FYIFYIFYI Volume 16, No. 1, February 2014

March 16, 2014, 2:00 p.m. Manhattan Public Library. “Travel as a Genealogy Tool” by Vickie Holverson. How to get ready for a research trip, successful travel research, documentation, follow up and us-ing material obtained. April 13, 2:00 p.m. Manhattan Fire Sta-tion. “Breakthroughs in Genealogy by DNA Testing” by Carol Regehr and a panel of genealogists. How DNA testing can help family history research. Come learn more about this newest research method!

May 6, 7 a.m.—7 p.m. GROW GREEN Match Day. See article for details. May 18, 2:00 p.m. Manhattan Fire Sta-tion. “Ethnic Labor and Small Towns on the Rock Island Rail Lines” by M.J.Morgan of the Chapman Center for Ru-ral Studies. Morgan will focus on the Rock Island Line in the 1920’s with oral histories from the railway town of Broughton. June 29, 2:00 p.m. Sedalia Community Church. “Welsh History and the Com-munity of Bala” by Jane Roth and Phil Parry.

We invite you to these upcoming events

Riley County Genealogical Society & Library 2005 Claflin Road, Manhattan, KS 66502 (785) 565-6495 • http://www.rileycgs.com

Ron Wells speaks about the Miller House Sunday afternoon, February 9.

Online Catalog moving ahead

The RCGS inventory of 5,000 holdings in the South Stacks is moving along thanks to our volunteers! Four teams of two persons, working two hours a week, are reviewing each item on the computer screen for accu-racy, and adding Subjects and Locations. These additions will allow patrons to use ‘key word’ searches once we move to a digi-tal catalog on our web site. Volunteers in-clude:

Jan Lange and Dorothy Dickerhoof; Ann Murphy and Beverly Holdren, Vickie Holv-erson and Virginia Beddow; Kay Stith and Candace Pannbacker. Marci Schuley is co-ordinator, trainer and worker in open shifts. Wann Towers, RCGS Library Chair-man, is leading the project. These volun-teers have spend many hours cataloging each book in the Library.

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Saturday, March 15: Northeast including Stillman, Sedalia, Hohman, Walsburg, Rose Hill, Czech-Moravian, Bellegarde, Swede Creek, and Fancy Creek/Randolph.

Saturday, March 29: Northwest including Teske, Peach Grove, Fancy Creek Zion, May Day, St. John's Lutheran, Crooked Creek, Pleasant Hill and Lasita.

Saturday, April 12: Central including Grandview/Mill Creek, Riley, Fairview, Leonardville EUB, Leonardville, Bala, Vin-ton.

Saturday, April 26: Southern including Rebbekah-IOOF, Eureka Valley, Kansas Veteran's, St. Patrick's, Ogden, Ashland and Pleasant Valley.

Saturday, May 17: Rain date or Bonus tour of Western Pottawatomie County in-cluding Valley View Memorial Gardens, St. Patrick's on the Elbow, Cedar Creek, Car-nahan Creek, Olsburg and Mariadahl.

All tours will involve some gravel roads and are in rural areas where there are few plac-es to stop, i.e. convenience stores. Bring bottled water, snacks and be prepared to "rough it". Some of the rural churches are open, and we will stop as time allows. These may have bathroom facilities.

All tours start promptly at 9:00 am at the RCGS parking lot. Car pooling is encour-aged, and bring a C/B radio if possible for commentary along the way. Each tour is less than 100 miles, and about 6 or 7 hours in length.

Please RSVP to Kevin Stilley at 785-556-8188 or trlrhouseman@gmail.com by 48 hours before each tour, so that I know how many copies of maps and tour info to have ready. There will be a $2.00 charge for cop-ies.

Following each tour, the maps, directions and information will be available at the RCGS library for self-guided tours.

Rural Riley County cemetery tours start in March

Use RCGS Library periodicals — you may find your ancestor’s name

Periodical binders are heavy, take up lots of space and are a challenge to the digitizing volunteers. However, a new member, Vir-ginia, came in the library just beaming be-cause she found the maiden name of an an-cestor. She had checked out several binders of periodicals, a perk for RCGS members, and found the ancestor’s name in a church record.

Most periodicals are either indexed in each issue or annually to help in your search. You will probably get side tracked reading other articles when you have plenty of time with at home reading of this underused re-source of RCGS. I invite you to check out several binders of your state and county of interest and let me know of your successes.

Wann Towers, Library Chairman

If you would like to purchase a booklet list-ing the people buried in the cemeteries of Riley and neighboring counties, contact the library at 785-565-6495 or visit the online

store at rileycgs.com. Booklets available in-clude: Ashland, Bala, Fairview, Fancy Creek, Riley and many others.

RCGS offers local cemetery booklets for sale

First Annual Community Foundation Awards April 13

Greater Manhattan Community Foundation is sponsoring the first Annual Community Foundation Awards on April 13 at 6:30 p.m. at Hilton Garden Inn, Manhattan. There will be Time, Talent and Treasure awards for volunteers, non-profit staff members and donors that go above and beyond the expectations of us all.

Riley County Genealogical Society has many volunteers who donate untold hours to running the library, indexing the new card catalog, maintaining the computers, publications, newsletters, maintaining the physical property, and many more. These volunteers deserve recognition for their val-uable donations of time and money.

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The under-represented counties in the RCGS Kansas Room expanded in holdings last quarter, due to diligent research by the Acquisition committee. Members Sherry Butler, Linda Fetters, Marcia Schuley, Mary Siegel and Wann Towers browsed Amazon, Abe Press, EBay, and county historical and genealogical societies to find books with re-search value to our patrons.

