Expert from FamilySearch to speak at McDonough genealogy seminar

David Rencher, the chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch in Salt Lake City, will be on hand to offer his expertise at an upcoming seminar in McDonough.

Rencher will speak at a Georgia Genealogical Society event on September 22 at the First Baptist Church, 101 Macon St. Registration is at 9:30 a.m.

Rencher’s first lecture will be on using all the features of FamilySearch. FamilySearch is the current name of the website and database created by the Genealogical Society of Utah, which microfilmed millions of county records in the U.S., as well as records from around the world. Other lectures are entitled “FamilySearch Collections, Tips and Tricks,” “Ethics in Genealogy: Professional and Personal,” and “Methodology for Source and Archives Research.”

The event ends at 4:30 p.m. The cost is $35 for members, $45 for nonmembers, if mailed to the Georgia Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 550247, Atlanta, Ga., 30355-2747, and postmarked by September 12. Or you can pay via PayPal by going online to gagensociety.org by September 18.

Rencher is a leading genealogy lecturer in the United States, has been with FamilySearch for decades and is an expert on Irish research. The next GGS meeting will be December 9 at the Georgia Archives. The society has a quarterly newsletter and journal for members, and free monthly webinars by national experts on a variety of genealogical topics open to all. Check the website.

Folk art is topic of Lunch and Learn

“Folk Art in a larger Historical Perspective” will be the Georgia Archives Lunch and Learn topic for September 14. Katherine Jentleson, curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the High Museum in Atlanta, will be the speaker. The event will be held at noon and is free, but bring your lunch. Her lecture combines history and art, as the High Museum has a large collections of folk art. For more information, see GeorgiaArchives.org, call 678-364-3710. For the Folk Art collection at the High Museum, see high. org and collections.

South Carolina Revolutionary War records digitized

The South Carolina Department of Archives and History has recently digitized and put online the Revolutionary War records from the “Accounts Audited of Claims Growing out of the Revolution in South Carolina, 1775-1856.” These 11,000 records are a gold mine of information for genealogists and historians, and are now more accessible than ever before. Go to scdah.sc.gov and then to their Online Records Index or archivesindex.sc.gov. The funding came from several grants, including the Southern Revolutionary War Institute and the National Park Service.