PGSM's April 26 Meeting is via Zoom; Topic is Polish Research in Michigan

The Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan's April meeting is a webinar format that is open to the public. Hosted in partnership with the Polish Genealogy Society of Connecticut and the Northeast, the meeting takes place on Saturday, April 26, 2024, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.

Valerie Koselka will present Polish Research in Michigan via Zoom. Invitations will be emailed to PGSM members.
Registration will be open to everyone at www.pgsm.org starting April 1. Pre-registration for this webinar meeting is required

Koselka will review Michigan libraries and archives as well as discuss other sources for performing Polish research in Michigan.

Valerie Koselka has served as a PGSM officer since 2007. She is the current vice president and has served as corresponding secretary and president. She also represents PGSM as a delegate to the Michigan Genealogical Council. Valerie belongs to several local genealogical societies, including the Downriver Genealogical Society, Dearborn Genealogical Society, Detroit Society for Genealogical Research, and Western Wayne County Genealogical Society. She is on the Board of Directors of the West Side Detroit Polish American Historical Society and is a member of the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast. Valerie is a consultant at the Westland FamilySearch Center twice a month and admins several Polish genealogical groups on Facebook.

See you at our favorite library!
LE

2025 Lansing FamilySearch Seminar (Free) on April 26; Register by April 23

The Lansing FamilySearch Center is hosting a 2025 Lansing FamilySearch Center Seminar on Saturday, April 26, 2025 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The them of the seminar is Get to Know Your Family History!

You can find a information on the various sessions offered at this link. The online registration form can be found with this link. Regular registration closes April 23. Session availability after this date are not guaranteed.

This seminar is free. Syllabus will be emailed in mid-April after registration.

See you at our favorite library!
LE

MCGG Meets This Friday at Noon for an On-Site Tour of FamilySearch Center in Bloomfield Hills

 MCGG Friday group meets in-person this Friday, April 4, 2025, at 12 p.m.
at the LDS FamilySearch Center, in Bloomfield Hills. Our topic is ... On-Site Tour of the FamilySearch Center in Bloomfield Hills.

Join us at a different time and place for an on-site tour.

Our meeting starts at Noon at the Bloomfield Hills FamilySearch Center located at 37425 Woodward Avenue. (Attendees are responsible for themselves getting to and from the tour site.)

After the tour you are free to explore the resources available and do some personal research. The FSC closes at 4 p.m. on Friday. We have learned that the center now has wireless internet for patrons' use. If you don't have a tablet/laptop, bring a USB drive in case you have a record find. There are about nine computers for patron use.

Note: This meeting will be in-person only.

New attendees are always welcome.

See you at our favorite library!
LE

MCGG's Bev Bishop to Present on April 25; Where There's Smoke ... There's Fire

MCGG Board Member Beverly Bishop will present Volunteer Firefighters 1880 – 2000: Where There’s Smoke … There’s Fire, on Friday, April 25th, at 6:00 pm in the Ray Township Community Center at 64255 Wolcott Road, north of 29 Mile Road, for the Friends of the Ray Township Library and Historical Society's special Now & Then event.

Beverly Bishop, RPh, PhD, pharmacist, historian, and speaker, will present findings from her deep dive into Macomb County’s firefighting history and will bring along a few artifacts, such as a Sanborn Fire Map and a Gamewell Alarm. In addition to MCGG, Bishop is active with the Roseville Historical Society.

Everyone is welcome to join this free event. Light refreshments will be served. Registrations preferred by April 21, 2025, at raylibrary.org/calendar/events. Drop-ins are also welcome.

See you at our favorite library!
LE

MCGG Releases its April 2025 Meetings -- Join Us!

A reminder about our Macomb County Genealogy Group April 2025 meetings. We will release the rest of our 2025 Winter/Spring schedule when everything is set -- we are down to one meeting to lock in place.

MCGG Friday group meets in-person on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 12 p.m.
at the Bloomfield Hills FamilySearch Center, in Bloomfield Hills. Our topic is ... On-Site Tour of the FamilySearch Center in Bloomfield Hills.

Join us at a different time and place for an on-site tour. Our meeting starts at Noon at the Bloomfield Hills FamilySearch Center located at 37425 Woodward Avenue. (Attendees are responsible for themselves getting to and from the tour site.) After the tour you are free to explore the resources available and do some personal research. We have learned that the center now has wireless internet for patrons' use. If you don't have a tablet/laptop, bring a USB drive in case you have a record find.

