Please join us on 17 January 2023 at 7pm in the Community room at the Fernandina Beach Branch Library, when we kick off the new year with a virtual presentation by Marl Olsen. Mark will introduce the latest update of the Family Tree Maker software, explaining how to get the update, what to do prior to running it, and highlighting its main features. This presentation will not only be useful to those who are already using the FTM software, but also to those who are considering acquiring it. A door prize will be presented to one person at the meeting. Mark Olsen is the Family Tree Maker Ambassador to historical and genealogical societies around the world working to support their members as they use Family Tree Maker. Mark is a graduate of Brigham Young University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Family History with a Spanish records emphasis. He has been working in the genealogy industry since 2007 and has been the Family Tree Maker Ambassador since 2016. 

Come join us on 21 March 2023 at 7:00pm in the Fernandina Branch Library community room. Carol Clay, Past-President of the Southern Genealogist Exchange, Inc. will present "Genealogy or History? Collaborative Research in Action" where she will discuss two Jacksonville families research while extolling the benefits of the collection at the Southern Genealogist Exchange office on Sauterne Drive in Jacksonville.

Cherished memories deserve special care, and preserving them for future generations is essential. We invite you to join us on April 18th, 2023, at 7:00 PM in the Fernandina Branch Library's community room for an informative session on converting photographs, slides, and videos into digital formats that can be treasured for a lifetime.

Join us on 16 May at 7pm at the Fernandina Branch Library Community Room to listen to Bob Frey, who will tell us how he traced his ancestry back to the Catholics who established colonial Maryland, then later migrated to Kentucky and beyond. His ancestors settled the historic, western Kentucky Catholic settlement of Fancy Farm and helped build the St Jerome Church. Frey will discuss his ancestors’ arrival in Maryland from England in the 17th century and subsequent migration to Kentucky in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Turpentine was a ubiquitous ingredient in American household products including paints, medicines, soaps, lamp oil, ink, lubricants, hair spray, and cosmetics, just to name a few. Pine trees would be tapped for sap and resin which was used in the production of making turpentine. Join us to listen to John Hendricks, Director of the West Nassau Historical Society, who will explore the economic and social impact the turpentine industry had on the development of Nassau County. He will take you on a remarkable hundred-year-long journey from the first turpentine still founded in the late 1850s through its heyday at the turn of the 19th century to its waning years in the 1940s and 1950s.