Tending to the family tree
CBGHA help centre reopening to public on March 7
The Cape Breton Genealogy and Historical Association is reopening its help centre at the historic Lyceum, 225 George St, Sydney.
The centre will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. each week. Our first day after our winter break will be March 7. There is no fee to use the help centre and it is available to anyone who wishes to visit. The CBGHA has had a website with vast amounts of Cape Breton genealogy information for 14 years and now we will be supplying some one-on-one assistance.
There is enthusiastic volunteer staff willing to assist researchers. Maureen McNeil, who is the vice president of the CBGHA, is the director of the help centre. There are three computer terminals and visitors will be able to visit the CBGHA website as well as other genealogy sites of interest. The CBGHA website, www.cbgen.org, contains a very large selection of Cape Breton information helpful to researchers all located in one easy-to-use location. The website contains books, maps, school records, Cape Breton Census records, family trees, newspaper records from the 1800s, land grant information, ships and shipping information, births, deaths, marriages, some parish records and more.
We have the largest collection of Cape Breton cemetery records available anywhere and many of our cemetery records are complete with headstone pictures. We add additional new material to our website each month and some of our records even extend beyond Cape Breton Island. Our collection of Cape Breton related reference, research and historical books will be located at the help centre for research and reading.
All the books may be used in the centre but will not be available for loan.
The Cape Breton Genealogy and Historical Association is a Nova Scotia registered not-forprofit society that has been in operation since March 2003. The CBGHA has a large numbers of local members as well as members from each province and members from each of the United States. We even have some members from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Many local historical and genealogy groups also belong to the Cape Breton Genealogy and Historical Association to access our huge selection of records. We feel that the CBGHA attracts members from such varied locations because our information is easy to access and is available 24/7/365 days a year.
We welcome new members to our group and membership is only $25 per year. We invite anyone interested to visit our website – www.cbgen.org. On the home page you will find an example of cemetery, census, civil, family and parish records available on the site. You can also check the how-to-navigate site feature that will give you an idea how the site is set up. We also post our most recent announcements on the home page of the website.
We hope that the public will visit the help centre and see what we have to offer.
“The CBGHA has a large numbers of local members as well as members from each province and members from each of the United States. We even have some members from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.”