Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War Decatur

01/14/2006 Meeting Recap

Thank you to those who were able to attend the Alumni Meeting Saturday, January 14, 2006. The organization was well represented. Everyone enjoyed our guest speaker, Dr. Lorraine McConaghy, Historian of the Seattle Museum of History and Industry. For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed an extremely interesting lecture on what will be Lorraine's next book.

Lorraine's subject was the cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War Decatur to the Pacific Northwest. As always, her stories were rich and memorable. The added bonus of her discovery of drawings associated with the ship made this unique story come alive for us. Lorraine is always so generous with her work and her time. We were very privileged to have this opportunity, given her very busy schedule.

Many of our members stayed for lunch after the meeting at the Canyon’s Restaurant. Lunch after the meeting has been such a success that we will continue the practice after every meeting.

------------------------------

State Archive Volunteer Project for G&FH:

Terri J. Nelson, the Historical Records Project Coordinator, has offered the 1885 - 1940 Federal Indian Census Transcription Project to our association as a group volunteer project.

The Memorandum of Understanding is to be completed between NARA and the State sometime in February with the project scheduled to commence in March.

Susan Berghan and Linda Palmer will be coordinating the project. If you would like to volunteer, please contact Linda Palmer at palmerlr@comcast.net. An email list for the volunteers is being created so that all volunteers can be kept up to date on the project.

A luncheon for the volunteers will be held in Pullman on July 28, 2006. We would like to schedule a road trip to the Digital Archives for Saturday, July 29, 2006, and would like feedback from the membership regarding the trip. Please send comments to Linda Palmer at palmerlr@comcast.net.

------------------------------

Put Your G&FH Project Online:

Having gotten inspiration from Susan Berghan, the Alumni Association is working to create an area where the memberships’ projects are available online.

An example of how we envision the page can be found at http://www.gfhalumni.com/projects/papers.html. There is no access to this page from the alumni site and there will not be until it is ready for publication. Right now it is a dummy site, to determine feedback on readability, form, navigation, links, etc.

Those members whose projects were known are listed (just as examples). The links to the papers are not active. All other links are active.

If you already have your paper online or have created a website for your family history, a link can be posted, as was done with Susan and Andrea.

We have decided to post the projects as PDF files (so much more efficient than writing all that code). If you do not have the ability to create a PDF file then you may email your project to Linda Palmer, palmerlr@comcast.net, as a word document and she will create the PDF file.

Try all the links, look the planned site over and let us know what you think. Feedback on readability, form, navigation, links, etc. should be sent to Linda Palmer, palmerlr@comcast.net. Pages read differently in different browsers, so if you have a comment please include what browser was used. (Example: IE4.0)

A copyright notice has been placed on the site. Examples of how to cite the works contained on the Alumni Association Project site are also included.

------------------------------

Use of the Website and Mailing Lists

Andrea Marshall gave a presentation on the use of the Alumni Association website and mailing lists at http://www.gfhalumni.com/. Detailed instructions have been attached to this email as a PDF file; you will need Adobe Acrobat to view.

If you have a suggestion for something you'd like to see on the website, please post it here: http://www.gfhalumni.com/forum/index.php?c=6

------------------------------

APG Use of Post-Nominal G&FHC:

Luci J. Baker Johnson announced at the meeting that the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) has approved the use of the post-nominal, G&FHC, by its members on their online membership profiles. The utilization of the post-nominal, G&FHC, is restricted to the internal use of the APG in their members' online profiles. Please see the attached announcement by Luci. The announcement is a PDF file and you will need Adobe Acrobat to view. The APG website Puget Sound Chapter can be found at
http://apgen.org/localchapters/pugetsound/.

------------------------------

Thank you to Andrea for setting up a store for the Alumni Association at CafePress. The products are "at cost" there is no profit associated with the items that are for sale. Take a look; there are some great products there. http://www.cafepress.com/gfhalumni/

Lisa Marker will gladly accept items for the door prize portion of the meeting. If you have something to contribute please see Lisa at the door prize table before the meeting.

Thank you to all of those who volunteered before and during the meeting to set up chairs and tables and those who stayed after to take it all down. Thank you all.

Thank you to all those who have actively participated in making the Alumni Association a success.

See you at the next meeting!

01/14/2006 Meeting Announcement

January 14, 2006
Shoreline Library

Directions:
345 NE 175th
Shoreline 98155
206-362-7550

Time:

10 - 1 (30 minutes to set the chairs up and take them down.) Meeting to start at 10:30 and end at 12:30.

Speaker:

Dr. Lorraine McConaghy
Historian of Seattle's Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)
McCurdy Park
2700 24th Ave East
Seattle, WA 98112-2099

Lecture:

The Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War DECATUR, 1854-1859

Earlier this year, Dr. McConaghy won a Hooper Research Fellowship through the Navy allowing her to spend 9 weeks at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., researching the narrative of the USS Decatur in the Pacific Squadron, from Valparaiso to Victoria.

Dr. McConaghy had access to the Decatur's logs, day-to-day locations, journals, court-martial and medical records, drawings and other artifacts. She became a member of the crew, knowing and calling them all by name.

Join us Saturday, January 14, as the tales of the Decatur’s journey and Dr. McConaghy’s journey make for an exciting start to our 2006 Alumni meetings.

Lunch:

Everyone is invited to meet for lunch at 1:15 at the Canyons Restaurant, 6003 244th St SW, Mountlake Terrace, WA (425) 744-1525. When you check in, the reservations are under Linda Palmer’s name.

Parking:

Parking at the Shoreline Public Library is limited; we encourage our members to park off-site and car pool to the library. Handicap parking, always, has unrestricted use of the parking lot.

The Library has asked us to limit the number of cars we add to their parking lot, as they have an obligation to their patrons to provide parking. The most additional cars Shoreline believes they can handle is twenty and only if there are available spaces in their lot.

The Library is located in a residential area and there is on street parking available, in addition to the lot. If you arrive early, please make an effort to fill the on street parking first.

If you are able to make arrangements to car pool, may we suggest the following meeting places in close proximity to the Library:

Canyons Restaurant
6003 244th St SW
Mountlake Terrace, WA
(425) 744-1525 Map

Park at Lake Forest Park Towne Center
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA
Map

Please make every effort to help us maintain a cordial relationship with the Library; they are, after all, providing us with a meeting place at no charge to our membership.

Any questions, please contact Linda Palmer at palmerlr@comcast.net.