Presidents Message

Land records are considered one of the most underused resources for amateur genealogists. September’s meeting featured AIGS own land record guru, James “Jim” Shroads. Jim made a living, late in life, by digging into these types of records for his legal practice. When you find people like Jim who are willing to share their knowledge of specific types of records, you should seek them out! Jim took what could have been a difficult subject matter and brought it down to a level that we could all understand. Well done Jim! If you missed his presentation, it was not recorded. Sorry! However, he instructs during our Beginning Genealogy Classes, and Land and Courthouse Records is one of the topics, so I expect he’ll repeat this presentation during January’s classes. Speaking of which, we are now taking reservations for our 2022 Beginning Genealogy Classes! Limited to only 24 seats, these classes fill up quickly. More details can be found here: Beginning Genealogy Course – First Session. Opportunities exist in our society for members to seek out and get assistance with their family history research. From our 1,000+ genealogy book collection at the Fernandina Beach library, our general meetings featuring specific genealogy topics, to our new Special Interest Group subjects, you can find a vast array of educational opportunities to increase your genealogy knowledge throughout the year. If ever you have a question, the library committee staffs the question and answer sessions at the library, and are more than willing to assist you […]

August General Meeting Highlights I want to personally thank Prof. Keith Ashley for an outstanding presentation about the ongoing archaeological excavations on Big Talbot Island. If you were unable to attend our first in-person meeting since Covid_19, then you also missed one of the best speakers we’ve been able to schedule! If your perception of what a Timucuan village looked like back in the 16th Century is tied to Theodore de Bry’s engraving, pictured here, then you have been deceived. The excavation is showing that the depiction is largely the fanciful artistry of de Bry, where he reused features found in other tribal villages and applied it to whatever tribe he was engraving at the time. History shows us that tribes were distinct and reliant on the resources around them. Their utensils, tools, food, and homes were all dependent on the resources available. The findings at Mocama are based on three themes described by Prof. Ashley: Hereditary Leaders Ranked Clans Social Inequality Mocama is not the only dig Prof. Ashley is leading, we hope to have him back in 2022 to discuss the findings from the other excavation! July General Meeting Highlights I missed commenting about our virtual meeting held in July as I was still working on a personal family writeup, the fruition of that presentation. As we did in June, we featured a video lecture from Prof. John Philip Colletta, part of the genealogy DVD series by The Great Courses called Discovering your roots : an introduction to