Il Circolo Filippo Mazzei

The Italian-American Genealogy Group (Washington, DC Metropolitan Area) held its quarterly meeting on October 25, 2014 at the Westover Branch Library, 1644 North McKinley Road (Suite 3) (at the intersection of McKinley Road and Washington Boulevard) Arlington, Vriginia 22205.  

Our speaker for the October 25, 2014 meeting was Amy Reytar.  She holds a BA in History from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a MA in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Leicester, England.  She joined the National Archives in 2001 as an Archives Technician and since 2009 works as an Archives Specialist in Textual Reference Archives II Branch at College Park, Maryland with civilian records specializing in State Department records which includes passport applications.   

The remaining time was spent sharing our Italian genealogy research accomplishments, personal experiences, and a few ‘how-to’ questions.

A few websites to explore are:

• http://www.fultonhistory.com/ - According to the Family Search web site, "The Old Fulton NY Post Cards" website originally began as a postcard digitization project, but has since evolved into the largest free online collection of New York newspapers on the Internet. The site currently (March 2012) has over 18 million historical newspaper pages online from over 450 New York Newspapers spanning the years 1795 to 2008. In addition to newspapers, the Main Album page includes Fulton County cemetery records, censuses, city directories, church records, maps, photos, postcards and probate records."

• The Family Tree software on https://familysearch.org/ has face recognition software.  You will need to create an account and pay a subscription fee to use this software.  There are quite a few search features available in addition to face recognition but be sure to read the fine print to determine whether you want to use this software.

• Go to http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/category/dna/ to view Judith Russell's blog about the various companies conducting DNA analyses and where you can get the most bang for your DNA bucks.  There are also links there for 23 & me, Ancestry and National Geographic's DNA web sites.

•  For more information and details about the lists of questions the census takers were required to ask from 1790 through 2000, go to http://www.census.gov/ and enter "Measuring America" in the search field.

Our next meeting is scheduled for January 24, 2015 at the Dolley Madision Library,1244 Oak Ridge Avenue, McLean, Virginia.  For updates to this information, please check back on our website at  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vapip6gs.

Our meetings run from 10 am until about 12:30 pm. After our meetings everyone is welcome to join us for lunch at a local restaurant

Submitted by Anne M. Jeffery

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