Additions were made to Coffey, Cloud, Lin-coln, Norton, Hamilton, Cowley, Ford, Meade and Elk Counties. The History of Ne-osho County, Volumes I & II, written by W.W. Graves is a special gem. Mr. Graves, who arrived in Neosho County in 1881, was editor of the St. Paul Journal for over 50 years and obtained interviews with old pio-neers he knew personally. The book con-tains pictures and interesting records for the county.

T-Town on the Plains, by local historian, R. Alton Lee, documents White City, Kansas,

in Morris County, home to our own Jim Sharp. Here is a quote:

“T-towns were founded in the Great Plains in the second half of the nineteenth century as market centers for farm-ers. They developed in the shape of a T, with the railroad constituting the top bar and Main Street and the commer-cial area the perpendicular….Developers followed the team-haul principle for determining the location of these centers: a team could haul a wagonload of wheat five miles round-trip in one day; a ten-mile distance required an overnight stay. Thus elevators and, subsequently, towns sprang up across the Great Plains along the railroad right-of-ways approximately every ten miles.” Encylopedia of the Great Plains, Alton Lee.

Take time to explore these new resources! If you have books that might add to the li-brary’s collection, please drop them by. We review all donations and if we are able to accept, we will provide a tax receipt, based on estimated value from Amazon.com.

By Marcia Schuley

Kansas counties expand holdings in RCGS Library

Charlotte Shawver and Joan Smith joined the RCGS Board for 2014. Charlotte is Vice President for Programs and Edu-cation. Joan also works with programs and holds the Public Relations position on the Board.

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R

GROW Green Match Day on Tuesday, May 6, 2014, holds an opportunity for RCGS. On that day, the Greater Manhattan Com-munity Founda-

tion will match donations made to the RCGS endowment fund.

Individual donations to participating organ-ization on Tuesday May 6, ranging from $25 to $1,000 per organization will receive a local match at 50 cents per dollar, so a $1,000 gift will receive a $500 match.

Online gifts by credit card will be eligible.

www.GROWgreen.mcfks.org

Or you may donate cash or check in person at the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation office at Colony Square, 555 Poyntz on that day. Make check payable to the Greater Manhattan Community Foun-dation. In order to be matched, donations must be made on May 6 between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. either online or in person.

Note that your donation on that day will go into RCGS’s endowed fund at GMCF. The endowment produces yearly income that can help support RCGS. The matched amount will be available for RCGS to spend immediately as their Board determines.

RCGS has continuing needs for additions to the library, computers, supplies, genealogy programs and classes, Platt House upkeep, online software licenses, and special pro-jects, etc. Help us further family history research in the community.

Donate to RCGS through “Grow Green” and your money will be matched!

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We will be deciding soon if the use of Amer-icanancestors.com (NEHGS) and Fold3.com warrants renewal.

We have paid subscriptions to these two ge-nealogical data web sites that have some-what limited scope.

Please bring your list of names, dates, etc. and let us help you search. We have had a few happy patrons that have found many pages of valuable documents.

The New England Historical Genealogical Society was founded in 1845, the oldest and largest genealogical society is U.S.

Fold3 is always adding military records but at the present time Civil War records seem to have the most information on line.

Wann Towers, Library Chairman

February 2014

Wanted: New England and Military Researchers

We send good wishes for a healthy and re-warding 2014. As membership secretaries we encourage members to use this time of new beginnings to renew membership dues. Members may send a check made payable to Riley County Genealogical Society in the amount of $30.00 to Riley County Genea-logical Society Library, 2005 Claflin Road, Manhattan, KS 66502. Alternatively, mem-bers may bring a check to the library or pay on-line at our website: www.rileycgs.com.

We look forward to hearing from you and assisting you in your family history search.

Ted Hopkins and Joyce Marr

Remember RCGS dues for 2014 June 14 KCGS Conference Valerie Eichler Lair will speak at the KCGS Conference on June 14, 2014. Early regis-tration is $45 if received by May 31. The conference is at The Cedars Conference Center, 1021 Cedars Drive, McPherson, Kansas.

Ms Lair is a nationally known researcher, consultant, instructor, and author. The “Digging Deeper” theme includes work-shops on: Genealogical Proof Standard, Probate, Finding Females, and Church De-nomination Archives.

Brochure available at:

http://www.kcgs.us/

John Reese and Fred Delano visit with Ron Wells after his talk on the Miller House

Membership form included If you have not yet joined Riley County Ge-nealogical Society for 2014, we are attach-ing a membership for to this newsletter.

Please join us in furthering family history research in our community!

RCGS Library Hours

Tuesday and, Thursday 10 am to 4 pm

Wednesday and Saturday 1 - 4 pm

Sundays May through November 2 - 5 pm

RCGS Officers

President Judy Regehr 485-2158

Programs Charlotte Shawver 477-9512

Joan Smith 537-4778

Treasurer Richard Phillips 537-7735

Fred Delano 776-4845

Rec. Sec. Nancy Williams 537-4390

Corr. Sec. Sherry Hooper 539-6453

Past Pres. Rebecca Rose 537-8495

FYI Newsletter

FYI Editor Judy Regehr

Proofing Dorothy Dickerhoof

Mailing Shirley Delano

FYI is published periodically and available to RCGS member-ship. RCGS members are invited to submit articles for publi-

cation.

RCGS strives for correctness and regrets any errors, but as-

sumes no responsibility for errors of fact or opinions ex-

pressed by contributors.

Contributors to articles in this issue of FYI include Ted Hop-kins, Joyce Marr, Judy Regehr, Joan Smith, Marcia Schuley,

Wann Towers.

Riley County Genealogical Society 2005 Claflin Road Manhattan, KS 66502-3415

OUR MISSION

Provide educational and research opportu-nities for genealogy and family history re-searchers,

Maintain a genealogical research library,

and

Collect, preserve and publish genealogical and historical records for Riley County and surrounding area.