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AUGUSTA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, Inc.



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AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

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The Society meets at 7:00 pm the first Thursday of every month in the second floor auditorium of the Augusta Museum of History.
 

ABOUT AGS

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a nonprofit organization. It was founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979, by 84 charter members and now has well over 1500 members in 44 states as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, Singapore, Germany and Ireland. AGS maintains a genealogical library, publishes a newsletter and journal, presents monthly lectures and semi-annual "Footprints" methodology seminars, co-sponsors semi-annual seminars with Augusta State University, and specializes in cemetery surveys. The Society is the proud recipient of four Certificates of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. All mail should be directed to P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743. We are located at 1109 Broad Street, Augusta GA. Our phone number is 706-722-4073.


WHAT'S NEW


FOOTPRINTS 2010

"Following Footprints is Fun!!!"

Whether you’re new to genealogy or a seasoned researcher who enjoys meeting with fellow genies, come to the AGS Adamson Library at 1109 Broad Street on Saturday, 27 February, 2010 for our award-winning genealogy workshop that has introduced the basics of research for well over two decades.

The registration fee of $15 for members and $20 for non-members (with a $5 refund if you join AGS when registering for the workshop) includes a catered boxed lunch and a 100+ page research handbook with at least twelve topics such as organization of records, oral interviews, using census, soundex and other genealogical sources, preparing home and portable files, courthouse research, time lines, and computer research. Using the Adamson Library and your specially prepared Footprints Research Handbook will also be addressed.

Speakers will be our own local members who are very familiar with resources and the problems encountered by our patrons. Jule Rucker, Jerry Scott, Gloria Lucas, Octavia Garlington, Jan McTier, and Tom Dirksen have all served as Librarians of the Day and have spoken at many AGS workshops and programs.

Registration will be from 8:30 a.m. until 8:55 with classes beginning promptly at 9 a.m. and lasting until 4:30 p.m. A one-hour lunch break will allow attendees to meet new friends and socialize with acquaintances.

Call the Library at 706-722-4073 or Jerry Scott at 803-279-4383 or email Jerry at JScott7388@aol.com to register. Deadline is Tuesday, 23 February, so register soon to assure your handbook and lunch.

 



PROGRAM PREVIEWS

by Janice M. Johnson

7 JANUARY 2010

THE MAPPING OF OLD ABBEVILLE DISTRICT

How can a researcher track down a “missing” post-colonial or Revolutionary War site in an area where records are believed to no longer exist? This was the dilemma faced by AGS member Nancy Lindroth when she began to research battles and skirmishes in the Old Ninety-Six District, one of the seven original judicial districts in South Carolina. Specifically, she was interested in the Old Abbeville District where many Scotch-Irish and French Huguenot farmers settled in the mid-eighteenth century. The French named the area for Abbeville in the Picardie region on the Somme River in northern France near the English Channel.

Abbeville County was designated in 1785 and is known today mostly for its secession role in the Civil War and as the scene of the last Confederate council of war held by President Jefferson Davis. But the region has a rich history that includes the signing of a treaty with the Cherokees and the creation of adjacent counties that include Greenville, Anderson, Laurens, Greenwood and McCormick counties in South Carolina. Elbert County across the Savannah River in Georgia shares a similar back-country history.

Nancy quickly learned that primary records in this section of South Carolina are very limited. The Abbeville Courthouse burned in the late 1800s. Colonial plats on file at the SC Department of Archives and History were available during her research only in the original books or in much-used microfilm. “The Mapping of Old Abbeville District” has been developed by Nancy with the subtitle of “How to find historic locations without historic court house records in modern Abbeville County and portions of Edgefield, Greenwood and McCormick Counties.” After becoming involved with the project, she found an additional obstacle: the county maps created by the SC Department of Transportation are drawn to different scales, so the old counties and those created from them could not just be pieced together to form a larger map.

A twentieth-century development has also hindered the study of lands where the native American tribes once roamed and where successive settlers farmed and fought for their homesteads. Timber was in great demand during World War I, and much of South Carolina was deforested. Abandoned farms and eroded and unproductive land were common but were rescued by the creation of national forests and parks that restored timber and created a habitat for fish and wildlife. Better land management is of course commendable, but the downside to historical research is that the earliest trails and roads disappeared into the new forests and man-made lakes.

