Events and Activities : Genealogy Workshop offered advice, helped raise funds for CP library project

A computer lab full of people (18) attended the Friends of the Center Point Library genealogy workshop Saturday, Feb. 22, at the new High School. The fund raiser for the Public Library was also made possible by CPU Schools, the Washington Township Trustees and by volunteer instructors Bob King, Center Point, and Linda Joy Schmidt, Cedar Rapids.

Bob led the group, step by simple step, through getting a family tree started on FamilySearch.org, which he considers one of the best free internet sites for genealogy. He had prepared detailed handouts that also explained the process and listed other useful free sites.

Volunteering to help Bob help fellow class members work through the site was Robert Heasty, a Marion carpenter, who has been building family trees for about a year. He said anyone interested is invited to sit in on a sort of genealogy jam session that meets very informally at the Marion Public Library every Wednesday from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Linda Joy Schmidt has started a business called Memory Echoes to help people save their family stories. She was inspired by her great-grandmother who contacted relatives and compiled their stories in book form and did it long before computers. “If she could do that then, I knew I could do it with all the resources available now,” Linda said.

“Get your stories down now,” she said, “because they will just disappear.”

She suggested using tape recorders at family gatherings, keeping your own journal or blog, buying a family history blank book and filling it in—anything to get some family history preserved. Label those pictures and write down the story behind family heirlooms, she urged. Write a “legacy letter” for your kids. Her website is www.memoryechoes.com.

Friends had asked CPU Schools for a room for the workshop because of the Public Library’s lack of space and computers. The current Library expansion campaign is planned to correct that problem along with lots of other space and accessibility issues. A community room is also in the plan. Preliminary architect drawings are on display at the Library.