (You too can create a Blog just like this one!)
A reminder that the Alaskan Cruise will be sailing on June 19 - 26, 2009. Contact Mary or Lauren at Morris Travel - 435-628-3633 or 800-777-1785.
Don Snow noted that FamilySearch Wiki has started a new project called 'Barn-Raising' wherein individuals input information on the State of Maryland'.
St. George Expo will be held on February 27th and 28th. You can get details and register by going to MyAncestorsFound.com.
A 'Thank You' to John Callister for his donation to the Washington County PAF Users Group.
TECHNO TIME - was presented by June Morton - WCPAFUG Secretary and member of a PAF Users Group since 1992 in Pocatello, Idaho. June is currently serving a Mission at the Regional Family History Training Center. June arrived in St. George six years ago to live in Temple Apartments and to enjoy Temple Service, during that time she was also involved with the local Record Extraction Group.
After about a year she felt the need to return to research and family history work, and applied for a Service Mission at the Regional Center....she is currently in her fifth year at the center and is blessed daily for her service.
June is the mother of two daughters, eight grandchildren and currently 13 great grandchildren...who she loves dearly and of course, they are the best, the brightest and cutest around. Her only regret is that the family lives to far away in Pocatello and Salt Lake so visits are few and far between.
FAMILY HISTORY AND THE INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE.....form the new book..."Google Your Family Tree'. A short Power Point presentation accompanied June's presentation on the Commands and Syntax instruction which can help one's search on Google and other internet search engines.
Handouts of various Commands and Syntax which help in searches were available. If you would like a handout please contact Fran Lightner.
TEN TOP GENEALOGICAL SITES- was presented by Max Turpin.
Max is a Board Member and has been a member of the WC-PAFUG for six-seven years now. He is a retired US Postal Service worker and has lived in Washington City for 16 years. He has a strong liking for the computer world.
In Max's handout he has noted the Ten Top Genealogical Sites as listed by Dan Lynch form the new book 'Google Your Family Tree'. The book shows a picture of the opening page with a description of each site.
Max also noted information regarding PAFInsight. He also like the special features and time saving that the program PAF PAL offered.
FIND-A- GRAVE - While serving a mission in Washington State on the Cooley Dam on an Indian Reservation he helped a woman of Indian descent find her ancestor's cemetery plot and a picture on Find-A-Grave which had been entered by others. So the indepth entry and cemetery visits began.
Find-A-Grave was created by Jim Tipton of Salt Lake City, Utah. It has grown to include cemeteries in most states in the United States and some countries throughout the world with almost 30,000,000 entries, adding a million entries every 45 days or so.
Max moved through the program from place to place, family member to family member demonstrating how to use the program.
He instructed us on how to create links from one page to another, link family members.
Max is also entering names from St. George Cemetery Burial Records on to Find-A-Grave as part of the current project.
ST. GEORGE CEMETERY PROJECT - was presented by Fran Lightner. Fran is the past-present of our group and now serving as a board member. She was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Indio, California. She is the mother of three children and grandmother of nine. She and her husband John will be celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary in February.
Fran has lived in California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah. She started genealogy about 35 years ago when John received a request from a cousin to send her a family group sheet for their family and his parents and siblings. Life's never been the same since catching the bug from that cousin's request.
As a groups we are trying to add to the utahcemeteries.org project..... by adding pictures of the tombstones and including them on the Find-A-Grave site.
Fran is seeking volunteers for this project. The comments that struck us all was the 'we need to give back to our community and help with this project'.... we have so much and our family and friends interred need to be indexed so they can be found by those searching for them.
The Meeting was a great success with much information proceeding forth to help us in our research effort.
Closing prayer was given by Thayle Smith.
Recording Secretary - June Morton