Nancy’s program will explain some techniques that helped her to track missing places and their early inhabitants. She has produced a handout that identifies printed, published, and online map resources. While she used the Old Abbeville District for her research, she will show that her methods may apply to other places of interest to a researcher.

The regular monthly programs are free and open to the public.
They are held at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street. Entrance to the museum at night is from a well-lighted parking area entered from either Sixth or Broad Streets.


GEORGIA BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prepared by Kathy Jarvis

Click here for bibliography


AGS TRUST FUND

Imagine That!! Donors Set Up AGS Trust Fund And Give Large Donation For Virginia Records. Two magnanimous AGS members brought new meaning to us of the word generosity when they endowed the Society with our very first ongoing private trust fund, to ensure the Society's future stability, and then made available another large fund to be used exclusively for colonial Virginia records for our Library.

The donors, who Insist on anonymity, have spent many years assembling details of the lives and times of their ancestors. Trips to research centers throughout the South and East enabled them to identify sources many genealogists only dream of finding. It is their wish that these types of documents and records be made available locally, hence the gift restricted to colonial Virginia, the home place of untold numbers of Southern families.

What a splendid piece of generosity, to their fellow members, and to their community!


Available for Purchase

WILKES COUNTY, GEORGIA
TAX RECORDS, 1785 – 1805


Volumes One & Two

Compiled & Published by
Frank Parker Hudson


AGS is happy to announce that Frank Parker Hudson’s 2-volume/1520 page Wilkes County, Georgia Tax Records, 1785-1805, is available for purchase. We raved about the books when we first saw them, and still consider them one of the finest additions public and academic libraries with genealogical collections, or genealogists with early Georgia ties, can make to their libraries.

And do you need the set? Consider this: Your late-18th century Georgia research is centered in Wilkes County, where nearly half of the population of Georgia was clustered in 1790. Then you learn that someone has published 1520 pages of names of all Wilkes Taxables for 1785-1805, with adjoining landowners and original grantee – 47,000 tax returns from all extant tax records, some never before microfilmed.

All genealogical data in the tax records is in the abstracts. Thousands of free white males 21 years old or older, owning no property, are also identified. Not only that, the microfilm roll & frame number of all returns found in the original records provide a splendid finding aid unavailable for any other set of Georgia records! That’s far from all! Locations of Militia Districts (using current maps as backgrounds!), names of successive captains of Militia Districts 1806-1830 as finding aids for future research, lists placing watercourses in counties, variant spellings of surnames, even a listing of current counties encompasssed by Wilkes County in 1785 is included.

It took Mr. Hudson more than 30 years to compile all the data; his presentation is bound to answer questions genealogists from Georgia to Texas and other points West have been posing for years in their attempts to sort out names and residences of Georgia ancestors. This is to say that the books could be helpful in any research.

To quote from Marguerite Fogleman's review of the books: "to say that the project of bringing these tax records to publication for genealogists was 'monumental' might be an understatement" is an opinion with which we agree wholeheartedly!

Printed on 1520 pages of acid-free paper, with library quality binding, the handsome set is sold only as a 2-volume set, due to 104 page common index.

Now On Special Sale! Now On Special Sale!

$30.00 at AGS Library; by mail for $30.00 + $5.00 p&h.
Check to AGS, P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743
Phone 706-722-4073 or 706-738-2241


OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST

65,000 Individual-Name References in Ancestoring. The Augusta Genealogical Society began publishing its official journal, Ancestoring, in 1980. Each issue contains several thousands of individual-name entries from cemeteries, churches and other rich resource records in the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia and South Carolina. All 13 Volumes include historical background articles, cemetery articles, cemetery records from St. Paul's Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Magnolia Cemetery, Cedar Grove Cemetery, courthouse records, naturalizations and more. For more information on Ancestoring, click here.

Do You Have Suggestions For Improving The AGS Web Site or Need Help in Constructing Your Own Genealogical Society Web Site? If so please contact our AGS Web Master, by clicking here.


Like To Visit Our Query Page?

If you would like to view queries posted by past visitors to the AGS Web site seeking genealogical information relative to their ancestors who might have once resided in, or passed through, the Augusta, Georgia region, or, if you would like to post your own query for such information, you may do so by clicking here. This will take you to our Query page.


For links to other genealogical society Web sites click here.