Note: This meeting will be in-person only.

MCGG Let's Talk...Genealogy discussion group meets in-person (hybrid) Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. in the Local History & Genealogy Room of the Mount Clemens Public Library. Our topic is ... Libraries That Have Helped Me.

It is National Library Week, let's talk about the libraries that have helped us further our research. Who knows it might help a fellow researcher research the same area.

Our plan is that our meetings will be hybrid meaning the meeting will be in-person with a virtual Zoom option. The Zoom meeting link (or registration link) will now be found on our Southeast Michigan Genealogy Events Calendar and our Facebook page. The link will usually be added the night before or morning of the meeting. Members will receive a reminder email with the Zoom invite or a reminder that registration is required for a meeting.

New attendees are always welcome.

See you at our favorite library!
LE

Congrats to the 2025 #DigMichNews Grant Winners ... 2023 & 2024 Too!

Originally posted Friday, March 21, 2025, at 11:54 a.m. Edited to include more information on St. Clair County's newspaper plans.

Congratulations to the 2025 Digital Michigan Newspaper Grant winners! 

Possibly as early as late this year, these organizations' chosen newspapers should begin appearing in Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library's Digital Michigan Newspapers site. This year's winners who will share the grant include: Bessemer, Eastpointe, Elk Rapids, Fennville, Pentwater, the Polish Institute of Culture and Research (Orchard Lake), and the St. Clair County Library System.

We have learned that St. Clair is planning to have the St Clair Republican from the years 1865-1871, 1877-1878, 1890-1893 and 1919-1922 digitized.

So, if you are interested in these locations find your patience and keep it at hand while we wait for the fruits of this grant.

In writing this post, we realized we had not mentioned on this blog the prior winners of the 2024 and 2023 grants since Mount Clemens won the grant in 2022 along with East Lansing. So congratulations to: Bellaire and Lansing (Capital Area) for their win in 2023; and Ishpeming, Midland, Lapeer, Zeeland, Dewitt and Alma for their win in 2024.

These digitized newspapers are every word OCRd (Optical Character Recognition) documents. Meaning it was done via a computer program. Digitizing makes these newspapers accessible to you where ever you are around the world and OCRing makes finding and pulling information in these historical galleys so much easier.

We would like to point out a few things. See our prior posts on the Digital Michigan Newspapers Grant for tips on how to better use the website when searching. Use the label #DigMichNews to find our prior posts.

Also, note that there are two lists of newspapers on the website.

The first is labeled Digital Michigan Newspaper Portal. You can clearly identify it because is has a golden map of Michigan followed below by a list of the Michigan counties and a list of newspapers under each county. This newspaper list is ... "from a variety of sources. Among these links are papers held by the Clarke Historical Library and also Michigan newspapers found in Chronicling America, a database maintained by the Library of Congress."

This is what is listed for Lapeer county on this list. This list is not up-to-date. It does not include what was digitized for last year's win.

The second list can be found from the gold menu bar at the top of the Digital Michigan Newspaper search.

Just select Counties from the gold menu bar. And then select the county you want to view.

 

Here is where you can see what was digitized for Lapeer's win. This capture also happens to show what was digitized for Midland and of course Macomb County. The staff at Mount Clemens Public Library has continued having additional newspapers and/or years digitized. So this list shows what is currently included and if you compare this second list to the first list for Macomb County you can see much has been added.

Have fun searching!

See you at our favorite library!
LE

MCGG Let's Talk Genealogy is THIS Wed., Mar. 12; Let's Talk about RootsTech 2025

MCGG Let's Talk...Genealogy discussion group meets in-person (hybrid) Wednesday, March 12, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. in the Local History & Genealogy Room of the Mount Clemens Public Library. Our topic is ... What Did We Learn from RootsTech 2025?

Let's share and talk about the online sessions you watched or have marked to watch from the RootsTech 2025 conference held March 6 to 8th. We'll also talk about the new things announced and if any conference sale are still taking place. Keep an eye on this blog during the conference in case we pass on any news.

 

Our plan is that our meetings will be hybrid meaning the meeting will be in-person with a virtual Zoom option. The Zoom meeting link (or registration link) will now be found on our Southeast Michigan Genealogy Events Calendar and our Facebook page. The link will usually be added the night before or morning of the meeting. Members will receive a reminder email with the Zoom invite or a reminder that registration is required for a meeting.

New attendees are always welcome.

See you at our favorite library!
LE